When most people think long term travel, they start thinking about all the two week vacations that they have had in their lifetime, and how expensive they were to do. But what most people fail to realise is that long term travel is nothing like a two week vacation, both in experience and in cost.
Its way better in every aspect in terms of experience and way reduced in costs also. It just does not work if you try to compare your two week vacation to long term travel. There are a lot of differences between long term travel and taking a two week vacation. For starters when you decide to travel long term you suddenly have a ton of different options available to you that people who take two week vacations just don’t have.
The reason for this is because the travel is long term.
Number 1 tip: You can practically get rid of almost all home based costs that people who take two week vacations will have to continue to pay while they are away from home.
The house that you live in, can be rented out or preferably sold. You can also terminate the lease if renting. Other maintenance costs such as utility bills, mortgage payments or rent are completely finished. You may even find that you are producing a profit, which will help to pay for some of the costs of your long term travel.
You will also not need your car while you are away, so its best if you sell it. If not then you can store it, or perhaps lease it while you are gone. If you decide that keeping the car is the best option then the payments for storage will be nothing compared to the reduction in insurance costs you will experience.
2. Long term travel means travelling at a much slower pace than when you would on a two week vacation.
A serious cost of long term travel is that of getting to your desired destination. If you can spread this cost over a period of a month or more you will find that the saving your make will be very significant. Buying round trip fares for shorter stays cost a lot less, but time is the real cash saver. An example can be, staying a month in India when paying up $500 for a round trip fare, you will be in essence paying 16.67 per day. If you pay twice that amount $500 each way for two one way tickets and you stay in the country for three months you are able to reduce the cost down to $11.11 cents. Stay for a period of six months and it becomes $5.56 a day.
The local transportation and tours add quite a bit to your daily expenses. But being a long term traveller, you are going to be taking buses, trains, rather then the taxis and the expensive tour buses.
As a long term traveller you also have the benefit of being able to stay much longer in the places that you love. The people who take two week vacations usually try to cram as much activity as possible into each and every day that they have. Long term travellers on the other hand have the luxury of spending the whole day doing one activity such as going to the museum, then the next day spend it casually sorting through the latest pictures, and lazily reading a book at the local coffee shop. Or if you like you can tour the local area, after which you can catch up with chores like washing up, cleaning, getting a haircut, and get you entries up to date in your journal. Or perhaps you would like to spend the day lying on the beach reading a book. The less you move in the day, the less you have to spend.
