Last week, Jonathan and I posted about how we saved enough money for a RTW trip. We plan to do more in-depth budgeting posts later, once we know how much our savings can actually get us on the road. [Update: We have an entire page dedicated to Money & Budgeting, including hard numbers!] But in the meantime, I wanted to share some words of encouragement (and a dose of reality) for anyone who is considering a long-term trip of their own (because several of you have reached out saying you are! and we think that’s great).
Before we begin, Jonathan and I acknowledge that we benefit from multiple types of privilege, and we don’t discount how much this privilege helped us be able to afford this trip. This advice is meant for people who are in similar situations as we are, but we do want to demystify the financial aspect of long-term travel so you can see if it can be possible for you!
Saving money is the easiest part of taking a RTW trip.
You might have to give up a few expenses that you enjoy; you might need to take a second job; or you might decide you need to keep working while you are on the road to help meet your expenses; but overall, if long-term travel is something you are willing to prioritize, you can do it!
Also, long-term travel is probably less expensive than you imagine. Jonathan and I were living in the Bay Area before we left for this trip, where average rent hovered around $2,500 – $3,000 per month, and we knew plenty of couples our age who were paying closer to $4,000 per month. Needless to say, we’re very interested to see how this first month of full-time travel compares to our “normal” monthly expenses living in the U.S. 😉
Furthermore, if you’re traveling long term, you don’t need to be flying or training between cities every few days to get the most out of your 10 annual days of vacation. Instead, you can hunker down in one place for a week or two (or longer), which cuts down significantly on your transportation costs. You can also use house-sitting (we haven’t done this yet, but we look forward to trying it!), workaways or other services for free extended stays around the world.
And finally, you don’t have to hit every continent, or even most of them. If you are actively saving money and don’t think you’ll be able to afford a round-the-world trip, you could pick one affordable region and travel deeper. For example, you could travel through Southeast Asia for six months for less than it would cost you to buy a gently used car, and probably far less than it would cost you to pay rent for six months in the United States (depending on where you live).
All that being said, we set a numerical goal for a one-year RTW trip (including a monthly budget for 12 months, a set amount for big miscellaneous expenses, and a resettlement cushion for when we return to the U.S.) and we met it … in summer 2017. That’s the encouragement part of this post. As you know, we didn’t leave on the trip until spring 2019. Why?
This is the reality check part: Because it’s much harder to quit your job (especially one you love) than it is to save money. It’s much harder to tell your family that you won’t be around for big events, like birthdays and graduations and weddings and annual family vacations, than it is to save money. It’s much harder to deal with the potential consequences of a one-year resume gap than it is to save money.
Bottom line: It’s much harder to find the right time for long-term travel than it is to fund long-term travel.
Spoiler alert: There is no right time. You just have to do it. For us, we originally planned on flying to New Zealand in November 2017 and then traveling west across the globe. Without sharing all the specific details, professional and/or family reasons caused us to push the trip back multiple times. We looked at spring 2018, then fall 2018, then spring 2019 … then Jonathan’s brother got engaged, and the wedding date was set for June 2019. It seemed like we would never leave.
In early 2019, while we were still trying to figure out a feasible departure date, we got a rent increase letter from our landlord. That seemed like the sign we were waiting for. We decided we would leave and come back for the wedding in June as part of our travels; we couldn’t keep pushing this trip off. In early February, we put in notice with our landlord and our jobs, told our families our (final!) departure date, started packing, and tweaked our schedule a bit.
Originally, when we were planning on leaving in the fall, we were going to start by traveling west. If we left in the spring, we were planning on starting in Europe and traveling east. But given the upcoming wedding, we didn’t want to fly all the way to Europe for six weeks, back to California, then back to Europe again. So we ended up adding a new region to our route: Central America! We’re spending about six weeks here before heading back to the United States, then we’ll fly to Europe in early June and make our way east.
Whew! I know that was long post, but we really just want to say: If you want to travel long-term, you can make it work for you. Money seems to be the first big obstacle in everyone’s mind, but I think it’s the rest of life (family, career, a promise of stability, etc.) that makes taking a RTW trip so difficult.
That being said, obviously money is still important and necessary for traveling, so we’ll be sharing more detailed budgeting posts along the way. Feel free to comment or contact us with any specific questions!
Were you happy you added Central America to your itinerary? I wanted to go the westbound route to begin in Asia in July/August and end in Europe a year later but then I started looking at possibly starting at Central or South America instead. We just have a window that we want to be in Japan to climb Mt Fuji (preferably last week of Aug/first week of Sept). My budget philosophy is very similar to yours in terms of saving money when it makes sense but also splurging/upgrading where it makes sense.
Hi Nicole – Yes, so happy! In fact, if we didn’t already have flights to Portugal in June, we probably would have stayed longer. If I could do over, I would start my trip with a 2-week (at least) Spanish course in Central America. I really, really loved our time in Mexico and Colombia. I hope to go back to Latin America some day and visit more places – especially Guatemala, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Argentina. But really everywhere! 😉 Hope your planning is going well and thanks for stopping by our blog. Please feel free to reach out with any other questions! Very exciting.