How to organize your budget
We can divise a budget between the expenses before departure and the bills on the road. The first are the air ticket – big one -, paperwork fees (visa, credit card, insurance, vaccines) and the equipments.The biggest check will be paid on the road: food, lodging, transport and special activities. We’re always trying to save money, but for such a big trip, we need a reasonable budget, to be sure we won’t waste this opportunity on hard financial restrictions. In the end of the day, if we really do not want to spend money, we stay home!
To arrive to the numbers we reckon raisonables, we had to do quite a research. First of all, there’s some travel guides which rank countries regarding the cost of living: we’re looking at the amount of money needed for a day. That’s a first source of information, after that we had a look on the travel forums, to uptodate the amounts shown in the guides, with the testimonials of travelers on the road. We’re surprised to know that two weeks in Japan can make one month in India. Ok, we’re not going to do cheap countries only – there’s some irreplaceable lands which are quite expensive. The best thing to do is to mix the two of them. Add on 10% on the top of the total amount to be sure no bad surprises will arrive once you have sailed away.
On the road, we gonna head to the backpackers spots. What means, for eating, we do local markets, we cook when it’s possible, and once in a while we do some not expensive restaurants. For lodging, we’ll hit the youth hostels, the cheap hotels and, when it’s possible, couchsurfing. For transport, we’ll use the local transport system and avoid taxis and sightseen buses. Simply, we’ll try to live like local people do.
We want to enjoy this opportunty entirely, for that, we planned a budget for extra activities. How can we go to Nepal and don’t do trekking? When will we be able to catch the transiberian again?
On the spreadsheet below we have detailed our daily budget (food, hotel, transport) for two people for the countries we’ll be going. This is a forecast budget based on a previous research. The right column will be filled as we get the real amounts on the road.
We have also created a spreadsheet with our total budget: don’t get scared by the final sum. Before, have a look on each item. We have included things we already had. It may be the case for you. Another tip is to buy things bit by bit long in advance. The final costs will seem a lot less heavy.
