If you had...?

RebelGirrrl

I have about €30,000 in savings plus €10-11k every year from a rented house. With the rent money plus dipping into your savings every year (only as much as you had to) and had indefinite time how far you get and how long could go for?

darrenh

RebelGirrrl wrote: »

I have about €30,000 in savings plus €10-11k every year from a rented house. With the rent money plus dipping into your savings every year (only as much as you had to) and had indefinite time how far you get and how long could go for?

I would say 20,000 a year without working. You could do it for far less and for longer if you stay away from expensive countries.

RebelGirrrl

If you were to balance rich and poor countries could you go for a long time?

macca1983

RebelGirrrl wrote: »

If you were to balance rich and poor countries could you go for a long time?

Avoid the US and Western Europe and you could definitely go for a year on 20,000. Asia, Africa and South America would be best for budgeting, maybe Australia and NZ too.

Maybe do a bit of volunteering work somewhere for a month or two to stop the flow of money going out the door.

My main piece of advice would be is to avoid the US and Western Europe if you want to keep costs down.

I travelled for 6 weeks in the US recently and it cost me a fortune, and i certainly was not living like a king.

RebelGirrrl

Would 20,000 really be the minimum you need? I would have thought 15-16? I do mean the backpacker thing.

macca1983

RebelGirrrl wrote: »

Would 20,000 really be the minimum you need? I would have thought 15-16? I do mean the backpacker thing.

Can i take it you have not done much backpacking before (i don't mean that patronisingly, im just guessing this from your questions).

You could get away with 15/16 but that would really cut out the expensive countries i think.

If you are going to go for 12 full months, and if you are doing it on your own which tends to be more expensive (i know from experience), then at some stages you will simply have to splash out at various stages. Doing the tight arse backpacking thing is near impossible for 12 full months i think anyway.

If you spent the first 5 months in Asia for example doing shall we say India,Thailand,Laos,Cambodia,Vietnam then you could do that on 1,000 Euro a month - 5,000 Euro for the first 5 months. Say you moved on to Australia and NZ then costs will go up. It all depends on where you go really.

Great thing about starting in Asia is for the first few months there you will have your own room and still only spend 1,000 Euro a month. It eases you in shall we say. I don't think there is anywhere as cheap as the countries mentioned above really.

A lot of time and research needs to go into planning a 12 month trip. Have a back up plan in case you need to stop spending cash ie research where you could do volunteer work even for 4-6 weeks just to stop spending cash and also it mixes things up a bit.

kraggy

Backpacking could certainly be done for 15k. If you go to places like South East Asia (Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma, Cambodia etc) or India, South America (most parts), Africa, you could do it for even less if you were careful with your money. In some countries, you could live on 10k (e.g. India, Bolivia, Peru, Laos, Indonesia).

Definitely doable as long as you're happy sleeping in dorms, which incidentally are, in my opinion, good places to stay as you meet loads of people, maybe even life-long friends.

Just do it. You won't regret it. And no better time than now. Get away from the doom and gloom.