What’s stopping you from going on that big trip?

Seriously, what is stopping you? Money? Time? A travel partner? Planning, or lack there of?

Let me tell you that (most of) those obstacles are easy to over come.  Let’s look at your travel partners first.

There are groups out there that match up people who want to travel to most any destination. Traveling with a total stranger may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is out there. For those who might not want to travel with a group of strangers, perhaps you can look closer to home. Perhaps there is a friend or group of friends who might want to share your adventure. And when you talk about it, tell them just how cheap it is going to be.

So, is time what is holding you back? Perhaps, but let’s talk money first (and in doing so, you will see how easy planning this trip is). Let us look at the expenses of a week long trip.

We group expenses into the following buckets:

1. Airfare: Round trip
2. Hotel
3. Ground Transportation
4. Food
5. Tour expenses
6. Souvenirs

Now if you use a travel agent, they may group some of these together. We have good friends who are agents and some people need that service and there is nothing wrong with that.

For this example, let’s look at Laguardia/LGA  (New York) to Italy (Rome-ROM) round trip. Go to any travel site like Travelocity.com, Expedia, or whatever. You are not buying seats, just getting prices (though it would be good to note the best airline/price). We usually check 3-5 weeks out. You need to decide whether your trip/vacation will include travel time. For example, we tend to want a week (or more) in a location. We tend to tack on a day or two in travel time. We’ve found though that if you looked to stay a minimum of 7 days, the prices do not vary much. For our trip, we found a round trip ticket for $1200.

For the hotel/lodging, I picked one hotel for 7 days in Rome (downtown/central). Again, you are not booking anything, you are getting prices. I found a decent/standard double room for $260 per night or $1820. You could go alone, but this is one place where a single vs a double is not saving you money.

Next is food. We tend to use at the 10/15/25 rule per day. That is breakfast, lunch, and dinner, making it $50 per day.  So, for the 7 day (9 day since you have to eat) trip the total would be $950.

Tour expenses are a bit more of an estimate. As a rule of thumb, tour expenses include museum admissions, tours, excursions and the like. Average costs at around $75 per day for us. Of course, we like to freestyle some too and some museums and such are free. So for the seven days,  the total will be $675.

Finally, there is souvenirs. This is completely up to you, but there has been times when at a shop or museum, you see something you have to have. Let’s put in $400 for that. You may spend more, you might spend less.

So I’ve thrown out many numbers, let’s look at the total: $5045. Looks pretty big, but it’s going to get bigger. We always add an inflation factor of 10%, so now that total is $5,549.50.

“Wow! That is a lot of money and you promised only dollars a day! You lied!”

No, no I did not lie. I said you can travel for dollars a day and I was right. So let’s say you are traveling not in 21 days, but one year. So, take that total and divide it by 365 and if you start right now, it would cost you just $15.20 per day.

Granted, that is $106.40 or so for week. Maybe you don’t trust yourself to not eat out for lunch or dinner, or to cut some extra coupons. What if instead of going next year, you go in two years, I mean, the math is pretty simple, it would only be $7.60 per day.

To help you, I’ve developed this calculator.

Think about this. If you plan all this out, you could go to your friends or family and tell them how you are excited to go, and you tell them how much it is going to cost you per day, they may want to go too. You might be able to reduce your costs (sharing a room, sharing rides, group tours, etc). 

The other good news is that when it is time to buy your tickets and make your hotel reservations, you have cash. Of course, you can use your credit card and continue to earn some interest on your money. You could even use your credit cards on the trip too, knowing you have money to pay off the balance. Plus, if the costs do not go up that 10% you have even more money in your pocket to spend (or a down payment on your next trip).