Around the World Travel

I got a question from someone who had the great fortune to take a year off and travel around the world for a year. I have never had the pleasure to do this but I'll try to offer some guidance on the matter. The main question was how much it would cost, which is very vague and I wish I could put an exact price on it. In a few books I’ve read about people selling all their belongings and traveling for a year, they claim they spend less traveling than they would at home with rent, utilities, insurance, car payments, etc. Krystin and I lived in Lincoln, England for a year to get our masters degrees and came back about even with our jobs we had gotten working 20 hours each week and making minimum wage. We also did some traveling and had fun money.

A great book to check out "One Year Off: Leaving It All Behind for a Round-the-World Journey with Our Children" by David Elliot Cohen. It's about a husband and wife and their three kids who sell all their belongings and see the world for a year. It's all about their experiences more than the airlines they used, how much they spent, etc, but it made me want to get out of my house and job to see more of the world.

A year is a hard length of time to put a price on but I'll do my best to map out a little budget that might get you on the right track.

The easiest way to figure out a budget is take your normal weekly spending on food and multiply it by 52. Your food cost should be equivalent, especially if your going for a year chances are your finding a place to sleep that has a kitchen and you can cook most of your own meals. And this will be even less in many areas like Asia, north Africa and the Pacific. Some places the dollar goes further. England, Switzerland, and Norway, Sweden and Finland, it doesn't go very far - so we'll average it at $40 a week.

If you were to spend every night in a hostel the average cost is about $25, or $750 a month. However, for the long period of time your likely to be finding a place that rents by the month which would be cheaper, and if your splitting it with friends, even cheaper - probably closer to $200 a month. My rent for a studio in Lincoln, England was about $250 including utilities and private bathroom. Paris, London, Zurich, Rome and Sydney will be more expensive than a small town, but it depends on how you want to live and what you want to experience.

The trickiest part of planning will be working out a rail pass since most are consecutive days or travel within a month or two, so this will take some planning. For instance, do you want to travel around for two weeks and then pick a location you want to live in for a couple months, or do you want to skip the rail pass and simply buy tickets from one destination to the next and live in 12 different cities for a month each?

There are around the world plane tickets that allows you to hop on and off just like a railpass but it of course has more cost and less freedom. I found a few sites that offers some advice and help:
www.staralliance.com, www.airtreks.com, and www.roundtheworldtickets.com, or if you're a member of AAA, asking their advice should be part of your membership.

I did a mock Itinerary starting in NYC, going to London, Cairo, Bangkok, Shanghai, Sydney, LA and back to NYC and the cost was $6,500 from staralliance and between $3,200-4,200 from airtreks. (of course there would be much travel around in-between, but this option would get you around the world.) I'm going to Italy in May and the ticket is $1,300 from ATL to Florence, so for 3-5 times the cost you get around the world. These tickets can be used within months or spread out over a longer period of time, check each site for their specific terms and conditions.

Think about the possibility of getting a small job when you’re there – wash dishes, wait tables, clean a hostel, be a tour guide, be a street performer or can you do your current job freelance? This will of course defer the cost and keep you out of the red if you don’t have a ton of savings or you want to come back with some cash – if you come back at all (I mean that you decide to live in Thailand, not that you get kidnapped and no one finds you).

So break it down your budget and do some research as to housing.

Food - $40 a week x 52 = $2,080
Rent - $300 x 12 = $3,600 (this is no hostels but finding cheap monthly places - very hard to put a price on)
Travel - $5,000ish
Fun - $2,400 ($200 a month)

Total - $13,080

Or if you want to over plan, maybe closer to $15,000.

Could you sell your car, big screen tv, XBOX, furniture and make the money for most of the trip?

Just an idea.