The Big Question: How We Live This Way

Many, many readers have been asking how we afford to travel the world and write about it. It is time to tell.

Contrary to popular suspicion, there are no trust funds involved. Sometimes, on the road, Lara actually tells people when they ask that she can do this because of her trust fund. We are not sure why, exactly, she chooses this off-color joke, but it is probably to make Claire feel awkward and make life just generally more uncomfortable for her amusement. The people she tells usually never believe her anyway (aside from the fact that it is a lie and Lara has the opposite of a trust fund – a trust hole, if anyone is counting), because she is wearing bad clothes, and her hair is a mess, and there is probably a piece of dirt on her face, and she just generally appears homeless.

So, it’s not a trust fund. Then what is it?

This is how we do what we do. There are several components to our lives, or, as Lara likes to tell people, “We have, like, eight million jobs.”

Job 1
Writers of Vague Things who currently get pennies but have potential. We have a couple projects with the food editor at TrippingOnMyCouch, and after parting from our earlier agents citing irreconcilable differences we are on the hunt again. Claire recently got a great agent for her travel book, All Roads Lead to Einbahn, who is trying to convince publishers to buy it. We are crossing fingers mightily. If you are wondering, we got agents in the first place because we had an idea, we started researching the publishing industry (there are a million books to read on it), and we began sending out massive amounts of emails stalking agents. And we got lucky a couple times. Needless to say, we are hoping to get even luckier the next time and find an agent we actually like to work with.

Job 2
Travel Writers that get lots of free things. We work for a website that has many many thousands of hotels around the world on it. We write feature articles for the site about hotels and tours and thing, and in exchange the hotels and resorts are nice to us and put us up and feed us and pretend we don't look like mangy animals. We generally stay in one place for about a week, and have breakfast and sometimes full board there. In exchange we groom ourselves and have meetings with Scary Hotel Managers and Other Affiliated Officials. This is how we eat (sometimes) and sleep (most always).

Job 3
Freelance Editors who make good money. We work as freelance editors for a web-based international editing company. It is monotonous work, especially considering between us we have worked there for 9 years and our hours of it are piqued with remarks such as: “I hate this job.” But it’s anywhere there’s WiFi and we are lucky bastards to have it.

Job 4 (Claire)
Anthropology Consultant for three mostly international non-profits that do some really interesting things. This is because Claire has a master’s in Anthropology studying such non-profits and will eventually go back and get a PhD, because PhDs are free. And free degrees are great. As you can imagine, being an Anthropology Consultant for a non-profit pays along the same lines as investment banking, so this is a crucial aspect of Claire’s income (sarcasm evident; Lara wonders if Claire even gets paid. Lara is now typing and has deduced from Claire's wardrobe and tendency to spend hours comparison shopping in supermarkets that she does not really.)

Job 5 (Lara)
Future Doctor and Sometimes Waitress (when she is in the US) at a fancy San Francisco restaurant where she wears outfits that make her look like a dapper penguin to save money for travel and medical school. Waitresses deal with people’s special requests and cuisine infused outbursts in exchange for generally (IRS people stop reading now) tax free tips.

Dream Job 6
We want to write for an airline magazine, or bifurcate our bodies such that a clone could work for American Airlines headquarters and get free or compensated airline flights. Because we drop major money on airlines, as you might imagine.

Dream Jobs 7-1000
Any more travel writing gigs or general ideas that people have. If you know someone somewhere who wants help with something, we are generally quite flexible and willing to explore even slightly profitable options in exchange for experience, general fun, or free stuff.

In sum, although we are lucky bastards, it is feasible for you too to quit life and do this, if your little heart so desires. We get a real kick out of it when readers write us and ask about how, so please do. Even if only to say that we are idiots and you hate our blog and it reads badly and you hate that blogspot made us a Blog of Note. Our email? You may know it: ClaireandLara@gmail.com OR HateToHelp@gmail.com.