How to Maximise Travel Around Your 9 to 5 Job

We would all love to travel more, right?

I’m pretty sure we would all love an extra trip or two each year, but we also need to work to make money to live. So how do we go about travelling more around the 9 to 5 job? (or any job for that matter!)

Thankfully the idea of remote working, digital nomads and flexible working schemes in the UK have become more commonplace and more widely accepted.

But how do we put work and travel into practice? How can we travel more while working?

I’m going to break down a few ways you can maximise travel, annual leave and your weekends so you can do more travel without leaving your job!

How to make the most of annual leave

This is no secret, but the biggest mistake people make is leaving booking too late to really maximise their annual leave allowance.

If you have bucket list trips you want to take this year, get that annual leave booked in.

If you need more days, does your work offer TOIL (Time Off in Lieu) or overtime hours which can be converted to annual leave?

Be strategic about accruing as much leave as possible earlier in the year and booking in the days you want sooner rather than later. The sooner you book time off, the sooner you can book flights and accommodation and bag the best deals.

Maximising bank holidays and weekends

At the start of each year, make sure you know how much annual leave allowance you have, then write down the dates of every bank holiday throughout the year.

Look at how the bank holidays fall around weekends, particularly around Easter and Christmas. These are often the times when you can take just a couple of days of annual leave and end up with a whole week off thanks to bank holidays and weekends falling right.

Here’s an example for Christmas 2025 which uses only 6 annual leave days for 13 days off:

Maximising Christmas 2025 bank holidays

Maximising May bank holidays 2025

Why not try the May bank holiday in 2025 (this works for the August bank holiday too) where you can book just 4 days annual leave for 9 days off:

Using flexible working schemes

More and more companies are seeing the value of employee retention by offering flexible working schemes.

There are lots of different ways this can be offered and if your company doesn’t offer this – maybe it’s time to put this in as an employee suggestion when your company next asks for feedback!

What flexible working can schemes look like:

• fully remote working
• being able to work from home a number of days a week
• being able to work from anywhere nationally, or internationally for short periods
• Being able to work in company offices abroad for a short time
• Sabbatical or workation schemes

You will notice that the key here is being able to work for short times only. That’s because there are tax implications for you and the company you work for if you work abroad for more than 3 months of a year, so these schemes are only for short term use.

However, that makes these schemes ideal for a short city break to Europe or being able to maximise your summer holiday by working for the first few days you’re there, then taking annual leave for a few days or even a week, to really enjoy your itinerary.

Maximise your weekend time

This is undoubtedly the most underrated way to maximise your annual leave and travel more around the 9 to 5.

Many people spend their week looking forward to the weekend but perhaps feel too exhausted to plan anything or social and family engagements get in the way.

But what if you dedicated one weekend every few weeks to getting out and exploring more?

Travel doesn’t have to mean getting on a plane, you can take a weekend break an hour down the road, visit a city or attraction within the UK that you’ve always wanted to see, or maybe take a road trip: North Yorkshire, Wales, the Peak District, Cotswolds, Northumberland, Scotland or South Coast are some of my favourite road trip destinations in the UK.

If you have the time and budget for a trip abroad, we are incredibly lucky to have mainland Europe on our doorstep.

Look out for those budget airline sales: RyanAir, Wizz Air, EasyJet and others often have incredibly cheap prices for weekend flights if you book in advance or travel in the shoulder season or low season.

Or what about taking the Eurostar to Paris, or the ferry from Hull to the Netherlands? Or a short flight over to Belfast or Dublin for a couple of days exploring?

There are a lot more weekend travel options available to us than we realise, whether that’s in the UK or abroad.

Budgeting for working and travelling

Okay, you’re thinking this all sounds great but how much does it cost?

Travel is a privilege but it doesn’t have to break the bank. This is where work and travel comes in, being able to work while travelling means you’re still earning and not using valuable annual leave, but you still get that holiday feeling and can still explore your destination in the mornings, lunchtime and evenings after work – I’ll take that over sitting on the sofa in the evening!

Here are my top tips for budgeting for working and travelling:

• Book at least 3 months in advance to get the best deals
• Know your budget before you book – but also remember you’re sort of offsetting some of that if you’re able to work while you’re there!
• Travel in the low season or shoulder season for cheaper deals on flights and accommodation (this goes for the UK too)
• If you’re working remotely on your trip, book flights for a Tuesday-Thursday, these days are usually cheaper than flying on a Friday-Monday as this is when most people are travelling so demand is higher = higher prices
• Create travel saving pots, digital banking apps like Revolut, Chase, Starling are great for this. By seeing a separate savings pot it helps you make saving for these trips a priority
• Remember that sometimes a weekend away in Europe will be cheaper than a weekend spent in the UK where meals, takeaways, drinks, and public transport can often be more expensive than some countries in Europe!
• Use a VPN to find cheaper flight deals by setting your location to another country
• Set up price trackers on Google Flights to find the best time to book

Tips for remote working abroad

Working abroad remotely can be a learning curve, especially if you’ve not done it before. If you’re planning to work abroad, these are my top tips for remote working abroad.

• Check the rules – while some countries allow for some amount of business to be completed while on a tourist visa, some places are very strict amount not allowing this. Take a look at our digital nomad visa blog for more information on this.
• Pick a nearby destination so the timezone doesn’t impact your ability to work
• Stick to a schedule. While it’s tempting to sack off work early and explore, this is about being able to work and travel without damaging the privileges of being able to do so
• Make sure you have the right equipment – sounds obvious but things like a separate keyboard and mouse, the right chargers, headset or headphones can impact your ability to work effectively when you’re not working from your usual setup
• Might sound obvious but make sure your accommodation has reliable wifi when you book, or alternatively you can find a coworking or coffee shop nearby
• Also consider whether the accommodation you’ve booked has a suitable workstation. Working at a breakfast bar or on a sofa can get uncomfortable fast!
• Do you have the software you need to work from abroad? For example some jobs might have internal systems that don’t allow access from abroad or you can’t use VPNs

Hopefully this guide gives you some ideas for how to travel with a 9 to 5 and how to make the most of weekends and annual leave to improve your work-travel life balance!