How I Traveled the World for a Year With $15,000

June 25, 2020 | Sarah Funky

Many people think that in order to travel you need to have a lot of money. This thought is simply not true. I was able to travel the world for an entire year with my savings of $15,000 (while making about $8,000 doing odd jobs along the way). This is an average of about $2,000 per month for a year but I believe that it could be done even cheaper.

The main point is that there is a difference between vacationing and traveling. Vacationing generally involves going out to nice restaurants, staying in beautiful hotels, and doing all types of excursions every day. Traveling can include some of those things but not every day. When you are a traveler you immerse yourself in the local culture, eat food from the grocery store, live in a local Airbnb or hostel, and take public transportation.

If you are planning a similar trip and want help planning the finances of this, enter your name and email above and I’ll send you the excel document that I used to track our expenses. In it you’ll see all of our expenses for the year including; flights, rent, groceries, entertainment, transportation, visa costs, cell phone bills, restaurants, bars, cafes, miscellaneous costs, and weekend trips.

WHERE DID WE LIVE EACH MONTH?

As we traveled the world, we decided to live in a different country each month. This helped to reduce costs because flights and transportation were 22% of the expenses that year. We normally stayed in airbnb’s because when you book an Airbnb for 28 days or more there is a 30% discount. To save $35 on your first Airbnb booking, use our link here.

SAVE $35 ON AIRBNB

In each place we lived, I made travel guides to those destinations. If you are planning on visiting those countries too, then click on the country name below to get more information.

HOW DO YOU PACK FOR A TRIP AROUND THE WORLD?

Packing can be confusing when your traveling for a year. My biggest piece of advice is select countries that are warm when you are visiting. We started our trip in January 2017 and went to South America first (where it was summer) then once Spring was hitting in Europe we moved there, by October we had moved to Southeast Asia where it was still warm. Warm weather makes packing easier because clothes take up less room. To see my full packing guide click here.

SEE MY YEAR LONG PACKING GUIDE