how to travel and budget

How much do you budget for your entire trip?  jafatravel.com will consider how to travel and budget if you are travelling on the backpacker level with a budget traveller mentality.

Your budget is a key consideration to decide where you are going to travel and for how long.  It also determines the experiences you will have and the level of comfort that you will experience along the way. 

Money can be saved by staying in hostel style accommodation and getting around by public transport where possible. Even though you are a backpacker travelling on a tight budget, there will be times where you will splurge. In considering how to travel and budget, jafatravel.com will still take this into account. There will be times where you'll feel you will just have to do spend more than you're willing to in order to get the most out of the experience. These occassions are usually ones which you will regret not spending the money when you had the chance.

When deciding how to travel and budget, jafatravel.com recommends differentiating between costs that arise before you actually start travelling and those when you are on your travels. These will be dependent upon how much you wish to spend in total.

These include flights, travel insurance, visas, your backpack, clothes, camera and other things that you will need to buy before you leave.  These items are largely fixed and there is little room to move on these.  Flights are the only part which are largely flexible and where the most savings can be made. A way to reduce these costs is by possibly finding some cheap international flights.

The last resort may be to change destinations if the flights eat too much into your budget. There may not be any point going to your dream destination if you won't have any money to enjoy it.

This category of costs includes everything that you'll spend once you land at your first destination.  This includes accommodation, food, transport, activities, sightseeing and drinking money – basically anything you spend after you take your first flight.

Your daily budget once you arrive at your first destination should be around 5-6 times of the cost of one nights accommodation.  For example, if a night's accommodation is US $10, then you should budget US $50-$60 per day. You'll appreciate that exact dollar figures cannot be given because your budget will depend upon where you are travelling to.  Probably the biggest factor which blows your budget is the amount of times you head out drinking at night and how much you actually drink! 

The estimate of 5-6 times of one night's accommodation provides enough scope for you to spend money and do what you want to do. Of course, you can travel for cheaper than this, but this is up to you. This method of budgeting assumes that you will be travelling on the backpacker level. You won't be spending lots of money on taxis and quality meals each day, only every now and then.

Total costs

Adding together the two categories will obviously give you your total budget. If it is far higher than what you expect, then choose a cheaper destination which will reduce your costs when travelling or find those cheap international flights to reduce the costs before your travel.