Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
2
Is Travel Really Too Expensive?
Let's put the “travel is too expensive” myth to death right now, beginning with a short exercise.
Get out a sheet of paper and write down all your set expenses. Write down your rent (or mortgage),
your car payments, cable bill, cell phone, and the like. Tally them up.
Then write down all your discretionary spending. This is food, movie nights, drinks, shopping, that daily
coffee from Starbucks, cigarettes, and the like. If you don't know what you spend money on, track your ex-
penses for a two-week period and see what you spend.
Total up all your expenses to get a monthly and then yearly figure.
Now, take that number and think about the title of this topic—$50 USD per day. That's $1,500 USD per
month or $18,250 USD per year. When you add up all your monthly spending and costs, it's more than $1,500
USD, isn't it?
If your rent is $900 USD per month, that's $30 per day, which is 60 percent of the daily budget set out
in this topic. Add in food costs, gas, insurance, and cable and your set expenses are mostly higher than the
number you need for a year abroad. And that's before you've done anything else with your life.
You might look at the cover of this topic and think, “I spend way less than $50 USD per day.” That's
because we often don't consider our fixed costs, like housing, insurance, and debt payments, when we think
of our spending. We may not go to the ATM every day, but we are constantly spending money without even
thinking about it.
Now, imagine if all your living expenses were less than $50 USD per day. Everything. Your house, food,
transportation, travel, nights out at the movies, or drinks at a bar. How wonderful would that be? How won-
derful would it be to live on $18,250 or less per year? Pretty wonderful, huh?
For that much money, instead of being at home, you could be out traveling the world. And even if you
can't save that much money, travel
is
within your reach.
I recently met a girl while in Bangkok. Sarah was an American who lived in New York City working a
job that barely paid her enough to live. She had to cut a lot of corners, but after two years of saving, she'd
scraped together enough money to travel the world. She didn't have a lot of money, so she went to Southeast
Asia, one of the cheapest areas of the world. As Sarah put it, “It's true that I didn't have much in savings, but
if I waited until the perfect time to travel, I'd be waiting a long time. Of course I was nervous about leaving
a steady job and the life I had created in New York. I worried about going broke in the first two months and
having to turn around and live in my mother's basement until I found another job. I'm doing this on a tight
budget while still paying student loans, and I'm happy to be doing it now rather than waiting an eternity until
retirement. You definitely don't have to be wealthy to pick up and travel.”
And if the money does run out, there are plenty of ways to work overseas. It doesn't need to all be about
savings. Travelers around the world work in hostels, teach English, work on farms, pick fruit, live on kib-
butzes, or get service jobs. When I decided to travel longer, I stopped in Thailand and taught English in order
