When we tell people about our travel plans, their first question is usually “wow, where are you going?” And their second question is either “how long have you been saving?” or “how much is this going to cost?” It’s asked in a whisper, as if they feel that they shouldn’t ask, but they just can’t help their curiosity. I can’t blame them! We are also very interested in the answers to these questions and have done a lot of research to find ours.
How long have you been saving? Forever. Ok, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. But anyone who knows us, knows that we are savers not spenders. We have been saving in general since we started bringing home a paycheck. But, more specifically, we have been tracking our savings for this adventure for about a year. Our first priorities are still retirement and investment accounts, but our second priority has been the adventure account.
How much is this going to cost? The honest answer is that we don’t really know. We are going to aim for a daily average budget of $100. In addition, we have a slush fund for experiences that exceed the budget (e.g., Machu Picchu, Easter Island, Trans Siberian Railway). We’ve found a few ways to keep our costs down:
- Free/discounted flights – We hope to use vouchers, points, and miles to cover most, if not all, of our flights. We both have vouchers saved up, travel rewards credit cards, and lots of airline miles with Delta (Lindsey raked up about 40,000 traveling for work in 2013-2014).
- No foreign transaction fees – All of our credit cards and debit cards have no foreign transaction fees.
- No ATM fees – Our debit cards also have no ATM fees.
All that being said, we’ll see how this plays out. We want to be mindful of our spending, but we also don’t want money worries to preoccupy our thoughts or prevent us from having fun. It will probably take us a while to find a balance between being savvy and splurging.
Nomadic Cadence 