A question I hear from nearly everybody is, how the heck did you save up enough money to travel for ten months? My salary was decent but little more than that. I have no secret stash of money to cushion my fall. The truth is, I have neither Croesusian wealth nor a particularly Spartan travel style. The only way I can travel for this long is by budgeting carefully, and enduring the incredible stress that goes along with it.

Yes, that’s right, to travel the world you must deal with relentless budgetary stress. There is a constant tension between the desire to see sights, experience things, make the most of your trip, and the conflicting obligation to maximize value, cut corners, make spot decisions with salesmen breathing down your neck, and avoid indulging yourself needlessly. Budget travel is a matter of turning down familiar comforts whenever they appear without compromising your spirits. Every opening of the money purse is preceded by hesitation, and followed either by relief or shame. And your lapses in discipline add up quickly.

For example, right now I am sipping a coffee while sitting in the hostel courtyard. The coffee ıs sucky Nescafe, but cost about one dollar CAD. But as the words I’ll have a coffee left my lips, I began to doubt whether it was the coffee I wanted, or just the familiar comfort of coffee, of sittıng beneath an awning on a breezy day with a coffee which I otherwise had no desire for. I upbraided myself a little. The expense was nearly nothing, but what sort of habits would this fiduciary laxity beget? And furthermore, if I’m to stay on budget, I’ll have to make up for this purchase by saving an equivalent amount somewhere else, won’t I? Oh lord, what am I to do? My bank account will be bone-dry in months at this rate! And so on. This is how the cheapskate mind churns, and for the next nine months, I am wholly of his ilk, the skinflint, the killjoy, subsisting on bread and water and wagging a dirty finger at money-wasters.

I keep a detailed log of every cent that leaves my pocket. This is pretty much required for long-term travel unless you’ve got enough padding in your bank account not to worry about it. Doing this lets you see not only how much you’re spending, but whether you could cut down on some recurring thıngs. There are a lot of ‘Beer’ entries. I haven’t decided what to do about those. More worrisome are the food costs, easily the most frustrating aspect of budget travel. You simply must eat three meals (or really two and a half) a day, and sometimes you’ve got little choice but to absorb the sting of that $12 tourist-trap dinner. Conversely it’s quite rare to find food that is all three of: cheap, good, and convenient, as most of those get spotted by Lonely Planet and up up up goes the price. These are the stresses of the day, of scrounging for food and beds and cheap attractions so that you don’t just spend your time walking around the park all day. Quite a bit different from the stresses of meetings and project schedules, eh?

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 9th, 2007 at 10:23 am and is filed under Travel Advice.