How to pay a world trip?
You probably have seen it in your time line: a family that travels the world. Some for half a year, others for a year or even half their lives. We always think: how do they do that? You never get a real answer or it’s an answer that doesn’t help you at all: “No, we don’t spend anything from our savings but have $ 54 million in the bank” (with a 0.5% interest that soon will be 270 thousand dollar per year …), according to the Snapchat founder. Well ….
Money has been the reason that we doubted to do this, for a long time. When we come back, after a year, we don’t have a job AND no money (in the worst case). 🙂
Our original plan was to request a travel and work visa. The idea was to pick apples (for example) when needed. Just to earn some money and then travel on. In fact, we planned our entire trip in our minds until I started looking for visa options. That was such a disappointment! The travel and work visa are only for people up to 30 years and in some cases up to 35 years …
By that time we were mentally so ready to do this that we decided to make a financial overview with all of our savings and expenses. We also made a list with expenses we have at this moment but that we can pause during our trip (there will be someone living in our house and except our health insurance, a very cheap telephone subscription and all expenses for my company, we will stop everything). Besides that, we took a look at all the options to travel low budget.
Traveling low budget
What will we do to keep all expenses at a minimum during our 1 year world trip?
– House sits
Via Trusted House sits (except in the US, because officially you can’t do any voluntary work in there) we hope to do a few house sits. This is free in exchange of “watching” property and taking care of pets (if they are there). You pay $ 85 annually for a subscription, so if we can do 1 house sit, we are already happy. It’s a great way to safe money and you can do this all over the world!
If you would like to subscribe too, then use this link. You will receive a 20% discount and we will get 2 months subscription extra for free!
– Local hosts
Last month we posted our movie with a call for hosts! We received so many nice, sweet and awesome comment. Thank you so much!
We could still use some hosts, so if you have room for us, we would love to meet you! The only thing we need is a (queen size) matrass/bed and we will sleep there with the 3 of us. In exchange I’ll do a photo session! Do you live in the U.S.*, Canada, New-Zealand or Asia and would you like to meet us? Then please let us know and send an email to: marry@fermontfotografie.nl
* Washington state, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine.
– Sponsors
We still need some stuff for our trip. Instead of buying it, we did several sponsor requests (in exchange of promotion) to save some money. We can also write reviews for accommodation in exchange of (a) free night(s).
Do you have a B&B or hotel in Canada, U.S.A. or New Zealand? Then it would be great if we can stop by to write a complete review including professional photos and/or a movie 🙂
– Visting friends
A long, long time ago (1996-1997) I lived in West-Virgina for a year as an exchange student. I went back in 1998 to see my boyfriend at that time, but I never went back after. So now it is the time! I’ll visit all of my friends and my first love in that time haha 🙂 When we are in West-Virginia we can also stay with friends. So happy!
– Budget
Beside saving money we have to make sure we don’t spend to much. We have a budget of 50 euro’s a day for accommodation and food and € 15,- for activities each day. This is excluding gasoline and the money we will spend on buying a car. If we have an host or we can do an housesit then this will safe us € 25,- which we can spend on something else 🙂
Transportation
– Flight tickets
We always book our flight tickets ourselves. Normally this is cheaper and this way you are flexibel. This time we immediately encountered a problem: a single flight to Canada is 3 times as expensive than a round trip (really!). The flights we found to Canada and New Zealand were € 1,300.- together per person (a little less for Liv). So we checked out the options for a world ticket. With a world ticket you literally fly around the world. You can only fly in one direction (so either east or west) and you can choose how many stops you make (the more stops, the more expensive).
Our ticket is as followed: Amsterdam-Vancouver-Auckland and then Christchurch-Singapore-Amsterdam. In total we paid € 4,865.- euro for the three of us. If we would like to change the dates of the tickets that would be €75,- per person every time we would do that.
This was the first big chunk from our savings, but definitely cheaper than booking single tickets! In Asia we are free to go where we’d like. We could fly with AirAsia (a budget airline in Asia). By that time we can see how much money there is left and what we will do. Otherwise we have little to peck at in Singapore :p
– To rent or to buy a car
Longterm car renting in Canada or the U.S. is quit expensive. We calculated the costs and it’s cheaper to buy a car ourselves. Of course, including an insurance and this is also the hardest and most expensive part, but still we will pay less then renting a car. In the U.S. it is impossible to buy a car and to insure it as a tourist, so that is the reason we are starting in Canada. Now we just need to pray that it will keep driving, so we can also sell it at the end of our trip in Northern America.
Making money
If you are younger than 30 (or in some cases 35) you can apply for a travel and work visa for all of these countries. With different jobs you can pay for your trip, while doing it! Too bad for us that we are too old to apply for this visa so we cannot work. That means I can’t offer paid photo sessions either unfortunately.
We hope to make a little money along the way by using affiliate links, maybe for an extra cup of coffee along the way. It won’t be a fortune, but you have to start somewhere right? 🙂 If you like to know what affiliate links are you can click here.
Complete budget
All considered, we hope to do the whole trip with € 35.000 euro (this is already minus the flight tickets. We’ll see if we will make it! And if we don’t? Then we have to come back within a year….