Apart from the full time job, you're pretty much exactly the same as me...

I think you shouldn't wait as long though. Just budget better.

I'm heading to Canada on the working holiday visa to try and get started in the Oil Industry.

If you can't find high paying work where you are, move elsewhere and look for it.


£5000 sounds a fairly low amount to save in year. I'm currently managing to save £150 a week despatch riding in London, I might have to have pinched a little bit out of my savings by the time I'm finished (well alright, by the end of Jan when the double whammy of vat and tax are due at the same time :() but it's mostly a fairly credible savings regime, and could be a lot better if I hadn't got used to daily heavy drinking and living off fast food.

I think that's quite a lot..... Just under £500 a month.

Who really has that left over after you've been squeezed left, right and centre by the government, family, bills, prep costs etc.

Not me doh

I agree.

Ian Coates says
 

Just spent the weekend with Ian Coates who has just returned from a 14 year RTW trip. His budget was £10 a day or less.

Well practised in the art of fixing anything Ian went the odd way round simply helping farmers fix there gear, doing free work for bed and food, and on occasion getting paid in food, petrol or accomodation.

With a credit card for emergencies, he managed with his tent, and has done over 400,000 kms on his old Africa Twin.

Ask him yourself at facebook/iancoates

Oh did I mention he is 70 years old this year.

I can't find him on facebook with that name...


I think it's

https://www.facebook.com/ian.coates.923?fref=ts

I believe this to be one of the most vital threads thus far. Take my word for it, as I've been lurking for quite some time now. :innocent:

Anywho, as we started to set our departure plans in soft stone, we've also started to prep for it financially. Meaning: we started by clearing out decent items at yard/garage sales which were held at inopportune times by the sellers, and stashed the items in the garage, waiting for spring to have our own sale, in hopes to generate a small profit. Stash away profit, re-use operating capital, buy - sell. Rinse - repeat.
Caveat; our vehicles remain parked outside the garage throughout the winter.
Upside; it's personal sales. No sales tax, no 'profits' to speak of, and a nice supplemental chunk of change that goes in the pink pig.
Combine the above with going out less, eating out less, selling the low MPG truck, etc. Money doesn't come easy, and it certainly doesn't come fast, but it comes, and that's the entire idea of the "gameplan".

Not much input, but maybe something to consider for some of you.

M.

Well.... he made it !

None of us want to hitchhike, but I though this story of a Frenchman who travelled for five years, RTW, paying NOTHING for transport, hitchhiking on planes, boats and vehicles was inspiring. And you know he was invited into many homes for meals.

French hitchhiker Jeremy Marie travels 100,000 miles around the world without spending any money | Mail Online

I replied on this thread a long time ago, but find a lot of the responses really interesting in that we seem to put a high value on doing things cheaply/for free as opposed to what I consider more realistic. Granted, selling one's home and all posessions and just flying out of town full throttle is so sexy and legendary, I just find it so unrealistic for MOST people. I find it unrealistic for people with a sense of obligation to what is at "home," let alone those 90+% of us who dont' have the personality to just up and leave.

For me, I want the adventure, but I also want the home to come home to. You can say that is having your cake and eating it too, and it may well be. However, what I tell people any time I talk about travel is that you CAN have both but it is all about choices. I live in a smaller house than I can "afford" because I want to make sure I can pay the mortgage when I don't have income (am traveling). I don't buy a new car every few years, I don't own a flatscreen, I don't go out to the bar and drop $100 every friday night. For me, those are the major things which enable travel from the fiscal side.

I wrote before about how I do contract work as a financial analyst for a couple of years at a time and then plan something and go off for a few months (last trip lasted about 6 months). I come back with a beard fit for nesting birds, tens of thousands of pictures, and several lifetimes of experience.

I hope to travel more, and I also hope to have a (somewhat) stable life here in Richmond, VA. Have I found the perfect answer or some secret formula? ..no, far from it, but I have found what I THINK is a way to make my perfect mix of travel and home time work out.

In the end, I'm always saving, always working to make sure my debt is limited and that when I do get the itch...or I do come up with a plan, I can execute on it more quickly. ...and that I have some sort of fall back when I get home, utterly destroyed from an epic adventure and need to obtain an income stream within a few months.

In the future I hope to be able to generate income through investments that can sustain or help buffer more longer duration travel. Every penny I don't spend on something I don't need gets me that much closer to that goal.

I surprised myself at how little I was spending on my last European trip. I thought it was going to be equivalent to Australian prices but it ended up averaging at 30E a day.
10 on petrol, 10 on food (supermarket) and 10 on camp sites.

In Germany I met a lady at a youth hostel who put a sign up offering 10E haircuts to backpackers. She was busy all day and funded her next weeks travelling with a few hours work.

Note to self - learn to cut hair :thumbup1:

I'm driving around the Balkans in an old Volvo that cost 700 euros
I mostly cook my own food and camp, my expenses here are under 30 euros including fuel.
So 2000 euro for 2 months including car ferrys

Diesel currently 1.50-1.70 (!!) Italy
1.20 Montenegro
1.30 Bosnia
1.50 Serbia
I packed light so if the Volvo dies after a moment of silence for her I can pick up my gear and hitch!
But a mechanic in Serbia earns 400euro a month so I could pay for repairs, they can keep the oldest cars imaginable on the road and thought I must be a manager or doctor to buy the Volvo!
I have done some repairs but this could have been avoided if I had time to replace some simple stuff (old hoses) before I left but.

I'm a seasonal worker so its never a problem to get time off and I get to travel to some exciting places for work too (antarctica, NZ, australia, france, switzerland, italy, maybe greenland next I hope..)

My main motivation for the big trip was that I was in dire need......quite likely in dire medical need...... to wander off and chill out for a substantial amount of time. I was working in the middle east in a somewhat stressful environment and fortunately saw the warning signs that the job was starting to badly effect me.

So, I quit my job and a week later was back in the UK and browsing through The Hubb for inspiration, as to where I could effectively disappear for a while.

I had quite a substantial amount of money saved up.....this was not luck, but damn hard and somewhat risky work that funded those savings, it really does annoy me when people assume that you are lucky to have saved a good fighting fund in the bank.

Within a few weeks I had sourced the hire of a DR650 for eight months in Australia ( incredibly low rate, that I was indeed lucky to get )....Placed my own R100GS into a workshop back in the UK to get rebuilt and packed a travel bag with camping and off-roading gear....and got the Visa/medical/travel cheques/insurance etc for a year.

Two weeks to sort out a one year trip....yeah, I know its not some far flung, foreign speaking/culture but it does show you do not need massive amounts of planning.

When I was being good and focused I was spending very little a day...maybe £20 just mooching about, other days I would have to triple that in fuel costs for covering distance if the mood took me. Then I discovered my inner party animal again after many years of lying dormant and spent the rest of the trip effectively partying after a hard days/weeks riding with the backpackers etc......a little more expensive with the added beer tokens.

Got back to the UK, discovered there had been/was a recession on.....could not get a job in my particular trade....so decided to tour around Europe for another year.

Got back, after spending my allocated funds, and got a job that allows me to take a fair bit of time off unpaid to still go off on some shorter trips ( nine weeks off the other year )

Hi all, I joined HU 10 weeks ago and this in fact is my first ever reply here. This topic is so fascinating that I felt I had to post something myself. :)

Loved the Sterling Hayden's quote about voyage; it's really powerful for me as me and my wife are currently in a process of selling everything we have (we don't actually have that much, just things that accumulated over the years) and embarking on unknown voyage. We don't know how far we will get, or where we end up... but surely it will be an adventure.

After all, life is too short to waste a precious time.

I have just completed an 8 week trip around the Balkans. It was done in a Citroen 2cv not a bike, but the costs may give some idea of the amount of money needed. I spent £2000 in total including ferry , fuel , accommodation and food. More details here

Facts and Figures - bouncearoundthebalkans

I even managed a few beers and I ate out regularly although I stuck to cheaper places. In Western Europe picnic grub and fast food were the only affordable options. I covered a lot of miles in a relatively short time so extending the stay would not have resulted in a proportional increase in costs. If I had been really trying I am sure I could have trimmed a good 10% off my costs.