It's All About the Benjamins, Baby: Take Three

Part Three: In which you suddenly have $12,000 in your bank account and are about to set off on a life-changing adventure

This is the part where I channel my inner Jillian Michaels and tell you that “I know this isn’t easy, but if I’m going to make big promises to you, I’ve got to give you a [financial formula] that’s going to deliver the results that you want and deserve” (pretty good, hey? I swear I’ve got that whole work-out memorized). Basically, saving money is just like working toward any other goal. You want to get fit? You jump around with Jillian Michaels for half an hour every day. You want to get good grades? You spend your weeknights holed up in the library. You want to save money and travel the world? You follow this guide and I promise, you will.

Money is not some big, scary thing that is by nature out of your control. In fact, money is one of the few things in life over which you have almost complete control. I don’t understand people who are so afraid of seeing their account balance, that they crumple up their ATM receipts and lament the day their statement comes in the mail. Sure, we all succumb to impulsive, frivolous spending every now and then, and there’s definitely a sort of sting that comes with dealing with the aftermath in the form of a Visa bill, but to actually be afraid of a number? It’s absurd. Get to know those numbers - the more conscious of them you are of them, the more they seem to grow.

The message is simple: anyone can do this. Yes, Scott and I were fortunate in that we had supportive families and decent(ish) jobs, but it is my belief that long term travel is well within anyone’s reach. All it takes is determination and a willingness to make a few short-term sacrifices. Before you know it, you too will have $12,000 in the bank and be jetting off to an exotic locale, whilst your unenlightened co-workers continue to toil at their desk jobs, bemoaning their dismal finances, feeding their addictions to caffeine and shoes.

Plus, saving for travel is just so much more fun than saving for the standard stuff like a new computer or car or a down payment on a townhouse. Life should be about the experiences, not the stuff, that you have. Learn to put that philosophy into practice, and just about everything becomes a whole lot more enjoyable.

That’s about all the motivational Jillian Michaels speak I can conjure up at the moment, but rest assured that I’ll keep you posted on how we handle our funds on the road (something I’m more than a little anxious about) and whether or not all this scrimping and saving turns out to actually be worth it (anyone care to speculate?) Thanks for tuning in, I’ve had an unusually good time writing this, and may have just discovered my true calling as a financial advisor.

Ha. Ha.

It's All About the Benjamins, Baby: Take Two

Part Two: In which you are horrified by how much your latte habit is costing you

Welcome to the second installment of How to Save Money and Travel the World, with your host and financial expert, Alanna Hardinge-Rooney. In our last episode, I showed you how to create a realistic and precise budget for your future travels. Today, I will show you how, with a little practice, patience and potting soil, you can grow money on trees!

If only. In reality, when it comes to saving your cash, there ain’t no such thing as a get rich quick scheme or easy money – just hard work and determination. Look at what you’re spending your money on now, perhaps even track your finances for a couple weeks, and see what you can do without. Chances are, you’ll be surprised by how excessive your lifestyle has become, and how easy it is to cut back on things you’re better off without.

Tip number one: get cookin’. As a downtown cube dweller, I developed an unfortunate taste for bought lunches. This is fine if those lunches are going on the company credit card, but if you’re footing the bill, this habit has got to stop. Even seven bucks once or twice a week adds up to $50 a month – two days of traveling in Africa. Find recipes that appeal to you, make a shopping list, and go buy a week’s worth of food. Make large portions so that you can bring left-overs as lunches, eliminating the need to pop out for an overpriced sandwich or salad. At the supermarket, try to save anywhere you can – go for the generic brand, buy in bulk, pay attention to what’s on sale – but don’t buy food that doesn’t excite you. No matter how focused on the prize you are, no one can sustain themselves on oatmeal, Kimchi and K.D. for eight months without losing it.

No coffee. This doesn’t really apply to Scott or I, but from observing others, I’ve learned that the Starbucks addiction is an affliction of many. At our office, endless tea and coffee is provided for free, and most people still make frequent coffee runs downstairs (returning with disposable paper cups – oh, the horror!) This is total madness. You might as well be throwing your money in a landfill. If you really can’t live without your grande extra-hot no-whip soy caramel macchiato, treat yourself to one every now and then, but certainly not everyday and for goodness’ sake, bring your own mug!

Shopping. Working downtown, I have developed a new appreciation/abhorrence for consumer culture. People congratulate one another when they purchase things. Things they don’t need. Things that waste money, support exploitation, harm the environment. You do not need those shoes. You do not need that handbag. You do not need those Rock & Republic jeans, that Benefit lip gloss, that gaudy Juicy Couture charm bracelet. When you’re hiking Mount Meru, you’ll laugh to yourself how ridiculous you were, how little any of that matters. If you really can’t keep your debit card in your wallet for more than a few days, hit up your local thrift store, or head for an outdoor store, where you’ll find some stuff you can actually use on the road.

Entertainment. Prepare for your social life to take a bit of a hit. Seven dollar pints at the bar is just not economical. Restaurant are out of the question. Even an $8 movie on a rainy Sunday afternoon is one night’s accommodation up in smoke. What to do? Invite people over, host a potluck, play board games, have a dance party in your living room. Take this time to do some of those projects you’ve been putting off, pick up a new hobby, learn a new language. Go to the library. Seriously – if you’re anything like me, the library will keep you entertained indefinitely. Read some historical fiction, memoirs, journalism from the areas you’ll be visiting. Check out some guidebooks, look at their map collection, plan your route. Rent movies – for free! I cannot endorse the library enough, and though the prospect might not excite you now, replacing your bar nights with staying in to read, will save you hundreds, nay thousands of dollars.

Your place and your stuff. What are you going to do with it? Keep it or let it go? Unless you’ve got an amazing apartment with impossibly low rent, I say let it go. Pocket your damage deposit, sell your lumpy couch and unsightly shelving unit, and purge your closet of things you never wear. Inevitably some things will remain: a box of winter clothes you won’t be needing for a while (hooray!), a mattress, a stereo, a few kitchen appliances. Unless you really have no other option, do not rent a storage space. Ask your parents to store it, see if your friends will baby sit your house plants or CD collection. This will save you money – like, $500 or so – so it’s worth seeking out all your options, even if it means that you’re stuff ends up strewn all over the city (or in our case, two different land masses!)

There are a million ways to save your money. The main thing is figuring out where you can cut costs and sticking to your budget. I guarantee that once you’ve started saving, and seeing what opting out of things like salon dye-jobs and Starbucks lattes does for your account balance, living on the cheap almost becomes a fun competition with yourself to see how much you can save. Not to mention the added benefit of knowing you’re doing something good for the planet and society. Minimalism for the win!

It’s All about the Benjamins, Baby: A Money-saving Odyssey in Three Parts

Alternately titled: Alanna Fancies Herself a Financial Expert

When it comes to frequently asked questions (besides that which has already been discussed), the thing that most people want to know about our trip is how can we afford it? Did a wealthy great aunt bequeath her estate to us? Did we set up a meth lab in our apartment? Did we invest our savings in Google and Whole Foods?

No, no, no, and it wasn’t gambling or a gift from God, either. The truth is much simpler: we got jobs and we saved. We decided to do something and we did it.

On paper, it doesn’t really add up. Our pay cheques are really quite paltry, the cost of living in this city is insane, and one of us just wrapped up four years of university that certainly wasn’t cheap. And yet, we’ve managed. We have more money in the bank than ever before, and we still treat ourselves to things like fancy cheeses and a bottle of (cheap, Chilean) wine more than we probably should.

The funny thing is, almost without exception, the people who ask us how we can afford it make far more money than we do, yet they are seemingly baffled by the perceived costs of a trip such as ours. This leads me to believe that there is a misconception about the costs of international travel. Sure, you could easily blow our six month budget on a six week (or even six day) African safari, spending your days tracking wildlife on private reserves and your nights in five star resorts and lodges, but you don’t have to. There are other options. Not all travel is prohibitively expensive.

A lot of travel blogs I’ve come across go into great detail about their budgets – what they estimate the costs of their trip will be, covering everything from airfares to camping equipment to immunizations. While this is absolutely fascinating for people who love crunching numbers and scrolling through Excel spreadsheets (i.e. accountants), it didn’t really do a whole lot for me. I haven’t spent a lot of time researching the cost of a bowl of mealie pap in Umtata or the cost of a dorm bed in Mwanza, nor do I think that that sort of precision is necessary, or particularly helpful to those in the process of drafting travel budgets.

I do, however, see the value in sharing some of my own money-saving tips and emphasizing how attainable long term travel really is. I honestly think that anyone (yes, anyone) can start at this point, with an empty wallet and bank account, and in less than a year be taking off for an extended period of vagabonding. If you have credit card debt, a hefty student loan, or a minimum wage job, you’re going to have to work a little harder, but I still think you can do it. Let the penny pinching begin!

Part One: In which the only math skills you need are addition and multiplication

Step one is an obvious one – decide where you want to go. Break out the old atlas (or use Google Maps, if that’s how you want to be) and have a good look at what’s out there. Since we’re talking about long term budget travel, there are a few places that you can pretty much forget about right away – mainly, Europe. Don’t let me crush your dreams of Paris and Berlin and Milan, but if you’re headed there thinking a few grand is going to cover several months of living and traveling expenses, think again. Your $35/night hostel bed in Amsterdam could buy you three or four days of beach bumming in Guatemala or Malawi. If you really want to stretch your travel dollar, you can cross off Western Europe, North America, Japan and even Australia, from the get-go, leaving yourself plenty of fascinating destinations to choose from. Travel Independent has a great section for wanderlusters trying to decide where to go and what to see.

Next, purchase a ticket. There’s a ton of information out there about this, and from what I’ve read, what it boils down to is this: air travel is expensive. There are certainly some deals to be had, and if you spend some time getting creative with your dates and pricing a variety of different airlines and ticketing agents, you just might get one of them. Most airlines will let you book fares up to eleven months in advance, and some of the best deals become available well in advance of departure. However, I would caution against becoming too caught up in getting the lowest fare. You might find that you end up having to pay several hundred dollars more because you were banking on fares dropping and they didn’t. Also, having a ticket purchased well in advance is one less thing you have to worry about as your departure approaches, and a great incentive to start saving for other parts of your trip.

Which brings us to all those other parts of your trip. Before you even get on that plane, you’re going to be doling out some cash – and no small sum either – on some rather pesky but totally necessary details like insurance and immunizations and equipment. If you don’t have a passport, you’ll need to get one. It will be the best $85 you’ve ever spent. Depending on the length and itinerary of your trip, you could be spending anything from a couple hundred to a couple thousand on travel insurance. We’re going with World Nomads, where a comprehensive six month international package costs $355. Another non-negotiable is immunizations and drugs. Unfortunately, few of these are covered by MSP or your employer’s insurance policy. It is possible to keep costs down to some extent by paring down the number of shots you get and by choosing cheaper or generic drugs (i.e. don’t get Malarone) but keep in mind that it’s your health in the balance, and $100 for a vaccine that could save your life? Sounds like a pretty good investment to me.

Another potentially major expense to consider is that of clothing and equipment. If you’ve done much traveling before, you can probably save most of your shopping dollars, but if you haven’t, you might surprise yourself with just how fast the money goes, even if you’re just picking up the essentials. Item number one on your list should be a backpack. You’re going to want something comfortable and small. Seriously – there’s nothing you’ll need for six months on the road that won’t fit in a forty litre pack. You might also want to buy some clothes to go in that pack. It’s probably not in your best interest to invest in a whole new khaki wardrobe, but a few high-quality outdoorsy items probably aren’t a bad idea. Besides that, you might want to think about purchasing things like a sleeping liner, a mosquito net, a head lamp, a travel alarm, and a caseload of DEET insect repellant (especially if you cut costs by opting out of anti-malarials).

Once you’ve added up your pre-trip expenses (which probably total somewhere in the $2500 – 3000 range) you can start estimating your on the road costs. This basically looks like this: accommodation + food + transportation + activities = don’t be totally distraught, you can do this! Honestly, staying in hostels, making most of your own meals, taking local transportation and steering clear of expensive tourist activities, you can travel in most countries (barring those listed above) for under $30 a day. You can plug your locations into this Travel Budget Calculator, and it will give you a rough estimate of how much you’ll need. Keep in mind that this doesn’t take into account costly one-off activities like shark diving and elephant riding, so any figure you come up with should be considered as a minimum. You’re going to want to add at least another thousand (or two, or three) to that number if you want to partake in such activities, or if you’re easily seduced by drink specials and full moon parties.

Altogether these things add up to a pretty sum, but think about what you’re getting – food, shelter, transport, fun – all in some of the most incredible places on the planet. In all likelihood, your on the road budget isn’t going to be much higher than your at home budget – the only significant difference being that you’re not going to have any income (unless you put a ‘donate’ icon on your blog, but you won’t see any of that here). No matter if your budget is $5000 or $20 000, it’s not as daunting as it seems. Stay tuned for part two, in which I reveal just how much the average office worker spends at Starbucks in a week, and show you how to turn your caffeine cash into a rewarding experience abroad!