How On Earth Can We Afford to Travel the World for 6 Years?
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Simple answer: We can’t but we are going to do it anyways.
The more expanded answer is we have been saving for the past year for this trip. Making the decision to travel the world for 6 years was pretty easy. It was a no brainer for us. We love travel and we want to create a business and lifestyle that are compatible with travel so we have to travel. Figuring out how much money we wanted to take with us and budgets were not quite so easy to figure out.
How We Can Afford to Travel the World
Essentially Alex and I looked at our income and decided what we could cut out and how much we could realistically save. We decided that we wanted to save $10,000.00 each which means we will have a budget of $834.00 a month if we spread out the money over 2 years. That is not a ton of money for two people to live on but we are going to try. Surprisingly, since we eat out a lot, we are almost at our goal of $20,000.00 which is great!
The best decision we made when we decided to start saving for this trip was to create a separate savings account specifically for the trip. Having an additional savings account allowed us to separate out our trips savings, our rent and bills and the money we could spend during that month. It was so great to know exactly where our money was going each month so we didn’t have to do any guesswork. There were months of course where we spent a little tooooo much, in a town like Healdsburg it is hard not to go out to dinner or out for drinks, but we were able to recoup with cheap weeks where we acted like hermits and didn’t leave the house and the comfort of wine and Netflix.
A yummy Smash Burger from The Wurst is just one example of the many meals we have eaten out 🙂
Now that we have our savings sorted we are starting to figure out our budget. We have decided to hit the more expensive countries first while we are flush with money. We are starting with a road trip across America and luckily we have free accommodation in almost all of the cities we are stopping in! This is a huge help for us since cheap and good accommodation can be hard to find. The lack of hostels in America needs to be fixed. We also know that some places we are going to spend more like New Orleans so we are budgeting more for that week than we are for Santa Fe. After the US we are headed to Iceland! To cut down costs we are trying to book things in advance like the car rental and snorkeling Silfra!! We also are going to bring our camping gear thanks to the free luggage on Icelandair and the fact that camping in the wild is totally legal! Thank you Iceland! In the UK we are going to hopefully bum off our friends that live there and then try our hand at house sitting if everything goes according to plan.
We shall certainly be bumming off the Scot/Italian on the right 🙂
We are hoping that we will spend $2,000.00 the first two months we are on the road with the help of free accommodation and booking things in advance. If we spend only $2,000.00 in America, Iceland and the UK in two months I will be supremely happy! We are known for our love of food though and we want to see and do as much as possible including visiting the oh so expensive but totally worth it, Tower of London. Alex and I have already agreed that we are not going to obsess over our money on our trip. We are doing this to really get to know these countries and cultures and we do not want to let budgeting stop us from experiencing something unique and amazing. We are not budget travelers. We try to save where we can but if someone tells us we have to go to the best restaurant in Scotland and its expensive we will make it work because that is what is important to us.
Sometime you have to spring for that mid morning waffle. When in Brussels after all!
So we will have this $20,000 which is supposed to last us 2 years but what about after that? What the hell are we going to do? Well we are going to work of course. There are so many ways that we plan on working while on the road. I currently run the social media for a local city and am hoping to continue this while we are on the road. Alex is planning on working harvest around the world. Wine has become a large part of our lives since living in Healdsburg and it would be weird not be involved with it the wine industry somehow. We also are planning on House Sitting (I am digging the idea of free accommodation at an Italian villa 🙂 plus who doesn’t want to take care of adorable animals while on the road?) and WOOFing as well. The other means of making a living we will be using is freelancing. There are so many freelancing opportunities out there and so many websites like fiverr, elance and oDesk. I am sure we can find some skills which we can turn into freelancing jobs.
Must drink vino!
We also are planning on writing guides for some of our favorite cities (especially expanding our current City Guides into e-guides) and my ultimate goal is to buy property in Greece, renovate it and then use it as a base/rent it out on AirBnB. The Greece property is waaaayyy in the future though (like when I am in my 30s aka super far away…..But not really, let’s say it is more like in my 40s then) Other than that we are going to wing it which is typical of us. We plan on searching out opportunities along the road, not saying no and generally being open to new experiences and seeing where that takes us. Hopefully it will be a road that takes us to some sustainability of this lifestyle.
So there you have it. We are somehow going to fund our life on the road. I told you it was not a simple answer. We don’t totally have it figured out yet but we are at least set for 2 years. We both have an attitude that all things work out for the best and this is certainly going to apply to our trip. Don’t be afraid to go out there and travel because you do not have it figured it out because really, does anyone have it figured it?
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About Us
We are Ashley and Alex and we're foodies and boozies who eat, drink and live local. Our goal is to scour the globe looking for inside local tips, the best places to eat and the best places to drink with the locals.
We are also authors of a culinary guidebook, "Eat Local in Barcelona: A Guide to Catalan Cuisine." This guidebook is all about learning how, what and where to eat and drink local in Barcelona. Find out more in the link below!
Follow along with our adventures, so that you too can eat, drink and live local!
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While I am peeking and watching between my fingers spread over my eyes, I am a h.u.g.e. cheerleader, too!!
Thank you for the support! Ash and I really appreciate it. keep peeking through those fingers.
I love the idea of working harvests and just seeing where the road and work takes you. My one question is how you decided on travelling for specifically six years? Do you have a return date in mind?
Yea I can not wait to work harvest! So how did we pick six years? Well we really don’t have an end date. It really is a guesstimate on how much time we need. We originally thought it would take four years, but when we started planning we realized that it was going to take longer. We really wanted to take our time and spend time in certain countries. So we decided that we’re going to need at least six years to complete this trip. Thanks for the question! keep on reading.
Great plan!apart from wwoof, i recommend to have a look on workaway,too. i cannot recommend it enough for long-term travellers. Apart from local experience you can live badically for free or with ver little spending (i did not spend more than 100€/month so that means with such amount of money you can keep travelling for years!) 🙂
sorry for typos 🙂 i wish you good luck with your travels!
That is great to know! We will definitely look into it
I liked the idea of budgeting the travel in advance … I never thought of so long holiday .. but surely dreaming one day …. not sure what do u mean by free accommodation available ! was it your friends or relatives ?
We were able to get free accommodation from friends and family. Alex and I both lived in Rome and because of that we have friends that live all over Europe. Luckily a lot of them have been willing to host us which has saved us money. And we did our best with budgeting but it is tough once you get on the road! Don’t regret it at all though, it’s been a blast!