The 8 best tips to afford Long Term Travel

“How can you afford to travel for so long?” When long term budget travelers hear this, they know the real question is, “Why do you get to live like this and I don’t?“ Quick calculations have been made. “At least $100 per night for a room, but probably $200. Another $100 for food, and then there are admission fees, taxis, and souvenirs. That’s $300-$400 per day. Plus plane tickets. I know you. You aren’t rich. So where did you get the money?”

The answer is, they didn’t, not that kind of money. Long term travel is not a series of short vacations strung together. Long term travel is a different animal altogether, a cheaper, more affordable animal.

There are significant differences between traveling for months and taking a short vacation. If you become a long term traveler, you have options available to you that vacationers don’t have.

Because It’s Long Term

1. You can reduce or eliminate most home-based expenses that vacationers continue to incur while they are away.

You can sell or rent your house or condo, sub-let your apartment, or terminate your lease. You will eliminate utility and other maintenance costs along with the rent, mortgage payments, and condo fees. Additional costs, such as storage locker rental and moving fees are insignificant compared to the reduction in monthly carrying costs. You may even generate a profit that will defray some of your costs while away.

You aren’t going to use your car while you are gone, so sell, store, or even lease your car. Even if you keep the car, and it‘s payments, your insurance costs will probably be reduced more than any storage fee you might incur.

2. You will travel at a slower pace than you would on a vacation.

A major part of a vacation is the cost of getting to your destination. Averaged over one or two weeks, or even a month, the increase in your daily expenses is significant. Averaged over three months, or a year, it is barely noticeable. Round-trip fares for shorter stays cost less, but time makes the real difference. For example, stay one month in Ecuador after paying $500 for a round-trip fare, and your airfare averages $16.67 per day. Pay twice that, $500 each, for two one-way tickets, stay in the region for three months, and you reduce that cost to $11.11 cents. At six months, it becomes $5.56 per day.

Local transportation and tours also contribute to your costs. As a long term traveler, you will take buses, subways, and trains rather than taxis or expensive tours. A budget tour to Bo Sang, the umbrella factory village outside Chiang Mai, Thailand costs about $12. Two public buses each way total less than $4.

You can stay longer in places you like. Vacationers try to cram as much into each day as possible. Travelers try not to cram their days. You can visit a ruin at your leisure, spend as much time there as you like, then devote the next day to sorting through your pictures, strolling through town, and sitting at a sidewalk café with a book. Or, after a flutter of sight-seeing and travel, take a breather to get laundry done, have a haircut, and get your journal up to date. Sit by a pool, lie on the beach, read a book. The less you move around, the less you spend per day.

3. You will find cheaper options for almost everything.

In addition to using local transportation, you have cheaper options for almost everything else. You can take the time to check out several places to stay before choosing the best value place for your money. You might be able to negotiate a lower rate for a stay of a week or more. You could even rent an apartment for a longer stay.

Staying put allows you to check out different, and often cheaper options. You can have breakfast at the least expensive place around, instead of eating in your hotel or guest house out of convenience. You will know where to get laundry done for less, or even take the time to do it yourself. You’ll learn which bank or money changer has the best exchange rate. When you decide to move on, you can select from ferries, buses, trains, shared taxis, and sometimes pony carts or bicycle rickshaws, rather than being forced into the only option that fit’s a tight schedule.

4. You will choose destinations by cost, not just by appeal.

Some places are just more expensive than others, and while the difference may not matter much for a one week vacation, it has a major impact on a long trip.

Places are more expensive either because overall costs are extremely high, or there are no true budget options for accommodation, food, or transportation.

Since the money for a frugal month in England will pay for several months in Bali, the long term traveler chooses Bali. Backpackers swarm through India, South East Asia, Central and South America, New Zealand, and Australia because they are both interesting and affordable.

5. You will spend more time in less expensive places, and less in the more costly.

You can balance your time over a year so that long periods of time in inexpensive places allow you to include short stretches in the more expensive. India is cheaper than South East Asia, and South East Asia is cheaper than Australia. A trip that includes four months in India, four in SE Asia, and two in Australia is a better plan for you than one that includes four months in Australia.

6. You might be able to work.

If you are traveling for an extended period of time, you might have the option of stopping to work along the way. Usually the best option is to teach English as a second language. Even those traveling for only a year could sign up to teach at a summer camp in China or Viet Nam. If you no more than cover your costs for a month or two, that’s two months you can add to your travels, or money you can put toward the budget for one of those slightly more expensive destinations.

7. You will develop a different attitude toward money.

When you are on vacation, costs are compared to those back home. When you travel long term, you adjust to the local economy. The very meaning of money changes. Suddenly $6 for a dinner seems outrageously extravagant, because you are only paying $4 for your room and you choke at the thought of paying $2.00 for a beer.

8. You will change your spending priorities.

Over time, as you get used to spending less, your priorities will change. You will realize that a day at the Taj Mahal is just as beautiful and moving an experience whether you pay $7 for your room or $150. You’ll learn that a ten minute walk to the beach doesn’t change the beach at all. The sand is just as white, the water just as clear and blue for you as for those staying at a five star resort.

You may find you really don’t care where you sleep as long as it is safe and clean, but that you are willing to spend more for comfortable transportation. Or you may be happy to skip air-conditioned comfort and big seats to ride the so-called “chicken buses” everywhere, but absolutely insist on a private room with your own bath.

Because It’s Less Expensive

Conversely, because you travel longer, and can do all these things to make it less expensive, you will be able to travel longer.

For example, a Swedish man who left home to travel until his money ran out thought it would last two years. Four years later, he was riding a bus to Banaue in the Philippines, and still had sufficient funds for another year or two.

If you know the drain on your savings will be spread out over a long period, you can keep your travel funds in an income-producing account, extending your travel time even further.

The original question was, “How can you afford to travel for so long?” And the answer is, “Because I travel for so long.”