Budget Breakdowns

We budgeted $45,000 for a year-long world trip…and let’s just say we learned quite a bit along the way. More on that below. The $45,000 averages out to $123/day for the two of us. In other words, we each contributed $22,500 of our personal savings to this year of travel. This includes flights, lodging, activities, food, laundry, visas, car rentals, etc. Things not included are cell phone bills, health/travel insurance, and credit card annual fees. Peter tracked everything we spent and created summarized breakdowns for each country. If you want to see the itinerary for these countries, see our World Trip Itineraries. 

As a reminder, our daily average doesn’t reflect what everyone might spend in each location. It’s quite literally just what we spent from March 2022 to February 2023. Sometimes we did group tours, sometimes we opted to rent a car for a little bit more just to give us some flexibility, sometimes we were completely fried and did nothing for a week at a time. It alllll just depends. The best way to describe us as travelers this year: not the most hardcore budget backpackers you will ever meet, but definitely on that side of the scale. 

We’ll typically go for the cheapest accommodation that feels safe, and is in an area that logistically makes sense for what we’re trying to do (for example, staying 1.5 hours outside city center to save money…which we’ve sadly done before…doesn’t make much sense if you’re gonna make up the savings in transpiration costs and time to get into the city). We definitely pick and choose our excursions. Sometimes we go as far as having one of us do it while the other one watch, because 2 tickets seemed…not so budget core. But ultimately if there was somewhere or something we really wanted to do (I’m talking #1 on the life bucket list) we went for it! We adjusted our spending habits (eating out vs. grocery store, doing paid activities vs. free outdoorsy nature activities) depending on how high or low the cost of living in each country was.

And FINALLY, we used a LOT of credit card points, all of which we saved up prior to this year of travel. Over the course of the year, we redeemed roughly $9,000 worth of hotels and flights using hotel points. I’ve linked all of the cards we use here. 

OUR BIGGEST MISTAKE as far as budgeting…not accounting for INFLATION!!! We read quite a few blogs to finally land on $45,000, however in a post-covid world, pretty much every blog with any sort of budgeting, pricing, or cost breakdowns dated 2020 OR BEFORE, are not fully accurate. We had a few instances where covid pricing worked in our favor (by that I mean…$11 a night lodging instead of $16 type of thing), but for the most part quite literally everything costs more, from gas to hotels to food to convenience stores to activities. One day the costs we’re sharing here will no longer be totally accurate, but it’s all good because now you know to AJUST FOR INFLATION!