We are now 6 months into this journey, and I figured it might be time for us to give an update on how we’re doing financially. We had originally planned on traveling for about 1 year, and that has been extended slightly due to us planning on meeting some of our best friends in the Bahamas next summer, which, as of right now, will be the closing part of our trip.
Based on the original timeline of a year, things are looking great as we have recently also crossed the half way point in our available funds. You might say ‘but Jeff, if you’re traveling for longer than a year, aren’t you in trouble if you’ve already spent half your money?’, however the response would be that we have already been through the more expensive parts of our journey (at least for a while) as we hit Europe over the summer and did the expensive activities for the trip in climbing Kilimanjaro and going on Safari. Our next several destinations are relatively cheap, as India and Southeast Asia won’t cost nearly as much, so we should stay well ahead for the next several months. Also, in our total spent for crossing the half way point of our budget, there are quite a few things that haven’t happened yet, as we already paid for our 3 week tour of India (just need to buy food while we’re there), and we have bought quite a few of our upcoming flights and paid for lodging in Singapore and a few nights in Vietnam. Due to us booking with a budget company in Tanzania and ending up with quite a bit more free lodging in Europe than we had planned, we are well under budget for where we thought we would be now.
Now for some cold hard numbers (as of 11/18/16):
Our average spent per day: $117.91
Days since we left Virginia: 184
Days since we left the USA: 153
Difference in budget and actual expenses: $3,639.51
So where is the extra money that we haven’t spent so far going? If I had my way, it would roll into our return savings and give us a little extra cushion until we get jobs again. Cara doesn’t agree with that so much, so we’re going to keep it available for the rest of the trip and treat ourselves a little as we go, including Cara doing her scuba diving certification over Christmas while we’re in Singapore and me doing some mountain biking while we are there too.
Hopefully we stay under budget for the rest of the trip!
-Jeff