WHO KNOWS how much money you’re going to spend while traveling until you’re actually out there spending it! For us, we knew we wanted to be backpackers, stay at hostels, and eat cheaply, but we also knew we didn’t want to miss out on those epic moments like attending a big-time soccer game, swimming with pink Amazon dolphins, and scuba diving with sea turtles. And we knew some of these grand adventures would come with a heavy price tag. Therefore, we split our cost estimate into two sections:

• Daily Living – how much it would cost for typical travel expenses including accommodation, food, and relatively small tourist expenses like museums, buses, alcohol, laundry, etc.

• Extra Adventures – how much it would cost for the big-ticket items we hoped we could do such as hiking the Inca Trail and a cruise to Antarctica.

We assumed most accommodation to be a private room in hostels with a shared bathroom, however we also wanted to couch surf, rent an apartment (in Argentina), WWOOF, and stay in hostel dorms. We expected to eat out at restaurants as well as cook meals when we could. These daily prices reflect low to moderate backpacker type travel, however, are in no way the cheapest way to go. In the end, we ball-parked the numbers and rounded up to give us some wiggle room.

The table below shows our estimated costs for the year; about half of the $30,000 per person comes from extra activities. Our point being, it’s much cheaper to do the most important part of all: travel. And it’s even cheaper when you consider programs like WWOOF, Work Away, and Couch Surfing.