- How to Deal with the Post-Travel Blues
- The Best Travel Advice? Be Spontaneous
- How to Stay Fit and Healthy While Traveling
- Hostel Etiquette
- How To Find a Great Hostel
- Travel Checklist – 17 Essential Things to Do Before a Trip
- How to Prepare and Pack for a Long Flight
- My 45 Best Travel Tips from 14 Years of Travel
- Tips To Stay Safe While Traveling
- Why Solo Travel Is Awesome and Why Everyone Should Try It
- How To Deal with Humidity and Heat While Traveling
- How to Save Money While Traveling
- How to Save Money for Travel
- Voluntourism – Why You Need to Rethink Volunteering
- What to Expect While Traveling in Developing Countries
- How to Plan Your Travel Budget
- Packing Checklist – 11 Essential Things to Pack For a Trip
People always ask me about my travel budgets because they want to know how much money they need if they go on a similar trip. This is a completely valid question, but I dislike this question because it’s very difficult to answer due so many different factors that go into a travel budget, such as:
- Are you traveling for a few weeks or a few months? Someone who’s traveling for a few weeks will have a very different travel budget than someone who’s traveling for a few months. This is due to time and the fact that the person with less time will need more efficient and expensive options to get around (like flights instead of cheap buses). And a person traveling for a few weeks will want to treat themselves more often.
- Where will you be staying? Will you be couchsurfing, staying in hostels, an Airbnb, a private room in a budget guesthouse, or nicer hotels?
- Will you be eating street food, at budget restaurants or nice restaurants?
- How will you get around? By bus, taxi, rental car, boat, train or plane?
- How much do you drink and how often do you party? Drinking and partying all the time, no matter how cheap the place, is a major travel budget killer. And this applies in your home country too. When I’m asked how to save for travel, I tell people to cut down on the drinking and going out at home, which saves hundreds of dollars a month, which is a few thousand dollars a year. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly party too, but not everyday and I don’t drink very much when I go out.
- Will you be doing adventure activities like snowboarding, trekking, ziplining, sky diving or scuba diving? These are very expensive.
- Do you need visas and vaccines for the places you want to travel? These add up VERY quickly.
The 3 basic essentials where you’ll spend the majority of your travel budget are food, transportation and accommodation. The rest of your travel budget will go towards excursions, alcohol/partying, shopping, tours, etc; therefore, these all depend on you and how much of these activities you like to do. Everyone has a different travel timeline, interests, and standards of comfort when it comes to transportation, accommodation and meals. Different travel styles equal very different travel budgets. Once you decide where you want to travel, how much time you have, your standards of comfort, and all the extras you want to do, then you can research how much these 3 essentials cost in the places you’ll be traveling (along with the extras you want to do) and then you can figure out an approximate budget.
My #1 tip for traveling on a budget is to let go of high standards of comforts. You can save a lot of money by staying in nice hostels (or basic guesthouses) and eating street food (or at budget restaurants). More money saved means you can travel for longer and see more of the world. It’s also great to learn what you really need and what you really don’t need. You’ll learn that there’s a lot you don’t need and this may change your perspective at home too.
FOOD
Trying the traditional food from a country is one of my favorite things about traveling. In many places in Southeast Asia, you can get street food or dine at a very basic restaurant for $1-2US. However, in Iceland, a cheaper meal can start at $20US. If you’re traveling in expensive countries, avoid restaurants in touristy areas (like Las Ramblas in Barcelona) because they’re always overpriced. And the food is never good anyway.
If you’re staying in hostels or guesthouses, sometimes they include breakfast, which also helps with saving money. Many hostels and Airbnbs have a kitchen where you can cook your own food, which is great for saving money while traveling. Especially in expensive countries.
TRANSPORTATION
Bus, plane, rental car, train or boat? Typically, bus or boat are the cheapest ways to go, but they’re also the slowest. What you choose will depend on your budget and how much time you have. If you only have a few weeks for travel, you must choose the most efficient (and often more expensive) mode of travel.
Efficient transportation is a comfort I’m often willing to pay a little more for. If a hideously long bus ride (10-24+ hours) can be avoided with a quick, cheap flight, I’m sold. I prefer to not waste my life on a bus because it’s an inefficient use of my precious travel time. However, when flights from Nicaragua to Guatemala cost $700 and took 15 hours with a layover in Miami, I opted for a gruelling 18 hour van ride instead.
Many super budget travelers don’t look at flights (instead of a bus) because they assume it’ll always be too expensive. But that isn’t always the case. Europe is a great example of this with all their discount airlines. And in Brazil, where I flew from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval in 1 hour for $90US in order to avoid the 27+ hour bus ride, which cost more than $90US. It’s always worth checking.
ACCOMMODATION
Accommodation can be extremely cheap (or even free if you’re couchsurfing, or pet or housesitting) or quite costly, depending on where you’re traveling and your standards of comfort. Keep in mind you’re traveling to explore the world, not stay in your hotel room. You likely won’t spend much time at your accommodation, so this is a really easy area to save money.
I’m a solo traveler who stays in hostel dorm rooms, but location is important to me because I want to be near all the action. It’s pointless to save a little money on accommodation in the middle of nowhere if you need to spend money taking transportation everyday. And it’s a waste of precious travel time.
There are cheap hostels in the heart of the city and you can choose a small or large dorm room (larger is always cheaper). I cannot recommend hostels enough. Some of the best people I’ve met while traveling have been from my dorm rooms. And there are hostels to suit most comforts- super basic to boutique, and dorm rooms or private rooms.
BRING SOME EXTRA MONEY
No matter how well you plan, something will always come up and throw off your travel budget. And that’s fine, but be prepared for this by incorporating it into your travel budget. If your calculations say you need $2,000, make it $2,500 because this gives you a buffer for emergencies and spontaneity. And if you’re lucky, you won’t need to use the full extra $500.
Do the best you can with your budget, but don’t let it stop you from missing out on amazing opportunities. Unforeseen opportunities and expenses will come up, like Lollapalooza when I was in Chile. The Red Hot Chilli Peppers were headlining and tickets weren’t cheap, but how could I say no to this once in a lifetime experience?
You didn’t spend all that time sacrificing your lifestyle and saving money just to skip those once in a lifetime opportunities.
Remember, there’s a good chance you’ll only be there once, so you should enjoy yourself. You can always make more money, but you can’t buy more time.
For money saving tips, see How To Save Money For Travel and How to Save Money While Traveling.
Pingback: 11 Things I Love About Southeast Asia | A Traveling Gypsy
Pingback: 11 Things I Love About Southeast Asia | THE TRAVELING GYPSY