$25,000. The minimum. This is not a three-month backpacking trip through Europe or Southeast Asia. This is a year-long, around the world trip. It costs $25,000. With one caveat—South America and Africa are not in your itinerary. The round-trip flights to these continents will increase your costs above $25,000.
$30,000. Breaking your daily budget for activities like watching sumo wrestling in Japan. Glacier hiking in Argentina. Dining at the better restaurants. You could eat a $3 steak in Argentina, but why? A $3 steak tastes exactly how you would expect a $3 steak to taste.
$35,000. South America to Europe to Africa to Asia to Australia. A true around the world trip. More movement generates higher costs. South America and Africa are also large continents and relatively more expensive to travel through than Asia and parts of Europe.
The $25,000 budget breakdown:
Daily Costs: $18,250
365 days x $50 per day = $18,250. The $50 per day breaks down to $20 per night for lodging, $15 per day for food, water, and beer, and $15 per day for sights and local transportation, such as tuk tuks or a subway ride.
Daily costs vary by continent and country. Daily costs are the lowest in India and Southeast Asia, where you can travel for $20 and $30 per day, respectively. $10 in India gets you a decent hotel room for the night. It’s difficult to spend more than $1,000 a month in these countries. Japan and Australia are more expensive because the nightly accommodations are higher, though you can still eat and see the sights cheaply in those countries. A “room” in a capsule hotel, where you are sleeping in a 4’ x 4’ x 7’ box, your backpack is stored in a central locker area, and you share a shower room with Japanese businessmen, in a non-central location in Tokyo will cost more than $40 a night. I spent $3,000 for thirty days in Japan. China is in the middle. I spent a little more than $3,000 during two months in China and I went almost everywhere. Europe? There’s a huge difference between London and Sofia. The budget-busting surprise was the high hostel expenses of South America. Centrally located hostels in Argentina and Chile ran upwards of $40 per night during the summer.
The main driver in the daily cost equation is lodging. There’s no secret to how to save money on lodging when traveling around the world—stay in a hostel. There’s a balancing act between staying in a costlier, central location and walking or paying less to stay on the outskirts and placing more reliance on local transportation. My advice: reserve a bed early. Select the eight-bed dorm room (instead of the four or six-bed option) in the central part of the city at the highest rated hostel.
Dining local is the most consistent way to save money because you should be receiving local pricing. Every country offers some variation of a $1 to $3 meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Even in New York, $3 covers a large slice of pizza and a Coke. The longer you are in a location the easier it is to identify and participate in the local dining scene. Don’t go too local. Go for an early morning walk in India and see where the street vendors wash their dishes, then decide whether you want a $1 street meal.
You need to determine if you are the type of person who wants to pay up for fine dining. The cheaper the country, the less costly the opportunity to pay up for fine dining. In Laos, $4 equates to a full helping of street food but $6 purchase the best fried fish meal of your life. It’s a similar situation in India where doubling the price of your meal from $5 to $10, quadruples the dining experience. The momos at Lhasa Fast Food, around the corner from Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights, is an example of a meal under $10 in New York City that’s on par with the city’s finest dining establishments. You also need to consider that in certain cities meals are the travel experience. You can dine on $10 a day in Singapore but are you really going to skip a chili crab meal? The $50 chili crab price tag is your total day’s budget and it’s totally worth it. You may eat the meal twice.
Your drinking habit shouldn’t impact the budget. If it does, you may want to reconsider why you are traveling around the world. On a ten-day vacation I may drink a beer with every meal and go on bar crawls through the less touristy neighborhoods—on a 365-day vacation that behavior will wreck your budget. You need to dial back the alcohol consumption. When you do drink, know that like dining local, drinking local saves money. Beer and alcohol in a Western-style bar or restaurant are three times higher than the price of going local.
$15 a day for sights is reasonable. Paying a little more during the days with the must-see sights offsets other days when you are walking through neighborhoods finding places to people watch. There are also once-in-a-lifetime experiences that are only experienced during a once-in-a-lifetime trip—scuba diving, desert safaris, premiere sporting events. These activities will crush your daily budget. Identify the cost of these activities in advance and budget accordingly.
If your mindset is that you want to pay up for better restaurants, pay up for once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and pay up for major events, then add $3,500 to $5,000 to your budget.
Departure and Return Flights: $1,200
The beginning and ending flights are the best time to utilize dividend miles. Use these miles on the inter-continental flights instead of burning them on the regional flights where you can find a local, discount carrier. If you don’t have travel miles, the bookend flights will cost approximately $600 each.
Travel Insurance: $1,100
That’s the annual price per World Nomads as of June 2019. It takes less than thirty seconds to obtain a quote. Don’t overanalyze travel insurance. Don’t create a list of pros and cons or try to rationalize why you don’t need travel insurance. It’s a necessity. It’s a fixed cost associated with around the world travel. World Nomads acts as a broker. I filed one insurance claim during my travels and found it to be a straightforward and quick claim reimbursement process. I detail this process in a later section dedicated to the travel insurance process.
There’re no hyperlinks here. No affiliate payments involved. Purchase travel insurance.
Visas and Vaccinations: $500
Two other necessary costs of travel. More details later.
Inter and Intra-Country Travel: $1,500
Out of all the costs listed, this is the biggest guess, the biggest variable. Transportation costs depend on the number of countries included in the itinerary and where they are located. The more you move, the higher the costs. The more you switch continents, the higher the costs.
Don’t be intimidated by high intra-country costs, like the cost of Japan and Eurail passes, because there is a simple way to save money—take local trains and buses. Local trains and buses run the same routes with a tremendous benefit—you stop in the small towns the bullet trains pass. In Japan, tourists use cities like Osaka as hubs to take bullet trains to and from other cities on day trips. Take a local train. Spend the night in Okayama. You’ll be the only non-Japanese in the city. The same holds true with Europe. You have plenty of time. Take the local trains (and buses), see the small towns in between. It’s also the easiest way to travel off the beaten path.
If the itinerary includes flying between continents: To South America. Back to the U.S. To Europe. To Africa. To Asia. To Australia. To Japan. Add $3,000. If the itinerary also includes island hopping around the Pacific: To Vanuatu. To Fiji. To Kiribati. To Tahiti. Add another $3,000.
Basics: $1,000
The one expense you won’t give much attention to when budgeting for an around the world trip is…where will I get a haircut? It’s a question that isn’t asked when you are going on vacation that lasts for a week or two. Fifty-two weeks? You will need a haircut. You need to plan for that and similar costs. Shampoo. Shaving cream. Contact lens solution. Cough medicine. A new pair of jeans. Laundry at $5 a week is $250 for the year. Every ATM withdrawal will cost you $3-$5. That’s another $250 over the course of a yearlong trip. The non-direct travel costs add up.
Then there are replacement costs. Your items get beaten up. Lost. Stolen. I lost an item in five countries in a row. A travel pillow. An iPad charger. A Los Angeles Dodgers hat. A fleece. A backpack ripped and became unusable. Set the replacement money aside in advance.
You will purchase souvenirs and mementos while traveling. I collect mugs from local coffee roasters, which sets me back $5 per country. If the items you’ve been purchasing start to accumulate, you may need to ship them home—UPS and FedEx ain’t cheap.
Return / Safety Net: $1,450
Give yourself about a 5% cushion. I don’t know you. But I know you aren’t going to stick to your budget. Your plans are going to change. You’ll want to visit sights you didn’t know existed. You’ll want to travel an extra month or two longer. Worst-case scenario, you return home with a few extra bucks.
It’s the best $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 you’ll ever spend.
$30,000. Breaking your daily budget for activities like watching sumo wrestling in Japan. Glacier hiking in Argentina. Dining at the better restaurants. You could eat a $3 steak in Argentina, but why? A $3 steak tastes exactly how you would expect a $3 steak to taste.
$35,000. South America to Europe to Africa to Asia to Australia. A true around the world trip. More movement generates higher costs. South America and Africa are also large continents and relatively more expensive to travel through than Asia and parts of Europe.
The $25,000 budget breakdown:
- Daily Costs: $18,250
- Departing and Return Flights: $1,200
- Travel Insurance: $1,100
- Visas and Vaccinations: $500
- Inter and Intra-Country Travel: $1,500
- Basics (Toiletries, Haircuts, Laundry etc.): $1,000
- Return / Safety Net: $1,450
Daily Costs: $18,250
365 days x $50 per day = $18,250. The $50 per day breaks down to $20 per night for lodging, $15 per day for food, water, and beer, and $15 per day for sights and local transportation, such as tuk tuks or a subway ride.
Daily costs vary by continent and country. Daily costs are the lowest in India and Southeast Asia, where you can travel for $20 and $30 per day, respectively. $10 in India gets you a decent hotel room for the night. It’s difficult to spend more than $1,000 a month in these countries. Japan and Australia are more expensive because the nightly accommodations are higher, though you can still eat and see the sights cheaply in those countries. A “room” in a capsule hotel, where you are sleeping in a 4’ x 4’ x 7’ box, your backpack is stored in a central locker area, and you share a shower room with Japanese businessmen, in a non-central location in Tokyo will cost more than $40 a night. I spent $3,000 for thirty days in Japan. China is in the middle. I spent a little more than $3,000 during two months in China and I went almost everywhere. Europe? There’s a huge difference between London and Sofia. The budget-busting surprise was the high hostel expenses of South America. Centrally located hostels in Argentina and Chile ran upwards of $40 per night during the summer.
The main driver in the daily cost equation is lodging. There’s no secret to how to save money on lodging when traveling around the world—stay in a hostel. There’s a balancing act between staying in a costlier, central location and walking or paying less to stay on the outskirts and placing more reliance on local transportation. My advice: reserve a bed early. Select the eight-bed dorm room (instead of the four or six-bed option) in the central part of the city at the highest rated hostel.
Dining local is the most consistent way to save money because you should be receiving local pricing. Every country offers some variation of a $1 to $3 meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Even in New York, $3 covers a large slice of pizza and a Coke. The longer you are in a location the easier it is to identify and participate in the local dining scene. Don’t go too local. Go for an early morning walk in India and see where the street vendors wash their dishes, then decide whether you want a $1 street meal.
You need to determine if you are the type of person who wants to pay up for fine dining. The cheaper the country, the less costly the opportunity to pay up for fine dining. In Laos, $4 equates to a full helping of street food but $6 purchase the best fried fish meal of your life. It’s a similar situation in India where doubling the price of your meal from $5 to $10, quadruples the dining experience. The momos at Lhasa Fast Food, around the corner from Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights, is an example of a meal under $10 in New York City that’s on par with the city’s finest dining establishments. You also need to consider that in certain cities meals are the travel experience. You can dine on $10 a day in Singapore but are you really going to skip a chili crab meal? The $50 chili crab price tag is your total day’s budget and it’s totally worth it. You may eat the meal twice.
Your drinking habit shouldn’t impact the budget. If it does, you may want to reconsider why you are traveling around the world. On a ten-day vacation I may drink a beer with every meal and go on bar crawls through the less touristy neighborhoods—on a 365-day vacation that behavior will wreck your budget. You need to dial back the alcohol consumption. When you do drink, know that like dining local, drinking local saves money. Beer and alcohol in a Western-style bar or restaurant are three times higher than the price of going local.
$15 a day for sights is reasonable. Paying a little more during the days with the must-see sights offsets other days when you are walking through neighborhoods finding places to people watch. There are also once-in-a-lifetime experiences that are only experienced during a once-in-a-lifetime trip—scuba diving, desert safaris, premiere sporting events. These activities will crush your daily budget. Identify the cost of these activities in advance and budget accordingly.
If your mindset is that you want to pay up for better restaurants, pay up for once-in-a-lifetime experiences, and pay up for major events, then add $3,500 to $5,000 to your budget.
Departure and Return Flights: $1,200
The beginning and ending flights are the best time to utilize dividend miles. Use these miles on the inter-continental flights instead of burning them on the regional flights where you can find a local, discount carrier. If you don’t have travel miles, the bookend flights will cost approximately $600 each.
Travel Insurance: $1,100
That’s the annual price per World Nomads as of June 2019. It takes less than thirty seconds to obtain a quote. Don’t overanalyze travel insurance. Don’t create a list of pros and cons or try to rationalize why you don’t need travel insurance. It’s a necessity. It’s a fixed cost associated with around the world travel. World Nomads acts as a broker. I filed one insurance claim during my travels and found it to be a straightforward and quick claim reimbursement process. I detail this process in a later section dedicated to the travel insurance process.
There’re no hyperlinks here. No affiliate payments involved. Purchase travel insurance.
Visas and Vaccinations: $500
Two other necessary costs of travel. More details later.
Inter and Intra-Country Travel: $1,500
Out of all the costs listed, this is the biggest guess, the biggest variable. Transportation costs depend on the number of countries included in the itinerary and where they are located. The more you move, the higher the costs. The more you switch continents, the higher the costs.
Don’t be intimidated by high intra-country costs, like the cost of Japan and Eurail passes, because there is a simple way to save money—take local trains and buses. Local trains and buses run the same routes with a tremendous benefit—you stop in the small towns the bullet trains pass. In Japan, tourists use cities like Osaka as hubs to take bullet trains to and from other cities on day trips. Take a local train. Spend the night in Okayama. You’ll be the only non-Japanese in the city. The same holds true with Europe. You have plenty of time. Take the local trains (and buses), see the small towns in between. It’s also the easiest way to travel off the beaten path.
If the itinerary includes flying between continents: To South America. Back to the U.S. To Europe. To Africa. To Asia. To Australia. To Japan. Add $3,000. If the itinerary also includes island hopping around the Pacific: To Vanuatu. To Fiji. To Kiribati. To Tahiti. Add another $3,000.
Basics: $1,000
The one expense you won’t give much attention to when budgeting for an around the world trip is…where will I get a haircut? It’s a question that isn’t asked when you are going on vacation that lasts for a week or two. Fifty-two weeks? You will need a haircut. You need to plan for that and similar costs. Shampoo. Shaving cream. Contact lens solution. Cough medicine. A new pair of jeans. Laundry at $5 a week is $250 for the year. Every ATM withdrawal will cost you $3-$5. That’s another $250 over the course of a yearlong trip. The non-direct travel costs add up.
Then there are replacement costs. Your items get beaten up. Lost. Stolen. I lost an item in five countries in a row. A travel pillow. An iPad charger. A Los Angeles Dodgers hat. A fleece. A backpack ripped and became unusable. Set the replacement money aside in advance.
You will purchase souvenirs and mementos while traveling. I collect mugs from local coffee roasters, which sets me back $5 per country. If the items you’ve been purchasing start to accumulate, you may need to ship them home—UPS and FedEx ain’t cheap.
Return / Safety Net: $1,450
Give yourself about a 5% cushion. I don’t know you. But I know you aren’t going to stick to your budget. Your plans are going to change. You’ll want to visit sights you didn’t know existed. You’ll want to travel an extra month or two longer. Worst-case scenario, you return home with a few extra bucks.
It’s the best $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 you’ll ever spend.