Work for half the year, travel for the other half, financed by your working months. For the half-year work, do something like oil-rig, fishing boat, seasonal agriculture, etc. You can live on the boat/rig or in dorms or something with the other workers. Then, with no fixed address, you can take cheap buses to where you need to go, or hitchhike, or ride a cheap repositioning cruise to cross the Atlantic, and backpack and stay in hostels wherever you go.
Volunteer. Take up exercise - run, bike, swim, hike. Make friends with other broke people. Only drink during happy hour. Meetup.com sucks, but they have plenty of groups dedicated to getting together and playing board games.
Volunteering to teach ESL has always worked out well for me–twice I have accepted the invitation to visit my students and stay with their family in their home country. Excellent both times–Chile and Guatemala. My latest batch of students were from Congo, South Sudan, Iraq, Burundi, Morocco… I may visit them sometime!
The ESL teaching option is intriguing to me. I have a friend from college who currently lives and teaches ESL in Korea, I believe. I’ll have to ask him about his preparation and experience.
I’m thinking I’d love to teach ESL in my father’s ancestral country, Slovakia…
A friend of mine who always wanted to travel became a travel agent (this was before the internet more-or-less ate the profession) and hosted students from abroad every year. When she wanted to go somewhere, she found a cheep ticket, called up whatever former student she had in the area, and asked if she could couch surf for a week. It took some time to build a network of former students, but it worked for her.
You could look up a guy called Alastair Humphreys – he might give you some ideas or inspiration on interesting and exciting ways to spend your time without spending your cash.
His first book (Thunder & Sunshine) described how, with all his friends desperate to join the rat race, buy houses, get married, he just felt that it wasn’t quite for him, so with no training and much trepidation he cycled from his home in middle England, heading for Europe. Four years and many adventures later he completed his circumnavigation of the globe, passing through over 100 countries and mostly relying on the kindness of strangers along the way. (I think he spend <£7k on the 4 year trip in total). It’s a great story, quite uplifting in terms of restoring faith in humanity.
Obviously this is a step too far for most of us, but he has now carved a living for himself as an adventurer and an entertaining motivational speaker. He has also recently published a book on what he calls ‘micro adventures’ that can offer new perspectives on ways of seeing your local area for those of us too busy/lazy to consider organising such a major outing.
One tip I haven’t seen yet: Find friends who can facilitate what you want.
For example, I have very fond of memories of boating on the lake during summer vacations, yet my family didn’t own a boat. My uncle did. So we’d find out when he was going boating and we’d get the campsite next to him. We’d pitch in $100 for gas and - voila! - the use of a $40,000 boat on a regular basis.
I haven’t taken advantage of it yet, but I have a cousin who married an Italian and now lives near Milan. If I crash at her place for a few nights and maybe even get her to drive me around town, I’ve saved perhaps $1,000.
A friend of mine in college got a European vacation affordably only because he went with three other guys and they split costs like hotels and rental cars.
Those are interesting ideas, but oil rig or fishing are dangerous jobs. Seasonal agricultural could be very physically demanding and not well paying. There are also jobs with the park service that are only 6 months a year, but they don’t pay well.
I remember when I had a part time job, I would work a 2-2-3 schedule, which means I would work Sunday, wednesday & thursday of one week, then I would work everyday except those 3 the next. Then repeat that schedule. It was much easier to get through the work day, because almost every day you worked felt like a thursday or friday (meaning it came before a 2 and sometimes 3 day weekend). If you got burnt out, you had a 2 day weekend starting tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. I need to find another one of those jobs. This 9-5 stuff isn’t as fun as they made it out to be on TV.
For culture you might want to check and see if your local movie theater broadcasts any of the Metropolitan Opera shows. They film performances and then play them on the big screen across the nation for $20-$25 a ticket. You also might check and see what shows are playing at your local high schools and community colleges. They all have theater programs and you can see some very famous shows for not a lot of money.
As for travel you might have to do a little research but you can travel very cheaply even in very popular destinations. For example, my family is going to Montreal in a few weeks so we booked a hotel through Groupon and ended up with a 4 star hotel in an excellent location with a pool and all that fun stuff for super cheap. My MIL just went to Ecuador for 10 days a couple of months ago for a pittance with an online deal too. Groupon, Travelzoo, and any other number of online places offer great travel rates if you are good about checking them regularly.
If you just want to learn some interesting things and keep yourself busy MIT, Yale and a few other big name universities offer free introductory courses online. I’m doing the MIT Introduction to Political Thought right now and I’m learning a ton!