World Trip Expenses – The Grand Total

At the very beginning of our trip, we set out to travel around the world for $50 a day. This was a rough figure that we came across in our research. In fact, there is even a book titled, How to Travel the World on $50 A Day, which we bought and read cover-to-cover before departing. But in our online research we had heard of others who had also managed to travel on similar budgets.

So, after 500 days on the road, how did we do?

Surprisingly well. Our final bill was $54 per day per person. That’s pretty good considering that I thought we traveled fairly comfortably. We roughed it on occasion, but not all the time. I was imagining that we would be staying in lots of hostels and shared living arrangements and traveling on all the slowest, cheapest buses, or finding most of our meals at grocery stores. But that was not the case. Yes, we did all those things, but we also stayed in a lot of really nice Airbnb apartments, frequently opted for faster and more comfortable transportation, and we certainly ate out at restaurants all the time.

The total bill for the two of us may seem high, but it's actually a pretty great deal. If someone had asked me how much a one-year all-expenses paid trip around the world would cost, I probably would have guessed closer to six figures. But now I know the actual answer: $20,000. That’s how much we each spent on one year of travel. And that figure includes everything. Every restaurant, hotel, flight, taxi ride, every liter of beer and glass of wine, and even includes three weeks of Spanish language classes, a car rental for a month, supplies and equipment for camping, and all our tourism expenses that covered entry to museums, historical sites, hiring of hiking guides, and snorkeling gear.

All the stops on our 500-day trip around the world. 

We learned early on that it didn’t make sense to scrutinize our $50 budget goal on a daily basis. We quickly got a sense for what $50 per day felt like, but it was oftentimes somewhat out of our control. We always looked for affordable accommodations and inexpensive restaurants, but the cost of these items was highly dependent on our location. Some destinations were exorbitantly expensive, and others were surprisingly affordable. Even within the same country, cities were always more expensive than smaller towns. Our budget balanced itself out by spending less time in the expensive destinations and more time in the affordable ones.

So where were these affordable destinations? Our five most affordable destinations were Bali (tied with Guatemala), Peru, Ecuador, Malaysia, and Georgia. In these countries we each spent $32 a day or less to cover our accommodations, food, and beverage costs. On the other hand, our five most expensive destinations included, foremost, going on a transatlantic cruise, followed by our travels in Austria, Germany, Japan, and Slovakia. We spent over $100 a day in these places to cover our basic living expenses. Looking back on this, I still don’t know why Slovakia ended up on this list of expensive destinations, but I think we were only there for a few days and we probably went to a couple restaurants that were slightly more expensive than normal. 

Our bright yellow North Face tent got us through parts of Peru and New Zealand, but sleeping in a tent was certainly not the norm for the majority of our trip. 

It is important to note that we did adjust our spending habits in each of these places. For example, Italy is certainly more expensive than Slovakia but shows up as less expensive on our list. We were quick to realize how expensive Italy was and we hardly went out to eat while we were there, instead going to the grocery store and making our own meals. Slovakia was less expensive, so we went out to eat more often, thus spending more money. Also, New Zealand might have been at the very top of this list had we not spend over half our time there sleeping in a tent.

The list of countries we visited, ranked from most expensive to least expensive. The total daily average includes everything, including transportation costs to get there and any miscellaneous expenses we incurred while there (like purchasing new clothes, for instance). The daily living expense only includes expenses associated with our accommodation, restaurants, grocery store purchases, and beverages. The daily living expense is more reflective of what it actually cost to stay there, regardless of how much it cost to get there in the first place. Note that the daily living expense from our cruise is inflated because our accommodation and transportation costs were all wrapped up in one bill. *Destinations marked with an asterisk are places where we stayed with friends and did not incur a daily accommodation expense, which significantly lowered our travel costs.

 

Of course, we also had a fair number of hidden expenses that do not show up in these figures, and some of these expenses were quite substantial. Collectively, these additional items added up to an additional $17 a day, so we really probably spent closer to $125+ per day on this trip all in. However, these expenses are very situational. They were necessary for us to make this trip happen but would not be the case for everyone.   

Hidden fees:

·   $4,270 on travel insurance, combined total for the both of us. We got insurance to primarily cover any unexpected medical expenses, but it also covered travel-related delays and cancelled plans. Despite having coverage the entire trip, neither of us ever filed a claim. We'll consider ourselves lucky. 

·   $1,890 to rent a storage space where we kept our belonging while we were away. 

·   $500 was spent between the two of us on medical expenses. We each ended up visiting a doctor’s office for minor medical issues. Yes, these expenses could have been reimbursed from our medical insurance, but we each chose not to submit claims for various reasons. The expenses individually always seemed so low that it was not worth the effort. For example, I visited a doctor, had lab work done, and got a prescription filled for all less than $100 in Poland.

·   $800 each on new lightweight laptops to take on the trip. I also incurred an $85 expense to ship it back to the US for repair after it broke, followed by an additional $330 for the purchase of a new replacement laptop in Hong Kong. I’m still angry at Lenovo about this.

·   We cashed in 145,000 frequent flier miles on United Airlines and 120,000 frequent flier miles on American Airlines

·   Miscellaneous expenses to cover food, medicine, and veterinary bills for our dog, who was lovingly watched over by Travis’ parents

·   Miscellaneous expenses associated with selling our house, my car, and many of our possessions. Yes, we made money from these transactions, but we also spent thousands of dollars wrapping up our life and getting to the start of this trip. And that’s not mentioning any expenses incurred after our return and before starting new jobs again.

While I’m not under any impressions that a trip like this is accessible to everyone, I do believe it is less expensive than most people think. And it would not have been difficult to take on a few additional cost-saving measures while we were traveling had we wanted to stretch our budget out even farther. We would have gone out to restaurants less, found even more affordable accommodations, or simply slowed down our travel. It’s much cheaper to stay put in a single place for a longer period of time than to be moving around constantly.

For us, the most difficult part of making this trip happen was simply finding the time. Leaving hard earned jobs and selling a house and a car might have been a bit dramatic, but the timing was as best as it was ever going to be for us so we had to give it a go. And so far everything has worked out for us. We have a lot of memories and experiences from this trip, and I certainly don’t miss any of the money we spent on it. It was worth every penny. It might have been more convenient and less disruptive had we waited until retirement, but neither of us wanted to wait that long. We're glad we went when we did.