13 Ways To Cope With Being Broke While Experiencing Massive Wanderlust

1. Stare longingly out the window, because at this point, no matter how much you love your city, ANYWHERE IS BETTER THAN HERE.

2. Scroll through endless travel Instagrams. Double tap every picture and imagine you’re actually there. Cry a little, because your imagination isn’t THAT good.

3. Keep a jar in your apartment for all spare change and call it your “Travel Funds.” Best case scenario: Nickels and dimes magically transform into tickets to Iceland. Worst case scenario: You can piss off your landlord by paying rent with pennies.

4. Read up on all sorts of exotic locations, and then chat with a stranger at your local coffee shop. Spout off all your newfound knowledge and blatantly lie that you’re in town to visit a friend and about to go hike Mt. Kilimanjaro in a week before jetting off to Peru. Feed off of the jealousy in their eyes.

5. Walk through Chinatown. Pretend it’s actually China, and the guy on the corner ISN’T handing out fliers for Chuck E. Cheese.

6. Meticulously plan out a big trip even though you can only really afford the cost of the airport shuttle. Stretch the planning out all week, and convince yourself that you can actually take the trip. Sure, when you’ve planned everything out and have to accept the reality of the situation, you’ll be REAL SAD. But you were happy for a week, so that’s something.

7. Watch every single movie that takes place in a beautiful, foreign land. Don’t bother trying to explain to your roommate why Passport to Paris is making you sob like a child after losing their favorite Pokémon card. The reason should really be self-explanatory if they know you at all.

8. Look up cool recipes from the country you most want to visit. While cooking, blast the country’s traditional music, speak with an accent, and imagine that the recipe you’re preparing is one that was passed down for generations and a kind grandmother you met that day while sightseeing entrusted it to you because you helped her carry her groceries.

*Note: this only works if you can cook, otherwise the eating part will be substantially more depressing.

9. Audition for The Amazing Race. Be your craziest self to convince them that you would make for GREAT television. If that doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to go ahead and fall to your knees and beg. You never know what might work.

10. Avoid all friends who are just coming back from an AMMMAAZZZINNGGG trip. You don’t need that kind of immense jealousy in your life.

11. Find a globe and play that game where you spin it and declare that you’re going to travel to wherever your finger lands. Laugh at the globe’s stupidity because you can’t travel to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. DUMB GLOBE. I DIDN’T WANT TO TRAVEL ANYWAYS. *muffled sobs*

12. Read up on all the traveling horror stories where someone happens upon a serial killer while backpacking and isn’t found for two months. Not only will you not want to travel ever again, you probably won’t be able to sleep either, which means you’ll have so much more time for activities!

13. Go for a drive in a direction you’ve never travelled before. Don’t take your phone. Get lost. In the effort to find your way back home, realize that your cozy, familiar apartment is WONDERFUL.