How to Travel the World on Any Budget

We’ve really tried it all. We’ve been shoestring backpackers, we’ve done the luxury travel thing and everything in between. We finally came up with a happy medium and a budget that will let us keep traveling as long as we like.

If you’re reading this post, you’re probably interested in kicking off a big adventure of your own. Maybe you have a plan already. Or maybe it’s just a dream. Either way, there’s one practical matter that you just can’t avoid: How much will it cost?

If you’ve already tried digging into the numbers, you’ve probably discovered how confusing it can be. There are a million travel blogs, vlogs and websites to look at. And they all say something different about how much it costs to travel the world. 

We were in the same situation just a few years ago. We were ready to say goodbye to corporate life and finally see the world. It was our chance to go see all those countries on our bucket list. But we had no idea how to budget. Our only experience with budgeting for travel was adding up how much we spent after a two week vacation. That wasn’t going to help us for this trip of a lifetime. 

Full-time travelers

Now here we are today. We’ve been traveling full time since 2019 – even despite the pandemic. Along the way we’ve taken a ferry up the Bosphorus in Turkey…we’ve walked the walls of Dubrovnik…we’ve watched the sunset over ancient monasteries in Greece.

But it wasn’t all sunsets and beautiful experiences. As travelers in 2020, we ran into a few difficulties as well. During the first wave of the pandemic, we had to take a rescue flight from Italy to Canada. Then we had to hunker down for a few months in Toronto to wait out the international lockdown. This was pretty hard on our wallet with Toronto being Canada’s most expensive city. But amazingly, through it all, we’ve managed to stick to our budget. 

So how did we go about coming up with a budget that could work for this crazy adventure? Well it started by being really realistic about how we like to travel and what makes us feel happy and comfortable on the road. 

Different approaches 

Now when we first met, we had very different approaches to travel. Gillian was super frugal. She was all about the backpacker lifestyle. Travel to her meant camping or staying in hostels or taking overnight bus rides to save a buck on a hotel. 

I, on the other hand, had more refined tastes. I looked for boutique hotels with fancy breakfasts. Let’s just say that my travel budget was typically a little different than Gillian’s. 

Back in the early days of our relationship, we were living in Canada. We had the standard number of vacation days and would take just one big trip a year. These trips were a really big deal to us and we would plan every single detail a year in advance. 

Move to Singapore 

Then we moved to Singapore and our entire concept of travel changed. We were working in Singapore as expats. We had more vacation time, we were making more money and we had the whole region of Southeast Asia to explore. 

We started off with low-cost weekend trips. We’d book a budget flight and throw some things in a backpack. Then we’d have a weekend in Malaysia or Thailand or Vietnam. In those days, we didn’t mind having a cheap bungalow on the beach. We were just so excited to be exploring the region.

Eventually our trips became more elaborate and a lot more expensive. We went campervanning in New Zealand….we did a hiking trip in Japan… we even popped over to Europe to explore the Baltic countries.  

All of our travel experiences were amazing and memorable. But the way we were traveling by the end of our time in Singapore wasn’t financially sustainable as a lifestyle. If we wanted to travel full time, we needed to do things differently.

What we needed was a travel style that would be comfortable but also affordable. We knew we didn’t want to camp out in hostels but we also knew that we couldn’t afford to live in five-star hotels. After a lot of discussion and research and soul searching, we came up with a middle ground that would work for both of us. And it’s the travel style we have today. 

Our travel style

We’ve become slow travelers. We spend a month or more in each country before moving onto the next one. This is very different from our life as fast travelers when we would try to see an entire country in just a week or two. 

Slow traveling is a great way to discover a country and offers huge cost savings as well. Because we’re staying longer in each destination, we choose to stay in apartments instead of hotels. This means we pay a lower nightly rate wherever we go. And we get a kitchen so we can prepare our own meals, which is something we enjoy doing anyway. 

Staying longer in each destination allows us to discover it slowly. So we don’t need to book expensive tours to see it all in one afternoon. We can take our time to explore all the sights and neighbourhoods on our own. 

Those are a few ways we like to keep costs low. But at the same time we’re not afraid to spend on things that are important to us. For example, on travel days, we like to make life as easy as possible. So we’re happy to spend more for a direct flight versus trying to save a buck by taking a connection. And even though we cook our food, we also like to splurge a little or sometimes a lot and try the local cuisine. 

All of these wants and needs and preferences have a direct impact on how much money we spend each month. So we’ve created a monthly budget that totally covers our everyday living expenses as well as our splurges and any emergencies that might come up. 

The secret to our budget is that we’ve been really honest with ourselves about how much comfort we prefer to have for our life on the road. Before we started traveling, we were working professionals who lived in a nice apartment. We want to travel for the adventure but we also want to be comfortable along the way. We didn’t want to under budget and end up sitting miserable in a hostel. That would not be good for our marriage. 

Of course, your budget isn’t going to look like our budget. We all have different preferences when it comes to travel. 

Be honest

Before you start planning your adventure, it’s really important to be honest with yourself. Maybe you’ve always wanted to be a backpacker living a minimalist lifestyle. Or maybe your trip of a lifetime means luxury all the way. Once you really understand your travel style, it’s that much easier to plan a sustainable budget. 

In fact, we’ve made it even easier. We’ve created a workbook to help you understand your travel style and budget for your adventure. We’ve taken everything we’ve learned from years of research and travel planning and packed it all into this workbook. It’s full of exercises, tips, hacks, resources and spreadsheets all to help you get to a realistic budget for your adventure. 

If you’re ready to finally, finally plan that trip of a lifetime, you can get started by clicking on Budget For Your Next Adventure. And we wish you many hours of happy planning!