How to Travel the World on a Budget

Today we’re talking ’bout how to…

Kev and I have a bit of what you could call wanderlust. We’re marginally good at saving our money during day to day life so that we can travel when opportunity arises. Opportunity, AKA accrued PTO, money in our pockets, cheap airfare, a lull in work, someone to watch the cat, and hours of travel research completed. Did I mention I’m a bit of a crazy travel maximizer? After all, why would I buy the flight for $150 round trip when I could look at 495 other travel websites and eventually find it for $138?? Worth it? I think yes, others may disagree.

For me, it’s the thrill of the bargain that leaves a greater impact than the $12 saved. Then again, those $12 saved allowed me to have 6 more cones of Italian Gelato, and that my friends is why I argue that it’s totally worth it.

We got back from a two week stint in Europe about a month ago and I’ve been sitting on some pretty cool information that I’m just now getting around to sharing with you! I would estimate that I spent about 40-50 hours researching and prepping for this trip and was so glad I did. However, if you’re thinking about taking an international trip yourself, you won’t need to spend nearly that long because I’m going to provide you with some awesome time and money saving tips through a 3 part series!

Before we get to the nitty gritty in the upcoming posts, I’m going to lay out some numbers so you can have an idea of what we spent in total on our grand European Extravaganza.

In every effort to be transparent and helpful for you in detailing our budget and expenses, I’ve first broken down our expenses by overall trip cost, then our daily food average for the 2 of us together, followed by our average lodging cost.

We were gone from our home a total of 16 days so if you want to break things down even further, we spent an average of $124.70 each day that we were gone. That includes all meals, entertainment, lodging, in country transport, and other random expenses (but does not include any flights or cross country transportation). I’ll go into more detail on our budget in part 2 of the series, but for now I’ll just stick with a broad overview.

I like these numbers to the side. A lot. They show me that it’s totally doable to spend 16 days exploring and come back home without having to spend the next 3 months working to pay it off. By the way, don’t travel if you don’t have the money. It’s not worth it. Save, sell stuff, work some overtime, do anything you can up front to ensure that your trip is paid for before pulling out of your driveway.

Like I mentioned before, I’ll be rolling out these posts as a 3 part series, with this one only being the overview! So, 4 posts total. The next post, official blog #1 will talk about what resources I used in planning this trip, how we decided what cities to visit, how to navigate the crazy world of purchasing flights, how to pack a minimalist wardrobe, and other logistics to consider before boarding the plane.

Blog #2 will focus on our in country experiences ranging from budgeting to sightseeing to food and I’ll even throw in a simple PDF you can use for planning out your days!

The last part in the series, blog #3 will cover our post trip thoughts: what would we have done differently, what apps did we use and either like or dislike, our take on using AirBnB vs. hotels, and any other outstanding thoughts.

Can’t wait to chat more soon!!