money money

Hi,

Am planning to go travelling for six months next year - TOKYO, THAILAND, OZ, NEW ZEALAND, NY, BRAZIL - How much money would I roughly need???? dont know if id need 3 grand or 6!!!

any advice would be great, cheers

Well, my three month trip (Thailand, Australia, USA) is costing about £6k in total.

You will have to sit down and work it out I'm afraid. There is an internet tool somewhere that will give you a very rough idea, but I can't remember the website (hopefully someone else will know the one I mean). To do it yourself, just sit down with a pile of guidebooks and a computer. Work out the approximate cost of your flight, other travel, any tours or special activities. The guidebooks should give you an indication of a daily budget including food and accomodation, then you can multiply the estimated daily budget by the number of days in each country, add this to the other costs and you have a rough budget.

Get a hold of Rough Guide to First Time Round the World - it is a good starting point to planning this kind of trip.

Your trip will not be three grand, and considering I'm going to comparably costed locations for half the amount of time you are and it is costing £6k, I suspect yours will be more than that.

Tokyo, Australia, New Zealand and the US are all expensive destinations. Also you are travelling around quite a bit which will increase the cost. I'm sure £6k for 6 months is more than possible, but I suspect it might not be for your destinations. Obviously you know what you want to do on your trip, and where you definitely want to go, so play around with your itinerary. Say if you skipped Tokyo and spent more time exploring SE Asia your budget would go further. Which countries are your must-sees, and which can you save for another trip?

Maybe leave Japan? Tokyo is a very expensive city. Otherwise as #1 says you need to plan very well & when you are travelling to keep a careful check on how fast you are spending. If you don't keep such a check, spending can easily go into freefall.

Rule of thumb is to give yourself a weekly budget for the different places you'll be & if you go above it one week, to try & claw back the excess the next or budget for such happenings from a reserve that you are happy to whittle down every now & again (as opposed to the emergency reserve with is for just that).

Budgeting carefully you might just get by on the 6k & an emergency reserve fund at home (credit card (remember to warn your bank where you are going first) or mummy & daddy usually fit the bill - don't forget to warn them in advance) for emergencies

savingfortravel.com will give you the least amount you should budget for. Start there.

But I'm thinking 6 grand (I'm assuming that's £s) should cover it.

Search the Thailand branch for budget-related threads, they come up a lot. Perhaps by doing the same on relevant branches for the other countries, and adding them together, you will come up with the answer. You will need to bear in mind your lifestyle, and the type of travelling experience you are looking for.

It is easy to assume that Thailand is a cheap destination, which it can be, but you can also easily spend much more than you realise in the mistaken belief that you don't need to watch what you are spending. This is particularly true if you spend time partying it up on the islands in the south of the country - it's quite possible to spend 50 pounds or more per day there.

The same goes for NZ where I live ... you will need to watch your spending, as nights out in bars and various adventure activities can all add up to a very expensive holiday.