A Gen Zer who decided to quit his job as an estate agent to travel the world has explained how he manages to afford it.

To begin 2025, some Gen Z and millennials have decided to embark on a new career trend known as ‘microretirement’.

While a warning has been issued to those wanting to try it, the opportunity of taking a career break to travel the world is too good for many to turn down.

In January 2023, George Buckley, 23, decided to leave his career as an estate agent and book a one-way flight to Bangkok, Thailand.

“I went in as a trainee sales negotiator, frontline, hammering the calls,” George told UNILAD.

“Gradually I found my feet and began to love it. I really enjoyed working with my colleagues.”

George Buckley worked as an estate agent (Supplied)

But long-term, George knew it wasn’t something he wanted to do, as he tried to balance his full-time job with content he posted to his popular TikTok channel.

He ultimately decided to leave the role after ten months.

George quickly decided Thailand’s bustling capital would be an ideal starting point for his travels, before exploring the rest of south-east Asia.

“I went solo traveling,” George said. “So I kind of threw myself into the deep end. I didn’t do much research prior to arrival; I just wanted to throw myself in and see what happened and just deal with it.”

The content creator continued: “I’ve grown tremendously as a person because of it, and I’ve never looked back since it’s the best decision I’ve made.”

George booked a one-way flight to Bangkok (Supplied)

It all sounds great, right? But many will wonder how they’ll be able to afford such a venture.

Well, George told UNILAD he’s always been good with cash and managed to save prior to leaving his day job.

A part-time job at the UK supermarket chain Tesco also helped George’s finances, and he also has an emergency fund ready in case anything goes wrong.

Now he has made traveling the world a reality, the 23-year-old has said he doesn’t see himself returning to the typical ‘9-5’ for the ‘foreseeable’.

“I’m young, I’ve got energy for it [travel and content creation],” George said.

“It’s my passion, and I’m going to pursue that as much as I can and really go for it and see how far I can really take it. But I’d never write off going back into that nine-to-five role.”

Despite that, George admitted he does have some ‘envy’ for those in standard corporate jobs for the routine and steady income they provide.

The content creator has explained how he affords his adventures (Supplied)

But George is also earning money while traveling and is currently documenting his experience in Bali on TikTok – which is one of his main avenues of revenue.

“I’m not going to try and sugarcoat it and say it’s going to happen overnight,” George said about getting into content creation.

He went on: “I didn’t earn any money for the first two-and-a-half years of making videos and eventually built it up to the point where I realized I could do it full-time.

“I made sure that [my] income was high enough, which is especially important when traveling. Whether that’s making videos for brands or stuff that I’d earn off my personal social pages like TikTok and YouTube, to the point where that is steady enough.

“And I’ve also got that security fund as well for a fallback option if anything goes wrong.

“I would recommend if anybody is looking to go down this path, you build it [following] up first and get in the habit of posting regularly and actually getting some traction before taking that leap.”

George concluded: “And once you are fully confident you have some money behind you, go and take the risk, give it 100 percent and go from there.”

A cleaning influencer has been receiving backlash after filming herself sprucing up old or abandoned graves on TikTok.

The creator, who uses the handle ‘The Clean Girl’, rolls up her sleeves and gets to work scrubbing neglected graves as she believes ‘everyone deserves a beautiful resting place’.

However, her kind deed has somewhat backfired after some viewers claimed it was disrespectful to touch the graves without permission.

Would you be happy if a grave of one of your relatives was cleaned? (Getty stock image)

Speaking over one of her viral grave-cleaning videos, she says: “Let’s clean a random grave. Who do you think is buried here? Let’s clean it and find out.

“So many questions how old is this grave. It looks like it’s been here for 500 years, how did this grave get so dirty?

‘Wow, there’s a tree growing out of it. I love plants.”

The influencer continues: “This transformation was extremely hard for me but I believe everyone deserves a beautiful grave.

“Okay, so I did some research. A woman is buried here and she has two brothers – like me.”

The video goes on, and in the end the grave is looking pristine – she even throws away the withered, old flowers that lay there and replaced them with fresh ones.

However, not everyone was best pleased after watching.

Commenting on the TikTok, one user wrote: “I don’t think it’s okay to switch the flowers because they are from a loved one as a simble [sic] of love.”

And they weren’t alone, as another person agreed: “I guess its fine to just clean it but something about she changing the flowers and taking away the other sorts of plants on it doesn’t feel right.”

While a third added: “I don’t think you should take stuff away bc it’s probably from a friend or family and you should not take it and put new one.”

Is cleaning a stranger’s grave really so offensive? (Getty stock image)

And it didn’t stop there, as another person chimed in: “You have to ask family members before cleaning it.”

Meanwhile somebody else commented: “The vacuum felt so disrespectful.”

But there were a lot of people who found what she was doing endearing.

One of which took to the social media platform to say: “It might seem disrespectful, but imagine being a family member and coming to visit and arriving to a beautiful and clean grave. I’d feel so happy”

While another, claiming to be related to the person whose grave it was, added: “Thank you For Cleaning my grandma’s Grave.”

Getting matching tattoos with a friend is pretty normal, but the final product left one woman distraught in tears, and for very good reason.

When you get a tattoo, it’s ideal to know the artist and exactly what you want, since it can be a pretty big decision.

However, TikTok user Anicole, who goes by the username @lanicole001, insisted she did just this… and was still left with a rather unfortunate end product.

She wanted to get the wing of a butterfly on the back of her upper arm, with her friend getting the other half – but instead, it looked like she and her friend just had ‘limp d***s’ tattooed on them for some reason.

Yeah…. I don’t see butterfly wings, I can’t lie (TikTok/@lanicole001)

In fact, when Anicole came to the realization, she burst into tears and made a video ‘showing off’, (if you can call it that) to her followers.

In the TikTok clip, she captioned the video: “When you try to get cute matching tattoos and you get two limp d*cks instead! #wheninnash #ohno #coverup #tattoo.”

She is also seen holding her head in despair and, yeah… I don’t blame her.

As you can imagine, the video went viral, with over 754,000 likes and many people on social media making jokes.

One person commented: “Who ever did this knew. They knew.”

Another asked: “Is this a prison tattoo?”

With a third adding: “The fact one of you went first…and the other stayed true to the plan,” with a laughing emoji.

In a follow-up video, Anicole explained what had happened and how she decided to get it fixed by another artist a few hours later.

In the video, she said: “We don’t blame the artist or the shop, nothing against them. But on the flipside to that, I don’t really think there is anyway the artist didn’t know what it looked like.

NOW It looks like a butterfly wing (TikTok/@lanicole001)

“The first picture of it I saw was in the video and I started sobbing, that was me really crying. I cried for probably an hour after I saw the tattoo on my arm.”

She also addressed the speculation that the tattoo was infected, simply explaining that her skin was irritated, as the videos were taken not long after leaving the shop.

Anicole also showed off what her tattoo looked like now that she had got it touched up by someone else, and it actually does look like a butterfly wing.

She even admitted that she is happier with it and will at least now have a good story that she can laugh about in a few years.

A woman has left people divided after claiming you should ‘get a new job’ if you earn less than a certain salary.

With the rising cost of living, many would argue that wages have not risen in a similar fashion, leading to people in previously well-paid jobs struggling to make ends meet.

Alice Raspin weighed in on this debate in a now viral TikTok where she claimed ‘wages that don’t match inflation are out’ in 2025 – aka you should leave them.

It’s no secret that people are struggling (Kinga Krzeminska / Getty Stock)

The 28-year-old Aussie said: “I’m sorry but I’m not doing anything for AUD$60,000 ($37,000) a year. As a 28-year-old living in the capital city with one child I rent and we are saving for a home. How do people expect to compensate someone 75 hours a fortnight for AUD$60,000? What bills am I paying with that?”

The TikToker went on to say any company that is advertising a job at $37,000 are ‘dreaming’ if they feel that is a satisfactory wage for an employee.

“I don’t care how much you make, if it’s less than AUD$60,000 ($37,500 USD) a year get a new job.”

Raspin has since spoken to News.com.au about her comments and the subsequent viral video.

While she noted such a wage would be ‘suitable’ for those in their early twenties with no responsibilities living with flatmates or still at home, such a salary is not suitable for those older, according to the Aussie.

She added: “While we don’t struggle to afford anything, we’ve had to sacrifice a social life in order to pay bills, save for a house and pay for day-to-day expenses.”

In the comments section of Raspin’s video, one person said: “I 100 percent agree with you Alice. I don’t even think $80k a year is a liveable wage. Try attempting to pay off a uni degree also. It is a disgrace.”

Alice Raspin has divided opinion (@‌aliceraspin/TikTok)

While someone on the other side of the fence said: “If you can’t make ends meet you need to readjust your spending habits.”

An Australia Wage Price Index update in September 2024 revealed that the consumer price index rose 2.8 percent wage growth, on the other hand, increased at a higher 3.5 percent.

“In the September quarter, seasonally adjusted wages rose 0.8% for the third consecutive quarter, and 3.5% over the year,” the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on their website.

“This was the lowest annual rise for the series since December quarter 2022 and followed four consecutive quarters of annual wage growth equal to or above 4%.”