Travel Budgeting

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In Step 2, we took a look at Our Budget and discussed the Lifestyle Choices that we have made.
We shared our “Eat Wander Explore 90-Day Itinerary” with you, which took our actual costs starting from Paris and traveling to the Canary Islands, Morocco, Italy, Austria, and England over 90-Days.

You also created a 90-Day Itinerary that approximates how much your first 90 days will cost you.

Our 90-Day Itinerary shows our costs to be $63.84 per person, per day. This estimate is actually fairly close to our long-term average of $59.41 per person per day. Yours should also be fairly reasonable.

When it comes to budgeting, we must ask ourselves: “Are we each generating at least $59.41 per day from our Side Income strategies to pay for our Lifestyle Choices?”

If not, we may soon run out of money and will need to go home.
If you aren’t earning your daily amount, perhaps it isn’t time to start your adventure just yet.

How to meet your daily income needs:

Continue Working on your Side Income Strategies
Decrease Your Daily Expenses with our Tips & Tricks
Work While Abroad

Perhaps we should revisit Step 1 and either put more effort into our Side Income strategy or possibly pick a few other strategies to start building as well.

Alternatively, we could alter our Lifestyle Choices a bit to make sure that our daily expenses are less than the daily amount of Side Income that we are generating. See the “Saving Money” sections on this page to decrease your daily costs.

We could also make up for this shortfall by using some digital nomad income strategies (with the skills we learned in The FREE Nomad MBA), or by working abroad until our Side Income strategies are generating enough money per day to cover our daily expenses entirely.

ACTION ITEM: Check each of the sections below and decide if you can make adjustments to your 90-Day Itinerary to reduce your Average Daily Costs, Per Person. Decide if you would rather: 1. Continue working on your Side Income strategies (ask our community for help in our Facebook Group), 2. Decrease your costs by using the Money Saving Tips, 3. Start the free Nomad MBA to learn how to freelance as a Digital Nomad, or 4. Look for opportunities to work overseas. Post what you plan to do in our Facebook Group.

Saving Money on Your Accommodation Costs

Regardless of where you are staying, it makes sense to try to find the best value for your money. Why would you stay at a 5 star resort that is getting a guest rating of 9.0 for $300 per night when you could stay at an equivalent 5 star resort that is getting a guest rating of 9.3 for $215 per night? Would you rather stay in a Bed and Breakfast that has Wi-Fi and costs $75 per night, or one from a Super-host that includes Wi-Fi, Kitchen, Washer, Dryer, and Breakfast for the same price? Value is getting the most out of your money for things that are equivalent. Lets help you find the best value for your accommodations. Click on the button below to get started.

Saving on Accommodations

Saving Money on Your Transportation Costs

When we traveled to Italy, we used an Uber to travel from the airport to our Airbnb. The total cost for that trip was roughly $78 because the trip ended up being over 40 minutes. When we made a similar trip in Egypt, also with Uber, the cost was around $9. The same trick doesn’t work in both places! If we had done a little research, we would have learned to use the Metro in Italy instead, and then we’d have arrived in about 60 minutes for about $5 instead of $78. That was a huge difference! Use the button below to help determine how you can save money on your transportation costs.

Saving on Transportation

Saving Money on Your Dining Costs

It isn’t a big secret that gourmet meals taste so good! But eating pieces of bread and finding drinking fountains will keep you from starving. Everyone needs to make sure that they budget and keep enough money for food. It should be said that out of all of the categories, this one is by far the most important - because without food the journey becomes desperate very quickly. There are places to find inexpensive food - pasta, for example, is quite cheap if you can cook it yourself. Find out how you can make your dining lifestyle fit into your budget by clicking the button below.

Saving on Dining

Saving Money on Your Entertainment Costs

A quick way to save money on food is to also save money on your accommodations. While resorts occasionally offer dishes and things to cook with, so do some Hostels and many Bed and Breakfasts! Grocery shopping at home probably saves you a ton of money and that works while traveling as well! Find out what other tips could save you money on food by clicking the button below.

Saving on Entertainment

Saving Money on Your Other Costs

Do you really need to buy a new dress in each location that you travel to? How are you going to carry all of them? Does it make sense to only purchase a small amount of data for emergencies, but then do most of your work when you’re connected to Wi-Fi? What type of souvenirs do you typically buy - do you really need all of those? Can you pick up free hygiene items from hotels and bed & breakfasts? What things are you having trouble reducing costs on? Let us know if you have any questions, or feel free to ask our travel community how they do it!

Altering your Lifestyle based on Destination

Remember when you looked up how cheap it was to live in Southeast Asia? Have you considered traveling around India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, or the Philippines until your Side Income is producing enough to sustain moving to other areas of the world? This really might be worth considering! You could be living like a King or Queen for around $20 per day! How much do you think that could save you? Would you be able to start your traveling sooner by choosing this method?

Altering your Lifestyle based on Duration

We have talked to many travelers who move around very frequently and run out of money quite quickly. It seems that many of the ones who travel long-term end up picking a home base for a longer period of time. For example, they may stay in one spot for 60-90 days, then spend 14-30 days skipping around to 2-4 different spots, then they will head back to their home base for another 60-90 days. Others stay for 60-90 days in one location before moving on to another. The ones who move around too much typically don’t make it in the long run. Do you think it might make sense to slow down and stay in a few places a little while longer? How much do you think that might save you?

Do you have great advice that you think should be on this page? If so, send us an email with the information and we'll likely add it. Also, unless you say otherwise, we'll add a special 'thank you' after the advice you've provided on this page. If you'd like us to give your website or blog a shout-out along with the 'thank you', please include your site link and we'll be happy to add that as well. Thank you for your help and support!