8 Reasons to Start Traveling In Your 30s

Our 30s are often thought to be the slowing down years. The time when we leave behind our youthful exuberance and propensity to take risks, and start focusing more on settling down and starting a family. For those who weren’t fortunate enough to start exploring overseas in their 20s, the mindset that traveling just isn’t an option for them starts to take shape.
That’s a load of crap. Your 30s actually might be the best time of your life to start traveling, and here’s why.
You’ve got your stuff together.
They say that our 30s is the decade when we finally start feeling a sense of true confidence in ourselves. We care less about what others think of us, we’ve (mostly) got our careers figured out and we’re making way more money than we did in our 20s, and they’re kind of right. For those reasons alone it’s a great time to start traveling, since you’ll be able to really afford it and appreciate what you’re experiencing on a whole different level at this point in your life. 
You can afford it.
As we mentioned above, people tend to have a stable career somewhere in their 30s and more money coming in. That means you’ve got more you can spend on travel. Instead of purchasing an expensive house, use that money exploring new places and staying in nicer hotels.
You’ll appreciate it more.
When we’re in our 20s, most of the things we enjoy revolve around drinking and we tend to take that habit with us overseas. Your 30s are when the need to drink takes a backseat to the need to experience live a little more fully. Instead of rocking out until 3 am in Amsterdam, in your 30s you’ll probably enjoy a few more sunsets that you’ll actually remember down the road.
You develop real relationships.
The best part of being 30 is that you’ve reached the point where you can generally tell a real friend from a fake. Rather than racking up bar buddies overseas, you’ll spend more time having genuine conversations about life with people and you’ll form long-lasting friendships. Gone will be the one-night stands with nameless faces, and in their place you’ll find actual friendships with people who’ve lived an entirely different life from you that’ll help you grow as a human being.
You just don’t care anymore.
Our 20s are a time of constant competition to stay on top of things and to impress those around us. We compete for dates and for jobs and always feel like we have to be putting our best foot forward. By the time 30 rolls around, we just genuinely don’t give a s@$!. That’s a great attitude to have while traveling, you’ll find, because precious time won’t be spend overcompensating for insecurities and can be put to better use, like sleeping in even though you’re only in Paris for three days.
You’ve developed mad skills.
Whether you’ve found skills in conversing with strangers or simply packing a suitcase, you’re bound to be better at everything you kind of sucked at in your 20s, which will make traveling so much easier. You’ll pack with efficiency, know better than to expect everyone to cater to you, and you probably speak at least a second language or more by now. This also means you won’t sweat the small stuff when things go wrong, as they inevitably will, and will be able to handle any situation without calling home to mommy and daddy to help you fix it.
You’ll take smarter risks.
Risk-taking doesn’t completely end when you hit your fourth decade, but the types of risks you’re willing to take actually make sense now. You’ll play it safer as you travel and not put yourself in situations where things could go horribly wrong just for the sake of being a daredevil.
You’re still young.
Guess what? You’re 30, not dead. You’ve still got a ton of energy, a healthy body and plenty of years before you hit the grave. Long hikes along foreign trails are still readily doable and you can go skydiving, swim with dolphins, and even race cars in strange countries at least until you’re 39. After that you might as well pack it up. I mean, 40 is pretty old, right?