Its a tough call as to whether you work hard now and travel in 10-15 years, or find ways to travel now perhaps at the expense of earning power.
To my mind, it's fair enough to defer serious long term travel in order to get your finances in order. I think what isnt a good idea though is completely deferring, i.e. the "be a banker, work my ass off, make a mil before 35, then retire". The human mind/body doesnt work well on those timescales where you're punishing yourself for years for a distant better future. If you value travel/adventure, you gotta have at least SOME of it along the way IMO, even if it's just a couple of short stints per year.
I think the ideal life in your youth would be to work hard with something like 10-12 weeks holiday a year. I'd happily earn a fraction less for 3 months off every year. You might even end up more productive overall, anyway - you use the downtime while you travel in 3 months to pound books, learn languages etc.
I think something like that would be a great balance. Because when you earn more with less free time, you just burn it on material crap as a poor substitute for your lack of freedom - see the spending habits of lawyers/bankers in the rat race. It all goes towards cars/ apartments in better places / clothes/ expensive dinners and overpriced nights out, in the mediocre city you're enslaved to. Crazy.
To my mind, it's fair enough to defer serious long term travel in order to get your finances in order. I think what isnt a good idea though is completely deferring, i.e. the "be a banker, work my ass off, make a mil before 35, then retire". The human mind/body doesnt work well on those timescales where you're punishing yourself for years for a distant better future. If you value travel/adventure, you gotta have at least SOME of it along the way IMO, even if it's just a couple of short stints per year.
I think the ideal life in your youth would be to work hard with something like 10-12 weeks holiday a year. I'd happily earn a fraction less for 3 months off every year. You might even end up more productive overall, anyway - you use the downtime while you travel in 3 months to pound books, learn languages etc.
I think something like that would be a great balance. Because when you earn more with less free time, you just burn it on material crap as a poor substitute for your lack of freedom - see the spending habits of lawyers/bankers in the rat race. It all goes towards cars/ apartments in better places / clothes/ expensive dinners and overpriced nights out, in the mediocre city you're enslaved to. Crazy.