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You are here: Home / Archives for budgeting

Reflections on our Budget

February 24, 2011 By Danny

We recently participatedinacolumn where several travelers compared their budgets head-to-head.  We were surprised to see that we spent less per month than any other traveler featured on the page.  This got us pondering why and how this happened and reflecting on if there had been anything we regret skipping on account of our budget.

More to the point though; did keeping to our budget leave us with any lingering regrets?  We have a few, but as we discussed them last night a certain peace came over us as we realized there weren’t too many, and they weren’t huge things that we feel cheated from enjoying.

  • IMGP3045Patagonia – We spent a lot of time busing down to the tipofArgentina and back up again.  In hindsight we wished we’d take the ferry down the Chilean coast of Patagonia to where we hikedtheW and then worked our way back up.  We would have seen far more (courtesy of the ‘cruise-like’ ferry) and broken up the return journey north a bit better.  We also might have had slightly nicer weather in Bariloche, Argentina.  Cost was the principle driver in not taking the ferry but timings, a desire to hit some whitewaterinPucon, and a hope of getting to Antarctica all combined to help us make the wrong decision.
  • After hikingKilmanjaro, enjoying a Safari, whitewaterboogieboarding in Jinja, and paying the bill for GorillatrackinginUganda…we were feeling like we’d completely destroyed our bank accounts in a matter of days.  This led us to bus across Kenya from Uganda to coastal Lamu.  We soon wished we’d flown.  The flights didn’t work out perfectly but it would have been better than that hectic 24 hours of bus after bus after bus.  At that point in time we also had no idea how we were going to be heading northtoEthiopia and were expecting to fork over some major cash for big, last-minute African airfares in the coming weeks.

It seems that there were two very big keys to keeping our costs down.  First, overland travel meant sleepingonbuses and trains rather than paying for constant airfares.  We decided early on that we enjoyed traveling this way and don’t regret that decision.  Second, we spent only one month in Europe and skipped on Australia and New Zealand.   Although we’d hoped to make it to the South Pacific, we were simply too tired and homesick when the time came.  Our route also kept us traveling most of the time in shoulder seasons where the climate wasn’t quite perfect (not a lot of vacationers driving prices up) but still good enough for us to enjoy ourselves.  The only time the whole trip we had to deal with high season was while we were traveling through Turkey.

While in the Americas we generally erred on the side of keeping to our budgets and passing on the big items (e.g. Galapagos Islands) because we are from United States and those sites are much easier to enjoy to later in life than say, Uzbekistan. For the rest of the planet, we adopted a mental policy of treating ourselves to the big ticket items if we wanted to do them.  Faced with $100-$200 bungee jumping and adventure swings in South Africa and Zimbabwe, we decided to skip and don’t regret those decisions….We also don’t regret the big bucks we spent for game viewing, visas, and climbing mountains.

Although many travel with philosophies that differ from ours, we all have budgets and all make decisions…both good and bad.

IMGP6055

Filed Under: Headline, Travel & Planning, Travel Reflections Tagged With: budget, budgeting, summary, travel budget

Two Years of Travel Costs Less Than You Think?

February 2, 2011 By Danny

We’ve made no secret of our budgets as we’ve posted our spending for each and every country we’ve passed through along the way. Just about everything included brings us to a grand total of:

$59,114

That number is for both of us for 21 months of travel. It includes all of our airfare, (except the one trip we took between the US and Europe since that was for a wedding and not for travel) buses, food, lodging, gifts, souvenirs, postage fees, visas and medical expenses. And again, that’s for BOTH of us….a combined total.

Could we have spent less…absolutely. In Africa we spent $5000 climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, taking a safari to the Ngorogoro Crater and visiting the Mountain Gorillas of Uganda. Take out that two week period and our total trip cost went down by nearly 10%.

What else isn’t included? I think I left off our travel medical insurance. Anything we purchased back in the US isn’t included, which does account for most of our gear, but on the other hand we sold a ton of stuff before we moved out which more than covers that expense. I also didn’t include all the tailored clothing we purchased in SE Asia, since that really had nothing to do with our trip at all.

Otherwise it’s all there. Transportation accounted for nearly one third of all of our spending. Activities averaged out to be about a quarter and food and lodging combined for 28%, but we spent a touch more on food than we did on sleeping, probably thanks to couchsurfing. The remaining 15% or so were the miscellaneous things that can vary dramatically such as how many souvenirs we purchased, over $2500 in visa fees, and how much time we spent at the Internet cafe or on the phone.

The point of all of this, of telling you our deepest darkest secret, is to make it abundantly clear how easy this is to do if you make it a goal and stick to it. We’ve just developed a new financial planning website to help others do the same, so feel free to use it!

Country Days Food Lodging Activity Trans Misc Daily Avg
TOTALS 580 $16.58 $11.34 $25.12 $33.65 $15.24 $101.92
Mexico & C Amr 111 $17.76 $10.33 $23.31 $20.50 $9.96 $79.25
South America 135 $15.68 $10.21 $19.71 $31.73 $9.42 $86.75
Africa & Levant
174 $16.44 $12.09 $39.90 $36.35 $19.84 $124.63
Europe
32 $21.93 $6.26 $11.94 $40.22 $9.54 $90.01
Silk Road
50 $16.46 $17.96 $19.50 $29.01 $19.40 $102.33
Asia
78
$14.64 $10.21 $13.07 $33.42 $20.67 $92.01

Filed Under: Headline, Travel & Planning Tagged With: budget, budgeting, costs, money, travel budget

Report Card: Budget for Africa

June 21, 2010 By Danny

Africa was shockingly expensive. We expected that the touristy activities would be expensive but we underestimated the degree to this expense. True, eating in Africa can be cheap, lodging too, but that’s about where the cheapness ends.  We definitely could have spent less here, but we wanted to do the “big” Africa things: safari, Kilimanjaro, mountain gorillas.

IMGP3300A reminder of how all this works. Every dollar amount represents how much the two of us, combined, spent on the average day in a given country. Airfare to and from the continent (very expensive to get to Africa) is included in transportation in the totals line and aren’t applied to any specific country. As always, visa fees are included in miscellaneous. For more information visit our spending page.

A couple of generalizations about Africa before we go into detail about each country. Most people in Africa do not travel long distances, that means transportation exists only for people of means and people with money. In most cases the buses we paid for in Africa cost more money than their counterparts in Latin America but were less comfortable, more crowded, and more commonly broken down. The roads were awful meaning more trips to go shorter distances and very few routes had service available at night. Then the expensive fees (Park entrances mostly; to see wild game and hike Kilimanjaro for example) are extremely high….These fees basically annihilated any sense of “budget” we had for Tanzania and Uganda. Visas also add up, we spent $645 each in visas.

IMGP7805South Africa: We rented a car and took that through the entire country, Swaziland, Lesotho, and even Namibia. Having a car did increase our transportation costs but seeing as we traveled 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) I still think the expensive car worked out to be far cheaper than public transportation would have worked out to be. Additionally the backpacker friendly Bazz-Bus would have been even more expensive and greatly restricted where we could go. Having a car also allowed us to carry a tent and our own food, drastically reducing our lodging and food costs. Even still this was not a cheap country and prices felt very similar to prices back in the US. Internet was also expensive but the presence of a domestic middle class who enjoys their own national parks just as much as the foreigners means that those parks, and all our activities are that much cheaper.

IMGP3541Mozambique: We went here for one reason….to hide from the hoards of X-mas while soaking up rays of sunshine on a nice beach. We went there, stayed put, and even managed to hitch a ride back with some South African’s we met while there. Scuba diving did us in on the overall budget but most everything else was pricey on account of our location on a tourist beach. The expensive visas to enter didn’t help the budget either.

IMGP8855Namibia: Namibia was expensive because we spent the better part of every day in the car, driving and burning gasoline, and then sleeping in National Parks. On one park, Etosha, camping with our own tent cost about $55….quite absurd by our standards. This was an extremely expensive country to travel in with huge fees at the attraction you’ve already driven hundreds of miles to see. Even still, having our own car saved money and our little 2 wheel drive car handled the dirt and shale roads without a problem.

IMGP9845Zimbabwe: We managed to Couchsurf here in two of the four places we visited, joining our host and friends for a trip to Great Zimbabwe and traveling to Victoria Falls on our own. Traveling and staying with CSers helped our budget out immensely, especially with lodging. https://ishouldlogoff.wpengine.com/wp-admin/plugin-install.phpTransportation was still high where it was on our own, quite high actually, but it was quick and efficient when the police weren’t looking for bribes. Fees at Victoria Falls were significant but not awful. Our largest expense here was the purchase and shipment of beautiful soapstone artwork that was pulverized before reaching the US. 🙁

IMGP4188Malawi: Super cheap country and the only expensive thing here was the Scuba we did in the crystal clear waters of Lake Malawi.  We had a great time here and really enjoyed the chance to relax a bit. The reason miscellaneous is high is that we had to cross through Mozambique to get to Malawi from Zimbabwe and needed to purchase new visas; we applied those fees to Malawi rather than Mozambique.

IMGP0297Tanzania: Everything here is low except for activities. While on Safari and while climbing Kilimanjaro 100% of our food, lodging and transportation were covered in the overall fee for these activities. The true cost driver of these things were the park entrances (about $700 each just to climb the mountain in fees) so they throw our averages off a good bit. If we ignore the $100 visa fees and these activities we are closer to $90 per day, still high but in line with the rest of Africa.

IMGP0498Uganda:  Seeing the Mountain Gorillas is an expensive activity, period. (At least the gorilla pictures and videos are cool)You have to pay $500 per person just to see them and then because you have to book that permit with an agency you need to either pay their fees on top of that or buy their transportation package…due to a series of events we ultimately had to do both of those things. The rest of the country is super cheap though, one of the cheapest places we’ve been to and still a pleasure to travel in. Bummer that the waters of the White Nile are due to be dammed and there won’t be any more Ugandan whitewater in the future.

IMGP4472Kenya: Things could have been cheaper here but trying to keep to a schedule, treating ourselves nicely on the island of Lamu, and taking advantage of the presence of my cousin who could fly home from Nairobi with gobs of souvenirs led to us spending far more than necessary. There really isn’t anything wrong with any of that though… At least the corruption makes for a nice travel story.

IMGP1192Ethiopia: This is a very poor and a very cheap country. There is a reason it features prominently in hunger porn commercials and South Park jokes. We treated ourselves nicely while staying in Addis Ababa and even still this was our cheapest country of the entire trip thus far. Traveling in the backseat of an overland car rather than paying for buses probably contributed a bit to low transportation costs but not as much as moving slowly and relaxing a bit while waiting for visas to be processed.

IMGP2679Sudan: This is a cheap country, cheaper to travel here than in Ethiopia. We spent ten days and spent $88/day, that means $880 for the whole ten days. Five-hundred of that was paid to the government for visa fees and foreign alien registration. That means it really cost us about $38/day for two people. Everything was very cheap and Sudan had the cheapest gasoline we’d seen anywhere until we entered Egypt. A very filling meal could be had for two for less than one dollar but that didn’t stop us for cooking for ourselves when we were bush-camping in the desert.  Traveling with over-landers allowed us to do this and this country would have been a good deal more difficult without our friends in Kaspuur, the landy from London.

IMGP4915Egypt: We expected mass tourism and we absolutely found it here but were quite surprised at how budget friendly Egypt was. The sites were not outrageously priced to begin with but then we were given a 50% discount on pretty much everything thanks to our ISIC cards. Comfortable lodging was cheap, private, and generally included breakfast. Had we taken the train from Luxor to Cairo this would have been more expensive than driving but it would have saved two days of travel, one night of lodging, and a very annoying police escort.  There is a lot to do in Egypt and truly something for everyone and ever budget. Seeing the pyramids and then climbing Mt. Sinai were absolute highlights. We passed on the beaches and diving of Dahab because we really didn’t feel like beach time.

Jordan: This isn’t really Africa but we’ve grouped it in here as part of the ‘Levant.’ It was an expensive place and we made it worse by paying for expensive transport to save a couple of days getting between the border and Petra. Additionally, the boat to Jordan from Egypt was not a cheap excursion. This was our 29th country and the first where a unit of currency was worth more than one US dollar.

Israel: Just like Jordan, this is a super expensive place and really is not backpacker friendly. We spent 100% of our time visiting with friends and staying with them as well so our price figures really aren’t worthwhile to anyone traveling there independently. If you do plan to travel here with a backpack be prepared to pay prices that would be considered average to high in Western Europe or the USA.

Filed Under: Africa, Featured, Guides, Headline, Travel & Planning Tagged With: budgeting, money, spending

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