One of the biggest myths around traveling is that you need to spend a lot of money. Budgeting is probably the most common concern within people who wish to travel more. Ignorance or misinformation can give some people the wrong impression regarding a trip’s cost, and discourage them from realizing their dream.
Calculating the costs before actually setting off, will provide realistic expectations and a much more fulfilling travel experience. Although some people consider budgeting boring or unnecessary, it is actually the first contact with your excursion! When planning and researching details for your exciting adventure, you have already started it!.
On the other hand setting off completely unaware of your costs can lead to unpleasant experiences. You definitely wouldn’t like your money ending half way through your trip.
Let me show you how you can avoid that in some simple steps and how you can easily come up with a financial plan for any of your trips. I will also provide a real life example of this process and a chart that will make it easier for you to understand it.
What to take into consideration for budgeting?
Before breaking up every step of the process, it is important to understand that the amount of money that someone needs for a trip depends mainly on the destination and the individual choices that every traveler will make.
Regarding the region, Southeast Asia and South America will require a much smaller budget for expenses in comparison to a similar trip in Europe, North America or Australia.
Another important factor for the total cost, is your travel standards. If you prefer staying in up-scale hotels, eating every meal in restaurants and going shopping with no limits, then prepare for an exponential increase in your expenses. If on the other hand you are open to staying in hostels, volunteering for your food and accommodation or working while on the way, then you can extend your trip’s duration, or spend your money on other activities.
First step to organize our plan is dividing the expenses into categories which I will then analyze. These categories are:
- Tickets to and from destination
- Accommodation
- Food
- Activities and amusement
- Moving around transportation
- Souvenirs and shopping
Tickets to and from destination
One of the biggest parts of the expenses is transportation to and from the country you are heading to. Especially for grand distances you will most likely need plane tickets. Their cost will depend a lot on whether you are flexible regarding your dates. Airfare has a lot to do with demand, so if you can travel only on specific busy dates you will have to pay more. Flexibility means lower cost.
There are various platforms where you can enter your destination and compare different fares from air companies. I mainly use Skyscanner because of the various options and filters it offers. One of the features I like is that instead of getting airfare for just one specific date, you have the option to compare prices for a whole month and discover the best deals.
You can also select the option of searching cheaper nearby airports or connection flights rather than direct ones.
For me, one of the most important factors for selecting the next destination while traveling is how much it would cost me to get there from the country I am currently in.
So for me it has worked great the feature of selecting only the departure airport, while as a destination use “everywhere”. In this way, Ι can get all the possible candidates sorted by the cheapest to the most expensive ones.
Accommodation
Accommodation is one of those factors that can increase or decrease tremendously the cost of your trip. No matter how much money is available, nobody wants to pay a fortune for a room. However, the total lodging cost can tremendously vary.
Nowadays you can easily find various ways to spend zero money for your room with work exchanges, camping, applications like couchsurfing or pet and house sittings. There are also the cheap options like hostels or Airbnb apartments shared between bigger groups of friends.
Hostels can be a super fun part of your journey and can also save you a lot of money. All around SouthEast Asia and South America, I stayed in very comfortable hostels with prices ranging from 3-10$ per night. In Europe, the prices range a bit higher from 10-20$, but still just a fraction of private hotel rooms.
If you have never tried them before, concerned about the scary stories that surround them, I would recommend you at least once to give it a go. In hostels, I have met fascinating people from every age, families with young kids and valuable friends to keep for life.
However, hostels are not the only cheap alternative. You can get your own room or find other options for very affordable prices by following the tips in this article.
Food
Food is one of the expenses you cannot avoid. Everybody has to eat, and especially while traveling it is always exciting to taste different local dishes. However, your food habits or demands can deeply affect your pocket. If you want to have all your meals in restaurants, prepare to pay more for your diet. If you have access to a kitchen where you can prepare your own food the cost decreases, and the quality most of the time increases.
Your destination country also plays an important role regarding the cost of your meals. In the street markets of Vietnam, you can get a delicious bowl of Pho soup for less than 1$. In the Colombian capital of Bogota, you can get a dish full of roasted chicken, rice, beans and salad for 1,5$. On the other hand, while traveling in the US, Australia or Europe, prepare yourself to pay 10-20$ for a meal in an average restaurant.
Groceries are affordable in most parts of the world, or at least cheap alternatives are offered. For that reason, preparing your own meals is a good choice to save money during your trip.
If you are demanding, or have a very specific taste, prepare to pay for it. Local food is always the cheapest one. If you cannot adapt to it, and you can only consume what is familiar to you, the options will be less and costlier.
Try to enjoy various fresh products that each different part of the earth has to offer and take advantage of your geographic location. For example, choose fish when you are near the ocean, and consume vegetables and fruits that are locally produced.
Activities and amusement
This is the fun part of your trip. It includes all the activities you want to do, the tours you want to take, museums you want to visit, parties, hobbies etc. It is obvious that the amusement cost hugely depends on the individual.
There are many free activities you can enjoy while traveling. Going for a hike, visiting natural monuments or going peoplewatching are just some of those.
Online research before visiting a site can save you even more. For example certain museums or attractions around the world offer free or discounted entrance for visitors on specific days of the week.
Another advice is, unless it’s absolutely necessary, plan your excursions and your visits individually rather than choosing organized tours. For example, in the Philippines and more specifically in El Nido you can get tours to the gorgeous surrounding beaches for one day that cost about 50-100$. With 10$ I rented a kayak for the whole day and did the same route with friends at our own pace,having a fun time. Believe in the explorer you have inside you and avoid massive tourism.
Another good option to save money while sightseeing are free walking tours. In all major cities around the world, there are tours offered from students or offices that are tip based and you can offer what you think the tour worthed.
Partying is also an important part of the expenses, especially for young travelers. Once more, choosing local places and drinks is the way to go if you want to save money and have a more authentic experience. Avoid tourist traps that mainly want to attract and exploit westerners.
Moving around transportation
This section is for those who want to move around different places during their trip. Although airfare could in some cases be fairly cheap for internal flights, most of the time the cheapest option will be bus or train. In Ecuador every hour of a bus trip will cost you about 1$. That’s hard to beat. Check the website Rome2Rio for a good estimate on your transportation between different places. You will get a helpful and trustworthy comparison between flights, bus, train and ferry tickets.
Regarding transportation within a city, public transport is usually the cheapest one. Use metro and buses whenever is possible, but be cautious of pickpocketing and bad neighborhoods. Avoid taxis, especially in countries where drivers don’t use taximeters and charge whatever they want. Choose Uber ( or Grab in Asia) to get a fixed cost and a trusted driver, especially if you are a woman traveling alone.
Souvenirs and shopping
Most likely you will want to keep some memories of your adventure, or get back some cool items for family and friends. For keeping a low budget, try to get products from local markets. Avoid overpriced multi chains, or tourist stores.
An example of budget planning
Here I will show you a real life example of travel budget planning. Let’s say you want to go from Greece to Thailand and spend two – three weeks traveling around Bangkok, Phuket and Chiang Mai. You want to leave sometime within September, but the exact dates are not really important. Here is the process broken down in a few simple steps.
Step 1: Enter Skyscanner, select Athens as a departure city, and Thailand as a destination country. At departure date, select the whole month and choose September. Do the same for return flight. After that, you can get the results with the prices for each day of the month, as seen in the picture. In our example, seems like 1st of September is the best time for departure, while the 17th seems like a good deal for return. It’s perfect to choose those dates for your trip then!
Tickets to and from destination: 428$
Step 2: Now it’s time to get an estimate of the accommodation’s cost. You have decided you want to stay half days of your trip in a hostel, and half in an Airbnb shared between 4 friends.
Check on booking.com for hostels and Airbnbs available in Bangkok during your stay. Quickly you realize you can get high-rated and trusted accommodation in hostels for as low as 5-6$ per night. The price seems similar if you repeat the search for your other two destinations inside Thailand.
In Airbnb, using the same search criteria, you get an average price of 50$ for a comfortable apartment shared between 4 people . Your cost then, would be 12,5$ per night. If you spend 17 nights in Thailand, 10 of which in a hostel and 7 in an Airbnb, you would have to calculate a cost of about 125$ in total.
Accommodation: 125$
Step 3: Get an idea regarding the food costs in Thailand. Some simple online research shows you that in a Thai restaurant a meal would cost about 3-5$, while in markets it can cost as little as 1$. Western food costs about 5-10$. You decide you want to prepare breakfast in your accommodation spending a couple of dollars and most of your other meals in local restaurants. Some of them, in western restaurants. In 17 days, you would have to spend about 35$ for breakfast and about 150$ for your other meals.
Food: 185$
Step 4: Let’s say in Thailand you want to go scuba diving twice, do some hikes, visit a few temples and go out some nights with friends for drinks. With some online search on dive shops in Phuket, you find out that 2 dives could cost you about 100$. Regarding temples and museums, you can look for an indicative price, like the one in Wat Pho temple, which is 3$. Let’s say you want to visit about 5 attractions. And you also find out the waterfalls you want to visit have a 5$ entrance fee. Google will also tell you that a drink in an average bar would cost you about 3-5$. And you think that about 3-5 drinks about 5 times during your trip is a realistic expectation. If I sum up this rough entertainment estimate it would be about 180$.
Activities & amusement: 180$
Step 5: Get in Rome2rio and search the cost of traveling from Bangkok to Phuket. We can easily find out that you can find flight tickets for about $30.
Repeat the search for the trip from Phulet to Chiang Mai. The average cost of an air ticket would be 60$. Finally, to catch your flight back home, you need to get back to Bangkok. In rome2rio results, we find out that bus is the cheapest option, with a cost of 15 dollars. In total, our transportation around Thailand would cost around 105$.
Transportation around: 105$
Step 6: You want to bring back some souvenir for about 5 friends and 5 family members. For those 10 gifts you can allocate about 20$. Plus 20$ for your own shopping and purchases.
Souvenir & shopping: 40$
Final results: You would have to make an estimate of about 1065$
Here is a graph with the distribution of your expenses for your 3-weeks trip in Thailand.
You can now get a better idea regarding how much money you would need when planning your adventure. Keep in mind that the longer the trip, the less money you would have to pay on average per month, since you can distribute the cost of your transportation and get better deals on accommodation and food. I hope I offered some helpful budgeting advice. Enjoy the world and even if you can afford it, remember it is better to be cautious of your expenses!