How to travel for less than 20 dollars a day

Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer. But still it costs money. A lot of money. If you decide to travel a longer time, it’s not an endless amount of money, especially if you work only six months a year. Such a hard life! Still you can do it like I do by spending your money consciously.

(The 20 dollars a day is the money you spend on daily basis and doesn’t take in account plane tickets, visa etc.)

The magic word : “DAYBUDGET”

The magic word is budget of the day, what I call it in my beautiful Dunglish “Daybudget” Take your total budget and divide it by the number of days. Easy peasy. Imagine that your budget of the day (DB) is 20 dollar. Every spending is a percentage of your budget of the day. Your hotel is 8 dollar? So it is 0.4DB. Of course you can also work with a DB that excludes your hotel costs to make it more easy. If you’re ready to spend money, wonder if you want to spend almost 50% of your DB on a glass of wine in a fancy bar.

The Golden Rule

I have a simple rule. The Golden Rule. And it goes like this

“Today I can spend money that I saved yesterday but it is forbidden to spend tomorrow’s money”

Imagine that your DB is 10 dollar. Then take a wallet in which you put every day a billet of 10 dollar. By following the Golden Rule, you can spend money that I didn’t spend yesterday or the days before but I simply don’t have the money budgeted for the day(s) after.

CHOOSE or SLICE

The first one is easy. You have to choose whether you take a smoothie or a nice cup of cappuccino. Taking both is not possible with the budget in mind. You can’t have it all baby!

The cheese slice method is a typical Dutch expression. It means that you take a little of everything to reduce costs. For example, choose the bar where your smoothie is 40 bath instead of 50 bath. (or take only two fruits instead of three). When taking a smoothie every day, you saved 10 x 30 = 300 bath! If you do this systematically, you can save huge amounts of money. Another example is using your maestro card to take money out of the ATM and pay everything with cash. When using Maestro you pay 1,1 % surcharge instead of the 4.4% taken by my VISA card. Thus you save systematically 3% of your spending. 20 x 300 x 3% = 18 dollar a month! (Tip: Always choose Without conversion! You save a lot of money by paying the rate of your own bank instead of the local bank.)

Calculating I do by using Excel or Google sheets. I note all my spending, along with the category. I have put an example worksheet here so you can use it too. By using some smart formula’s and a pivot table, everything is reported automatically.

In this way, I can see almost real time my spending, my average spending, on what I spend my money and see if I have to spend less in the coming days (normally not possible if you follow the Golden Rule) or if there is space to treat myself on a delicious mushroomburger at Goodsouls Kitchen.

Last important rule

Hard to believe after reading all this,but don’t get too obsessed. You also want have good times when going out with friends and/or treating your self sometimes. (compensate the money on other days) It’s easy to loose yourself in calculations if you are like me, but don’t forget to enjoy life!

Other tips

• Play with the variations in price. If I lunch cheap on a day, I can dinner more expensive. And vice versa. A cheap lunch was 1 dollar for a plate of rice and vegetables. My average price was 2,50 USD for diner without alcohol. But you can treat yourself as long as you save on other meals of the day.
• Keep in mind that small spending (a coffee, a smoothie, all “only” one dollar) add up enormously! Also alcohol is very expensive in Asia!
• As said above: When taking money from the ATM or paying with your credit card, always choose “without conversion”. This will save you a lot of money!