Travel Tips: Budget Your Trip

Betsy & Warren Talbot shared with us the secrets of how they saved money for their career break travels. But how do you stay on track with the trip budget you planned for?

During their 10 months of travel, Laurie and Bryan Tighe traveled through West Africa, the Middle East, India and Nepal. Along the way they were meticulous in keeping to their budget. And with their computer programming skills, they were able to develop an online calculator to keep track of their money and budget. And now they are sharing that with others with Budget Your Trip.

Budget Your Trip is designed to help travelers track their spending and expenses. After registering you can create a trip and enter your daily expenses. The website creates charts and tables that break down costs by category and location. The layout lets you find out if you’re spending more than anticipated on transportation or which country ate away more of your budget.

Furthermore, the website’s budget calculator allows users to estimate the cost of future trips. The budgets provided by other travelers are used to determine the average cost of countries, cities, and categories a traveler might visit. Visitors to the site can search for the average daily costs of accommodation, food, and numerous other categories for cities and countries around the world.

Budget Your Trip also offers a “Travel Cost Calculator Widget” so travelers can search for travel costs directly on your website.

Be sure to check out Budget Your Trip for future trips. And if you have budgets from previous trips, be sure to enter them and help out your fellow travelers!

Travel Tips: Road Experience

There comes a point in long-term travel where you have gained your backpacker-legs and have the confidence to help others you encounter on the road, or those preparing. Our three career break couples are at that point in their journeys and share some tips they’ve gained after six-months on the road, as well as what’s next for them.

Two Backpackers (currently in Peru)
One week into our trip we arrived at Panajachel, Guatemala. When our bus stopped, 5 men were already pulling our backpacks off the roof rack and taking them to their own taxis or boats. We asked where a hostel was that we had reserved. The first man assured us that it was across Lake Atitlan, a 1hr boat ride away. We retained our bags and walked away, nervous about the situation. We found a tour shop and asked again. They told us it was a 10 minute walk up the street.

Lesson learned: Whenever you arrive at a transportation station make sure you don’t say yes to anything being offered. Get a hold of your bags and escape the chaos of offerings by finding a place you can sit down and think about your next decisions. Early in the trip we found ourselves being rushed into a bus or taxi with no clue where we were really going.

What’s Next:
Our plans have changed drastically during the last month. We have realized that traveling fast is not what we enjoy. It’s no longer a race to literally travel around the world, but rather to enjoy our visits to different countries throughout Latin America. Latin America is a vast area to explore and most countries have their own unique culture which we would like to experience. So Southeast Asia is off the list of destinations for this trip. I am sure we will get there some day. I am most excited about trekking through Torres del Paine in Patagonia and Aracely is looking forward to visiting the Amazonian Jungle.

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Favorite Tips: Updating Your Resume Before Your Travels

Now that you’ve made the decision to take career break and travel I, bet you have an extensive Excel sheet with all the items you need to pack and do before you go away.

• Do a test pack of backpack to make sure it’s not too heavy – Check
• Make extra copies of visas and passport – Check
• Create blog to stay in touch with family & friends – Check
• Update resume – wait, what?!?!?!?!

I know you just left your job and can’t wait to focus on your travels, but updating your resume before you leave is one of the best pre-trip activities you can do. In his post, “How My Career Break Helped My Career”, Michael Bontempi noted:

I developed a resume prior to leaving to ensure that my latest accomplishments were fresh in my mind.

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Itinerary Tips from The Blonde Wanderer

Even though Bill & Cindy Peterson have a great deal of combined travel experience, the idea of taking a year off from their careers still terrified them. Like most Americans, the difficult thing for them to get over was the “work hard, save for retirement” mentality.

Still they knew that if they didn’t take this opportunity now to travel the world, they would regret it down the road. And they found their corporate experience to be very beneficial in planning a year of backpacking the globe.

“We used our previous travel experience and our Corporate America budgeting and Excel skills to plan an overall budget. Our budget was broken down into maintenance costs (storage, cell phones, etc.); time for ‘re-entry’ (into the work world), and actual travel money. Our travel money allowance allowed us to establish a monthly travel budget and pick destinations and activities that we could afford.”

Bill & Cindy are now more than half way through their trip, and even managed to extend it from 12 to 14 months by stretching their travel budget even further. They took time off from the road to share with us their favorite tips on creating an itinerary that works best for you.

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Travel Tips from Hole in the Donut

Barbara Weibel of Hole in the Donut shared with us some of her favorite travel tips she utilized on her career break – and we want to pass them on to you!

BEING CULTURAL RESPECTFUL
It’s very important to understand the culture and etiquette of a country you are traveling to so that you can be respectful to the people you may encounter.

Travel guides are a great source for this information, but during her six-month trip, Barbara didn’t want to have to drag these heavy books with her. Instead, she visited sites like Wikipedia (type in “Culture of [insert country]”) and Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree Forum to find this information.

Then, she uploaded text files to her iPod for reference. When she was getting ready to enter a new country, she could easily read up on their customs and etiquette to avoid doing anything that might be offensive.

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