How to calculate expected cost?
 

Hi,

How do you guys (and girls) work out how much your forthcoming adventure will cost?

Some of the things are fairly simple to work out like cost of -

Visas
Fuel
Vehicle


But for things like maintenance on the road, accommodation, fines (inc special gifts for policemen etc), food/drinks.

I'm looking to do a 60 day drive from Dubai to Mongolia and back, so not much time to spend sight seeing, pretty much everyday will be driving. Or maybe it is possible to sell my vehicle in Mongolia and fly back, haven't thought of that until this moment.

I'm trying to write down all my costs in a spreadsheet so I can work out how much I need to buy before I leave and how much I should have available to me during the trip.

Do you have any advice of how to plan or a general figure for central Asian countries like does 50USD get you somewhere to sleep and a couple of meals per day or not.

:smiliex:

Got to admit that any overland travel I have done I just take as much money as I have.....I either spend it or I don't. You can get a rough idea of costs like visas and maybe fuel, but for me that's too much planning and in my personal opinion it takes the fun out of it....then again I maybe too laid back for some.

Most of my time goes into vehicle preperation...that's what floats my boat. I find reading other blogs of great interest and have saved posts on this site from people like Fabian who is travelling down the west coast of Africa and includes great visa info...this I will look at when I need it.

Sorry...I've not been much help...:oops2:

I think when I've gone overseas I've sometimes used backpacker guides such as Lonely Planet or Let's Go to get a very, very rough idea of what daily costs for rooms and food will be.

Usually you can google info about things such as fuel costs, visa and other paperwork costs, etc.

And of course there are various traveller forums, motorcycling or otherwise.

I usually do a rough calculation, then I multiply with 2 and that usally does the trick. Be sure to have something on a available savings account as well....:innocent:

Multiply times 2?
Ouch...

I worked out 150USD per day inc fuel should be fine, so 9,000USD over the 2 month journey. I won't be able to have the extra money.

20,000km - 60 days - sleeping in hotel/hostel/motel 80% of the time, only camping in Mongolia.

What do you think realistically I should have available cash?

Out of curiosity (not ready to go on a big trip yet), last year I created spreadsheet that vaguely calculated a big trip & then asked a similar question on another forum. I was a bit shocked that £150 per day was the average response! I expected a lot less. So your $150 may be about right. However, it does depend on the type of bike you take & your own personal preferences of eating / drinking / sleeping etc.
Remember to set aside a lump sum for emergencies too.

i would love to know what the hell people are doing to spend $150 a day. i have done a few big trips and by the end of the trip i am at about 30 pound a day averaged out inc things like tyres oil changes ect

$150?? Are these people staying in the Hotel Ritz every night?

I revisited my old thread & found this stuff which may be useful to you:
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...rtw-trip-73070

World prices, compare holiday prices, cost of living | MyTravelCost.com

http://www.rac.co.uk/RAC/files/b9/b9...85292283a2.pdf

and these comments from others:
"Chris Scott gives some budget info in the Adventure Motorcycling Handbook: £3500 to cross Africa, Europe to India for £2500, rtw budget £10,000. He qualifies this by saying you could spend more, could spend less."

"Cost me about £8k for Sydney to London, that included bike, carnet, shipping Darwin to East Timor, air freight over Burma, and a week through China. Budgeted £10 a day on the road. Nine months on the road."

"I think we spent about £4000 before we left the Uk on insurance ' visa's and all our Jabs and servicing my bike to make it RTW ready."

"£500 per week will take care of virtually most things you will ever encounter as you cross the world... it depends on shipping costs and a whole load of other factors, that's why nobody can accurately predict somebody else's costs."

Hi there, Phoenix. Just wondering how long your trip took?

I too have seen figures banded about such as £10-14,000 per year.

There are just too many variables....drink water or beer?? (although I have been places where beer is cheaper than water) cook or eat out?? Hotel or tent?? Drive fast use more fuel , drive slow save fuel etc etc. I like the idea of coming up with a figure and doubling it..:thumbup1:

Some days I eat cold beans from a can and other days I have a slap up meal with beers...it all depends where I am and who I'm with....just have fun doing it...as the old cliche says...it's about the journey, not the destination. So, if your out of money get inventive or turn around and head for home. Next time you will get there with the info you have found out about yourself and the way you travel.

What trip?
Regarding my above posts, at the time, I was adding up an idea to see how long money would stretch for. My trip involves going and not coming back :mchappy:

Well, it is a 4x4 not a bike, so fuel will be a lot more.
I don't especially want to camp unless is it remote and scenic, I don't mind to stay in crap hotels or guest houses. Not especially bothered about drinking and I'd mostly like to eat in small restaurants.

I did forget to mention that there will be two of us which pushes up the cost.

Thanks for the replies everyone, very helpful and interesting.

I think when you see how bad a bad motel can be you may change your perspective on not wanting to camp unless it is 'scenic'.

If your not going to camp, and don't want to sleep in crowded, noisy and often unfindable/non-existent hotels, you may factor in some serious accomodation money!!

Generally the less developed and poorer a country is the more expensive the'nice' hotels are, many years ago in Poland I was quoted 150USD a night for some kind of a travel lodge type affair in Krakow (I mean in the mid 90's), at a time when about 10USD was a lot of money.

This is because they base their prices upon what 3 categories of people will pay
(1) NGO's (famously lavish with your charitable donations)
(2) People on business accounts (again money no object)
(3) The political/mafia elite of whatever country you are in.

If there are virtually no tourists, prices are not based on value because there is no competition from all the other hotels on the strip.

Even today in Europe in places like Podgorica in Montenegro (the capital) that are not tourist destinations there basically are flop houses and high rate business hotels. Pristina (Kosovo) is another good example because it still is chock full of NGO parasites 'helping' people.

150$ a day is maddness,id get by easily on 50$ a day

totally depends on how much your willing to rough it out:thumbup1:

$50? That depends on the k's you're doing, doesn't it? That's easily worked out. But on average 50 seems tight on the face of it. Sounds like greasy burgers meals and bread and biscuits for breaky and lunch to me.

To the OP. Be careful accepting advice on costs as truths. I've taken prices of staying overnight on face value before, but it worked out much more. I like to rough camp myself, but sometimes it's difficult or you get called in by the shower. My suggestion is to look at web searches for fleabag place prices on the web, check the date and don't pick the average, but the conservative third. Cabins and camp grounds are good too. For us it's all about a shower and a quick undy wash. Or beers....

Daily consumables, both for man and machine, are easily identified and costed. The incidentals are the trick. That's what contingencies are for.

If you're tenting and cooking your own meals, fuel will be your largest expense. On the other hand, if you want to stay in pricier hotels and take all your meals in restaurants, well, there goes your budget. Of course, all this depends a lot on where you are riding. For example, India is a lot cheaper than western Europe...

50$ per day ! That make sense while you are on road

Hi,

Calculate the Visa costs, the petrol depending on how fare your going to ride, a few euros for food every day and the flights. Then double this costs just to be shure and be happy if you only used a quarter of it, when your back home again. There is no need to use hotels once you own a tent (there are no hotels in Congo anyway) so riding around africa for two years is possible for as little as 5000 Euro. This is less then 10 Dollars per day:

http://afrikamotorrad.de/?report=en_transafrika

I did not need more for Southamerica and Southeast Asia as well:

http://motorradtouren-suedamerika.de...en_suedamerika
http://schoene-motorradreisen.de/?re...ailand_bangkok

Its a myth that you need to win the lottery to be able to travel. Life on third world countrys can be cheaper then to stay at home. Only if your in a hurry and have to travel 1000 km per day as if the police is chacing you, you might need more for petrol.
Tobi

Didn't need more in South America? No in Argentina or Chile? What were you eating and where were you showering? I guess you could couch surf too.
Shipping to SA is extortionate. And Arg and Ch are first world prices.

Don't forget the beer prices neither ;-)

True shiping bikes allways makes trips more expensive thats why i prefere to buy or rent bikes at the continents i want to explore. Drinking alcohol is bad for your health :rofl:

Here i just found a great page wich describes how to deal with money: Meet Mr. Money Mustache :thumbup1:

It's simple. Stop buying shit. Or you could say, give up certain creature comforts as well. Half full or half empty. It's all down to you. bier

Hi James:

Sounds like you are planning to do the trip in a vehicle (something that has 4 wheels). My experience is with motorcycles, hence I can't give you any advice about fuel and vehicle maintenance costs.

I budget €100 a day for everything except fuel, tolls, and motorcycle maintenance (I get the maintenance done before I leave on a trip... I don't like having to do any maintenance when on the road).

I stay in hotels (typically 3 star), and I don't drink alcohol. €100 a day is sometimes too much, for example, at the moment I am in Skopje, Macedonia, staying in a first-class hotel that costs €58 a night. Food might be another €15 a day. But, in Western Europe, sometimes the hotels cost €80 a night or more, and food more than €20 a day. All in all, though €100 a day seems to average out OK month after month.

It should be fairly easy for you to budget fuel and vehicle maintenance costs (tires, oil changes, etc.) before you leave... you know what kind of mileage your vehicle gets, and it is easy enough to determine fuel prices in each country via Google. You can also get a rough idea of nightly accommodation costs by looking at TripAdvisor. Be careful, though, not to underestimate accommodation costs. The lower range of hotels and guest houses might only cost €30 or €40 a night, but if you find that the place has bedbugs, and neighborhood security is such that your vehicle might be sitting on concrete blocks the next morning, you're not going to be staying there.

Also, don't forget that you will need to set aside a contingency fund in case you have any mechanical breakdowns along the way.

Michael

Thanks for the great replies everyone.

Yes indeed it is a four wheel drive vehicle. I'm not sure how bad I'm expecting bad hotels to be, I stayed in some pretty rough places in Romania before but nothing I would say was worse than camping. I might even work out a way of removing the rear seats of the 4x4 and putting a bed in there somehow but how much time do I want to spend in that car.

The accommodation costs could easily spiral out of control I think, I'm going through the old Russian states and then into Russia, and then Mongolia. It seems to be that the cheap hotels really are quite cheap and the not so cheap hotels really are not so cheap at all. Seems to be no middle ground, I'm thinking to budget big time for accommodation and hope that when I make it home I've got some left over money that I can put into another adventure.

Really appreciate your views and thoughts, thanks to everyone to replied.