The “American Dream” has long included a yearly vacation as a metric for success. If you’re going international, let’s map out what this entails from a cost perspective:
- An expensive location designed for tourists.
- On-season thanks to career or school restraints.
- Less flight flexibility.
- Tour guides to maximize activities and minimize planning.
- Short-term and serviced accommodation.
- Eating out almost every meal.
- Taxis or car rentals, once again because you are rushed.
- You are still paying for the insurance, car, house or apartment back home, sucking up money.
According to these guys and a few other sources I found, the average cost for a vacation in the US is $1,991 per person per week!
No wonder travel is expensive! I get questions all the time on how I can afford to travel in my 20s – if I travelled like it’s a yearly vacation, I would be broke several times over!
Here’s how I saved TENS OF THOUSANDS and managed to travel for 5 MONTHS at a moderate comfort level.
- Stayed primarily in obscure countries, smaller cities, off the beaten path, did my research and compared prices for everything.
- Move around to avoid on-season. It’s not that much different in tropical areas anyway, and Europe is beautiful in winter!
- Plan your trip AROUND cheap flights, not the other way around. I’ll spend a whole other article discussing how I flew dozens of times across 3 continents for what some people pay for a round trip to Hawaii.
- Explore solo. Only rely on tour guides for occasional walking tours or extremely inaccessible or difficult areas.
- Be willing to live in local accommodations, longer-term AirBNBs for the discount, or hostels. Or just have a hell of a lot of loyalty points.
- Groceries are generally cheaper than eating out. Especially if you eat local products. Choose street food and take chances on local vendors away from central commercial zones instead of malls or food chains.
- Public transit in Europe and Grab/Bolt in SEA/LATAM, all the way. Buses for in-country travel. The occasional electric bike. Bonus points if you can rent a scooter/motorcycle.
- If you’re a renter, get out of the lease. We don’t pay a DAMN DIME for anything back home. Unfortunately I had a car that wouldn’t be economic to sell, so I used it as storage for the little amount of stuff I had left, put it in my parents’ garage, and reduced the insurance to just comprehensive.
- And of course, don’t let anyone pressure you into buying crap.
Let’s also consider how long-term international travel is vastly more economical when it comes to the primary expense: flight.
If you’re planning a two-week vacation to Brazil, and the next year to Uruguay, and the one after that to Argentina, you will bleed green. It’s not uncommon for round trips to end up more than $2k. However, consider my situation: I flew down to Brazil for just 25k Delta points (about $250), and all of my in-continent flights on budget airlines were less than $100. Flying domestic in the third-world is much cheaper than domestic in the US, despite us having the most domestic flights, and WAY cheaper than international flights.
Remember, flight costs are mostly based on distance, and the US is far away from EVERYTHING. Once you get to the promised continent, prices go down dramatically.
“BUT, BUT… this plan doesn’t take into account that my time is valuable! Public transit, planning, solo exploring, flight flexibility – these are all huge time sinks!”
Absolutely. But living FASTER isn’t necessarily living BETTER. Take some time to enjoy slow living and reflect on your experiences.
Another note: plan everything at least a month in advance. International flights: more like 2 months. Prices go up quite a bit past that. As much as I liked being part of the “spontaneous crowd”, it was not enjoyable scrambling for a hotel or ride last minute. It’s also less safe because you are easier to take advantage of.
You won’t want to plan much beyond that. There’s something to be said for just putting a city on your calendar without knowing anything about it. This is where the “exploring” part really comes in. Just make sure wherever you’re going is safe.
You’ll find yourself changing very fast as you get exposed to new experiences. Your idea of what your trip will look like may change. I originally planned an 18-month trip while working remotely, but after a couple weeks I was like “nah, scrap this”, took a spontaneous road trip across southern Brazil and decided to fast travel for 4 months instead. Then I decided I was travelling too fast and started staying a week or longer.
You can be super flexible. That’s part of the adventure and benefit of solo travel. If you like a place, see if it’s viable to stay longer. If you don’t, go home early. I got to one country (won’t say which one) and hated my first day so much I immediately booked an earlier flight out.
Here’s my ultimate checklist for everything you need to do prior to a trip this long.
- Have a general idea of which continents and countries you are visiting, with the first month travel and accommodation booked. I kept everything in a spreadsheet, including flights, confirmations, which cities I would be in, and what I wanted to do.
- See your PCP. Get vaccinated, get Malarone or whatever you need to not catch a life-changing illness.
- Post-trip finance. Are you in a field where it will be easy to get a job afterwards? Are you working remote? Can you take an unpaid leave of absence?
- Cancel monthly subscriptions, lease, insurance, and anything else you won’t be using. Sell stuff or move it into a storage unit. You can also rent a cheap parking spot and keep your stuff in a car if you don’t have a lot.
- Do you have a backup plan for emergencies, including what happens if you lose your phone, your credit card, or passport? I HIGHLY recommend keeping a spare card, digital cards (Wise or Revolut), multiple photocopies of your documents (this has saved my ass more than once) and routinely backing up your phone to other devices. I brought a spare phone with me that was also capable of accessing my passwords and automatically backing up images.
- Do you have an easy way to access your funds from overseas? There’s plans that won’t charge you fees for foreign ATMs.
- Think about how much stuff you’re taking. If I could redo my trip, I would absolutely have cut out the carry-on, reduced how many gadgets I had, and simplified my wardrobe. Dead weight adds up fast and “I need that just in case” syndrome is real. It also saves you a lot on budget flights. Most stuff you truly need you can get in the countries you’re going to. Maybe don’t take laptop and two backup batteries if you don’t really need it (yes, that was me).
- Phone plan: Lots of providers have international plans. I would recommend this if you don’t burn through data like a madman. Local physical SIMs are cheap, but it’s often not worth the hassle if your international plan is reasonable. E-SIMs like Airalo can be fantastic backups. I had to use them in a couple countries where my provider wasn’t working correctly.
- DOUBLE AND TRIPLE REVIEW VISAS. Requirements change all the time and I almost missed a visa for a country I already had planned, which could have required rerouting the whole trip. Check a month in advance even if the country was ok last time you checked. Your state department website should tell you what the visa requirements are. This is an expensive mistake to make. DAC (Digital Arrival Cards) do not need to be filled out before arrival. Your passport already grants you access and this is simply a procedure to get information needed at immigration.
- Know the general state of the countries you’re going to. STEP program and state department is good for this if you’re an American, as well as just occasionally reading the news. Hopefully you’re not putting “Iran” in your plan for fun with zero knowledge of the current political climate.
- Lastly, before arrival, know how to get around. Wikivoyage or Wikitravel were pretty handy for me; I would just read the article for whatever country I was going to in the airport lobby before my next flight.
Tightwad Travelling 
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