How Much Does It Cost to Travel the World for 1 Year?
Looks impressive, but unfortunately these are mostly Mongolian and Indonesian bills…
People Back Home Are Asking Us Constantly: "How Can You Afford to Travel for Such a Long Time?" - It's Not a Secret Folks, It's Research!
When people find out that we have been traveling the world nonstop for years, you can almost see the steam coming out of their ears: not computable, error! How is that possible? Won the lottery? Bitcoin millionaires? Ahhh, daddy must be sending money their way! Or maybe they have saved up for years and now they spend it on long holidays! I would love to travel, but no average Joe can afford this kind of lifestyle...
And this is the most frequently made misconception thanks to Instagram and co: traveling gets confused with taking a vacation.
With the right wherewithal, you can jet from one beach resort to another - cocktails on Bali, scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef and gambling in Las Vegas. All this costs loads of money. And above all, you want to recover from the daily grind without pinching every penny by leaving stress and worries at home and relaaaax. And if 2 weeks in Paris cost 3000 €, how should you finance a trip for several years? Well, if that's the things you’re looking for you'll most likely need a vacation and not a long-term world trip. By our definition, the journey is everything that lies between the beginning and the destination. It’s the adventures you stumble into by accident, discovering the unknown, learning from every challenge and growing in the process. Traveling can be stressful and that’s good! The hard work you have to put in, to not outsource everything with money is exacting but rewarding. For us it is a way of life and has nothing to do with taking a sabbatical.
If you share these values then traveling won’t cost you a fortune!
Among other perceived uncertainties, financing is probably one of the main reasons why the dream of a world trip is buried early by some potential travelers. That’s because only the ones who have been traveling for some time have a realistic idea of how much their personal travel lifestyle costs. And when you’re toying with the idea of breaking out of your normal life by seeking adventures yourself instead of marveling about the tales of others, you will eventually type the famous line into the Google Search Bar: "How much is a trip around the world?" The problem is: Everyone has different ideas, expectations, possibilities and know-how about traveling. Therefore, despite the overwhelming amount of travel articles on the web, it is not possible to find satisfactory budget plans for all the different types of travel. There are just too many variables involved. And since the topic is so complicated, we can’t give you a perfectly tailored solution either - sorry!
But what we can do is help you to find out which type of traveler you are and how you can realize your dream of traveling the world in your very own way!
On the subject of travel costs, you should first ask yourself the following questions:
What’s your budget?
We firmly believe that it’s not the budget that matters, but the passion to discover! If you make this a priority, then you should be able to travel, whether you have a large budget or a small one. Big but: That doesn’t mean that anyone can walk the earth like Caine from Kung Fu. There are a thousand reasons why some people just can not live a nomadic life (and some just don’t want to - that’s fine, too). Not everyone in this unjust world has experienced our education, owns a strong passport and enjoys the subliminal privileges we we’re granted just because we got lucky to innate a certain type of appearance. It’s way harder to cross lots of borders if you don’t tick all the right boxes. However, the most common excuse we hear is money, or rather the lack of it. This factor however, can be minimized by creative thinking and resourcefulness, more than often even completely replaced by other instruments. Well, all beginnings are difficult, so here's our first tip to get yourself on the road: Do not ask how much it costs to travel the world! Ask yourself how much you have available and how much you are willing to invest in travel! This amount you can use as a reference, adapt your travel style to it or discover alternative types of travel.
That's how we tackled it: instead of trying to reach a certain number on our bank statement, we circled a day in the calendar on which we wanted to start our trip. Until then, we have used creative ways to save as much as possible (for about half a year) and when it was time to get moving, we worked with what we had.
What’s your travel style?
Hostel, Couchsurfing, camping, hotel? Eat out or cook yourself? Hitchhiking, cycling, bus, or plane? Shopping tours, extreme sports, parties, or hiking? Or a little bit of everything? Your travel style is crucial for your budgeting.
As mentioned above, you have to realize one thing: a long-term trip is not a vacation. It takes planning, organization, and instead of living a life of comfort, you will often find yourself at the limits of your comfort zone. And this is what makes it so fulfilling!
We adapted our travel style to our budget, not the other way around!
It doesn’t matter if you have 50 quid in your pocket or 50 grand in your account, you can go traveling either way. How it will look like and how long you get by depends on your style of travel and your inventiveness. Having said that, we don’t advise you to dive into the unknown without sufficient funds and any travel experience. You should always have enough available to pay for travel insurance and a ticket back home. But there are countless people out there who - with a decent amount of research, lots of preparation, some backpacking experience, and outcome-oriented thinking - start without a penny in the bag! Just by hitchhiking, camping and volunteering you can come very far, even with a slim budget. Or you apply for a working holiday visa and simply fill your travel funds abroad. As a U.S. citizen, it’s a bit more complicated as for us Germans, but if you fulfill the requirements you can work and travel in Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Korea, Ireland, and Canada. Speaking of the nice Canadians: you folks from „The Great White North“ get a working holiday visa for 32 countries (!) and the Brits are welcome to work and travel in 7 different countries. There are also places like Guernsey, Jersey, and Gibraltar where you can live and work as a British citizen, at least for a while. And until Brexit 🤦🏻♂️ you don’t need a visa to live in EU-countries, so better hurry mate and spend a year in Paris/Lisbon/Berlin/… as long as you are allowed in! Whatever your nationality may be, it’s definitely something worth looking into. Just be aware that there are specific requirements (for example age, education & funds) for each country.
Our tip: visualize your journey before you pull up stakes. How do you move around? What can you forgo and what is especially important to you on your journey? How long are you planning to roam abroad? Can you imagine working in another country? Do you want to travel slowly or fast? How much money do you need as a backup on the account so as not to panic? Are you ready to choose the detour to save money? And prepare for unpredictabilities, because plans will change - and that’s okay!
After more than 2 years of nomadism, we know our preferred travel style very well. The recipe for success is complex, but the main ingredients are flexibility and a thirst for adventure. We tested different types of travel, adjusted speeds, maneuvered obstacles, and did not hesitate to change plans. We consciously work towards a balance that works for us - active forgoing combined with regret is very rare. We treat ourselves to the things we value and enjoy a fulfilled travel life. The way we travel is also incredibly diversified because we utilize a variety of travel hacks we picked up over the years, depending on the specific country, outside influences and our current mood.
Besides transportation and accommodation, nutrition is the asset we spend the most on. When it comes to the big 3 (breakfast, lunch & dinner) we rarely compromise and are happy to invest in good quality food. After all, this blog is called EatThisWorld. 🤤 But that does not mean that we dine in upper-class restaurants every evening and sip champagne to stay hydrated. We just believe a balanced, healthy and tasty diet based on fresh and preferably local products has a lot of benefits. Of course, often it’s not beneficial to our funds. To keep the costs low we cook most of the time ourselves. It also has something to do with the fact that we don’t eat animals and try to stick to plant-based meals. In some countries, the selection on the menus is quite meager because of that, or the restaurant search is unnecessarily complicated (in a lot of countries it’s not a problem, though). Also, we love to cook and experiment with local products. The pleasure of preparing your own food is immensely satisfying if you learn to enjoy the process. That’s one of the reasons why we are carrying our small camp kitchen around the globe and we’ve never regretted the extra weight. We also love to explore the authentic cuisine of the countries we are traveling! That’s why we eat out from time to time, indulge in local street food treats and never say no to an invitation from a local. We also have to admit that we enjoy a cold one or a good glass of wine every now and then and then again. This is definitely a factor we could dial down a bit to stretch our funds. We also love freshly brewed coffee and always have our little French press with us. If we had to go to a café constantly to satisfy the desire for C8H10N4O2, we would have been broke a long time ago!
As a general rule, we try to fly as little as possible on our trip. There are several plausible reasons for this: Firstly, we want to travel more sustainably and keep our ecological footprint as small as manageable (we try our best, but are far away from perfect). Secondly, we love to travel slowly. It is incredibly interesting to experience the often fluid transitions between countries, landscapes, and cultures step by step. Thirdly, this travel style constantly takes us to hidden pockets of the world we would never have discovered otherwise. So far we have flown twice in two years of fulltime traveling around the world: once because we had no time to find another option because our visa was about to expire (Australia to New Zealand) and the other time because we received an invitation to cross the Pacific by boat (New Zealand to Hong Kong). Not flying also helped us to save some money on transportation, but there is no guarantee for that. We have often spent more money on a ferry (ferry ≠ cruise ship) or train tickets than the flight for the same route would have cost. We gladly invest a little more if we can reduce some of our CO2 emissions while gaining experience on less-traveled roads. After all, it is a huge difference to be the only backpacker traveling from Kobe to Shanghai on a Chinese ferry for 2 days, than "skipping" an almost intangible distance by plane in just 6 hours. If you have to fly, we’d recommend to at least consider “offsetting” your flights carbon. Neel from flunkingmonkey.com wrote a piece on the whole thing here.
Otherwise, we use all the transport options available to us: bus, train, hitchhiking, ferry, sailing vessel, rental car, own car, motorbike, van life, bicycle and as often as possible our own legs. It makes sense to leverage this variety, just keep in mind that every form of transportation has its advantages and disadvantages. Which means of transport we choose depends on the environmental balance, its expences, the country we are traveling and its terrain, the time we have to get from a to b, and our available options.
Overnight stays are probably one of the biggest cost factors while traveling, and that’s why you can save a lot of money if you creatively approach the issue. We have learned to use various forms of accommodation to enrich our travel life but also to save some serious bucks while doing so. There are tons of options to choose from, and every travel type can find his/her fit. Especially in Scandinavia at the beginning of our trip, we pitched our tent almost every night and thus saved mucho dinero on lodging. In Russia and Asia, we were mostly quartered in hostels and cheap hotels, usually in a private room via Airbnb (up to 34€ off for your first booking!) or booking.com. For couples or travel buddies, there is often no significant cost differential and a little privacy + the option to store our valuables in our own room is an incredible advantage over a hostel-dorm. Although we are always looking for lower-end accommodation, good reviews are highly important. Nothing is worse than feeling uncomfortable or unsafe in a place you have to rest from a tiring day of travel. We therefore gladly spend a few more coins on a well-rated hostel. But as a resourceful traveler, you're not limited to the hotel business: in New Zealand, we slept most of the time in our self-converted van. For social travelers, Couchsurfing is another free lodging option which is available worldwide, and volunteer programs such as HelpX or WWOOFing provide meals and a roof over your head in exchange for labor. Our favorite and greatest money-saving tip is house & pet sitting. Through online platforms like TrustedHousesitters (use this link to get 25% off!), travelers can network with pet owners who are looking for a sitter for their beloved four-legged friend. While the owners are on vacation, we live in their house, and in exchange take care of their beloved animal. The accommodation is completely free in return. Everybody wins with pet sitting: The owners don’t have to pay a caretaker, we as sitters don’t have to pay for accommodation, and the dog or cat won’t go through the stressful experience of spending weeks in an unfamiliar environment like a boarding kennel. This way we were able to save tons of money and live on gorgeous properties we couldn’t dream to get on a shoestring. We love this type of accommodation because we can look after animals while traveling, get a better idea of the locals' everyday life, and enjoy the luxury of our own kitchen! Through house sitting we could live as budget travelers in the heart of the most expensive cities around the globe (like Tokyo, Shanghai, or Vancouver), as well as discover the spectacular nature of remote places, for example on a tiny island between Thailand and Myanmar or in the middle of a National Park in the Canadian Rockies - and all this for free! Having said that, there’s usually an annual fee for the platform, but it’s almost not worth to mention if you consider the benefits.
As you see, there’s great value in exploring the enormous savings potential in this category. There are offers at all comfort levels and after 2 years of full-time travel, we have learned to get the most out of the different options.
We probably spend the smallest chunk of our budget on tourist attractions. We aren't the biggest fans of guided tours, so we avoid them most of the time. But if we're not experienced enough to tackle it on our own, we're happy to throw money at it. It rarely happens though. We love to explore a place blindfolded while forgetting the time and deliberately omit Google Maps. We cannot really identify with travel blog posts like “10 THINGS YOU HAVE TO SEE IN BANGKOK / PARIS / CAPE TOWN!”. Be assured that every second traveler will put something else on this list. 😉
A beer or two in a pub, chatting with the locals, getting lost in foreign streets without a specific destination, shopping at the market, visiting a museum or the local cinema, or hikes through wild nature: these are our highlights when traveling. This mindset keeps our budget for activities relatively small. But still, much of it costs money and that's why we list “leisure” as the fourth biggest item in our travel budget!
how much did we spend in one year?
In order to be able to understand the expenses of our trip, we draw up the balance sheet about every 3 months. Not in the truest sense, there is no excel spreadsheet in which we assign every cent spent on an item - to be honest we are far from that! But it helps loads to have a rough overview of your monthly expenses. This is useful in two ways:
1. This way you can see where your financial priorities lie, and this yields many opportunities for further optimization of your personal travel style!
2. A travel expense report helps to keep an overview, and unnecessary expenses or nasty surprises are reduced to a minimum.
Since we want to be as transparent as possible with EatThisWorld - and it could be a rough guide for all those who are aiming for a travel style similar to ours - we want to disclose our expenses for our first year of travel. Please keep in mind that these are our personal expenses and not a blueprint for how much money you need in your account to travel the world. Some travelers need a lot more, and some need a lot less.
Roughly 8900 $US / 11600 $CAN / 6800 GBP / 13000 AUS$ / 60000 DDK / 80000 NOK
additional costs
The list shows all costs that have been incurred during the trip. Not included are costs for our website, monthly subscriptions for adobe products, learning platforms, charity, (...) due to the fact that these expenses are not relevant to our travel style.
Costs that were not included in the list above, but could be important for your planning:
1) Travel insurance we pay once a year. It’s about 45 € per person per month.
2) Visas we have organized before the trip and a Working-Holiday visa that gave us the opportunity to work legally in another country. In our case this was the visa for Russia and our working holiday visa for New Zealand:
Russia: 95 € per person
New Zealand: 145 € per person
All other visas that we organized during the trip were included in the list above.
3) Equipment for travel. We did not include everything we bought before the trip since we already had most of our gear at home. Of course, it also depends on what you think you need for YOUR travel style and what things you already call your own. For example, we bought new sleeping bags and sleeping pads, as well as a drone and a more compact second camera just for the project EatThisWorld.
To be able to understand the Fluctuation of daily expenditure, here is a monthly overview of all the countries we visited in the first year of our journey:
We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported us on our trip so far. To all the old and new friends, acquaintances and kind souls who have welcomed us to their home, networked with us via the interwebs or invited us to their table to share a meal (or some brews). Anyone who picked us up when we were hitchhiking through foreign lands and to the amazing crew that gave us landlubbers a chance to sail the world's oceans with them. All of our wonderful house sitting and couch surfing hosts who gave us a temporary home on the other side of the world. Thanks to our family who is always just a phone call or video chat away and helps out with plenty of advice and support. And for every little gift, contribution & good energy we got at our farewell party as well as the birthday gifts that reach us from afar. THANK YOU!
You think you’d be comfortable with our travel style and wonder how to actually do it?
What a coincidence! 😊 We have put together a super valuable online course in which we discuss the strategies we use on a daily basis to travel big for less. You will learn what travel hacks we think are the most promising and how you leverage the tools out there to travel for years without having to win the lottery! You can find the course on the online learning platform Skillshare and with our link, you not only get the course for free but also 2 months of Skillshare Premium on top and thus access to thousands of other courses on top!
And here comes the best: Just cancel before the 2-month free trial ends and our course will cost you absolutely nothing, nada, le zéro!
What our students say:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Rebecca:
“Boatloads of useful material here. I appreciated their advice on honesty, flexibility and cleanliness and I completely agree with the need for those things. Even if you're not looking to travel far, there's plenty of good house- and pet-sitting tips here. Feels like your chatting with two new friends.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Erica:
“What a fantastic class! It is very clearly organized. (….) The filming is beautiful and the changing up of images makes it engaging to watch. Anna and Toby have done an excellent job of presenting exactly what one ought to do in order to become a full time traveller. Thank you for the thoughtful class.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Maibis:
“I had a lot of pleasure taking the class from Anna and Toby. This class is very interesting, very well thought, planned and organised. Both, Anna and Toby have a great experience as modern nomads and throughout this class they share their tips, advises, solutions to travel the world on a budget. At the same time the class is very entertaining to watch. I appreciated the fact that they shared photos and bits of films gathered during their experiences in traveling around the world. Thank you Anna and Toby for this magnificent class!”