On Money

“Do you have a job?"
“Did your father get oil money?”
“Did you deal drugs?”
“Who’s paying for your trip?”

Inevitably, these questions come up in conversations, colored with various mixes of curiosity, disbelief, and the assumption that I am a trust-fund kid. People seem to struggle with the concept that yes, I am paying for the trip myself, and no, I am not independently wealthy, all money I've made has been legal, and I did not have particularly lucrative jobs for the last year and a half. I had did have a LOT of jobs, both in college and since I graduated, but that was not the secret.

Travel is not particularly more expensive than a new car, a wedding, a boat, or any other "luxury item" that people spend money on. It is not an unreachable goal for most of us in the Western World. It simply requires saving money. My secret to saving is so simple it can be explained in one sentence. 

I kept track of every single dime I’ve spent since Fall 2012.

Each month I did the math: How much I would earn that month, what my necessary expenses were (food, rent, car insurance), what my unnecessary expenses were (beer, eating out, beer, skiing, beer). I added it all and made sure the total was a smaller number than the amount of money I made. I set goals each month based on those totals. If I went over my budget, I picked up an extra shift, found another job, or pro-rated the expenses over multiple months. For example, if I had to spend $300 on groceries at Costco, I added and extra $100 to my grocery expense each month for 3 months, since that was the approximate amount of time the groceries would last. It's simple math, the kind even I can do, it just takes discipline to enter your expenses as they happen.

In the interest of full discolsure, I will admit to two additional advantage, besides my obsessive accounting. 

1) I have very little student debt, and my loan payments are incredibility low, meaning that unlike my peers I don’t need to shell out $600 every month to make my minimum loan payment. This I attribute to a combination of good fortune and hard work, including applying for nearly 100 scholarships, working as an RA, and taking the maximum number of classes each semester so I could finish in four years. However, I truly believe my system would have worked even if I’d had student debt, it would have just taken a bit longer (perhaps 2 years instead of 1) to save enough.

2) I avoided paying rent as much as possible. I spent nearly every summer with a job that included housing, and had my housing paid for when I was an Resident Assistant in college. Housing is generally the biggest expense in any budget, so finding that cheaply was key. This does mean a few sacrifices of privacy and space, but with a bit of creative thinking it is entirely possible.

That’s it. That’s the whole story. I worked a lot, had a bit of luck, and most importantly kept an account of every dime I spend, and still do.  

If you would like a copy of an the excel template I used, a breakdown of my expenses on the road, or other budgeting information, comment with your email below.

To find out what your dream trip would cost, check out: 

Budget Your Trip - for accurate estimates of expenses in many countries  

Kayak - for estimating flight costs. In Europe, also try RyanAir and EasyJet

Lonely Planet - cost estimates for budget, mid-range, and high-end travel 

On New Friends

Staying in hostels is like a perpetual first day of college. You tried to figure out who was cool and who wasn’t, but, if you were even a little bit social, you gave everyone an equal chance all the same. Everyone was a potential friend, and it was only after days or weeks or even school years that you learned who could be trusted and who was going to flunk out, flake, fuck off, or never be heard from again.

Traveling alone and staying in hostels is so much like that – figuring out who you can trust and who not to, but being open all the same. But the stakes seem so much lower. After all, if you make a mistake, say something stupid, you or he or she or they will be gone in the next night, or the one after that. You will never have to look that person, or group of people, in the eye in English 101 next semester. Your interactions in these places are fleeting and temporary and, often, follow a very similar pattern.

“Where you from?”

“How long you been here?”

“How long you traveling”

“Where to next?”

Names often come last, and only if the answers to the above are satisfying.

This isn’t to say the experiences aren’t valuable. There are interesting people, smart people, people whose lives you can’t even quite imagine, waiting to tell you their story. There is an open-minded and handsome young man from Dubai, who is excited at pathetic attempts to speak Arabic. There are Germans and Italians and French, all usually traveling in groups. There are the invariable shades of Aussie and English girls and boys, and one can’t help but fall a bit in love with their accents, in the same way they enjoys yours. There are one or two potential true friends, who leave too suddenly, and whose itinerates you wish you could match better. Just like in college, there are people with whom there is unexpected common ground. 

But mostly, when one is traveling alone there is only the road, that endless stretch of potential adventures. The question of what you are doing and why you are here has a million answers, but it only the answer that you can give yourself that matters. The ability to leave a place, and people, is a great freedom, but it comes with the cost of starting over at a new place, answering the same questions, and sussing out the same people again and again. It is the perpetual process of making new friends.