We celebrated our second New Year on the road, this time surrounded by the friendliness of the Thai people. It was great to be able to share a new cultural experience here in Asia with a group of new friends. We experienced the always interesting display of fireworks, which are let of by hand without regard for eardrums or power-lines. We escaped unharmed ready to kick-off 2012 full of enthusiasm for what lies ahead.
January also meant our first visa run. We headed out for the 4 hour ride to the Burmese border and hoped to spend a couple days enjoying the border town of Mae Sai. Unfortunately, we discovered once again that border towns around the world are meant not for stopping, but for passing through. As a result we chose to spend a couple days enjoying the countryside, away from connectivity and the city. It added just a bit to the monthly expenses, but was immensely helpful to take some time from the hard work we’re doing on our next book, Stripping Off Your Fear, which we’ll be launching March 15th.
As you will see from the numbers, January we got back on track with our expenses and came in $100 below our “Thailand budget” of $1,500/month. This number even includes all the expenses from our visa run as well as Betsy’s full physical, blood tests, and prescriptions ($110 for all). Thailand is a great place to reset and we’re taking advantage of our time here to get all our check-ups and ensure we are ready for the next leg of our trip (see big news below).
Let’s Get to the Numbers
- Total spending to date (for entire trip) through January 2012: $31,105
- Total spending for January 2012: $1,387
- Daily average for January 2012: $44.75
- Overall daily average (16 months on the road): $63.73
Expense Breakdown:
Ready to Travel Again
After 4 months here in Thailand, Betsy and I are getting itchy feet. While we absolutely love it here in Chiang Mai, we are ready for the next adventure and we have started to plan the next destination and it’s a big one. Starting in April we will be heading over land from Thailand to Finland. This journey will be over 10,000km and take us through Laos, Russia, China, Mongolia, Russia, and then into Helsinki. As you’ve come to expect from us we will take our time and expect to spend 4-5 months enjoying every moment of this journey. It will be fun as well to share with you all the expenses along the way so you can plan your own cross-Asia experience.
If you have specific questions about our expenses or the next leg of our journey, please let us know. Drop us an email or include them in the comments below.
Hi, why Finland? And why no stop in austrailia?
Hey Rachel, great question. Our actual plan was set in motion after reading a book series set in Mongolia and we both fell in love with the idea of visiting the country. We are planning the adventure around their Naadam Festival in July. Since that we the target we started to construct the trip around it and realized we could both experience one of our dreams which is to take the Trans-Siberian railway across Russia. Finally, we have met a great friend here in Thailand who is from Finland and we’d love to see his home.
While we really expected to head to Australia, we decided we were just to close to not head north into China and points beyond on a big adventure. But we’re not skipping Australia, merely delaying our first visit there for a bit. We will certainly be heading there.
Great to hear you came in under budget..that must feel awesome! Just curious..I know you have a set budget for a set number of years, do you also have savings back in the US? As someone in my mid-40s I’m always thinking retirement etc. lately, even though it is years off. How do you guys handle this and do you have any fallback if you become disabled (seems the older I get, the more I think about ‘what if’s’..). Also, is any income from your current work on the road (books etc.) added to your ‘travel budget’ or does it go back to the US for ‘after travel’? Thanks!
Hey Joanna, when we left we had 3 savings accounts – 1 for the trip, a second as a “re-entry” fund” which would cover us for a year upon our return to the US, and a retirement account. Now that we have decided to travel full time our plans are a bit more fluid, but we still have these 3 accounts, we’ll just reassign them for new uses.
Our re-entry fund is now our “Oh Shit” fund and will be used if things go pear shaped (i.e. disability). Our retirement account will continue to be this, but our retirement just looks vastly different today and will likely resemble our current life. We have no intention of moving back to the US so this money is likely to be spent elsewhere.
All our our income is spent on our lifestyle. In fact, since landing in Thailand all the money we spend here had to be covered by our business and it has certainly been so. Going forward the money we earn will go into our travel budget as well as back into the business to continue to grow. Overall I’d say our financial plans continue to evolve as we change our attitudes about this trip, but we remain committed to continuing to follow our dreams.
Hey Guys, Just checking in , like the post, and love the idea of going that direction, would like to hear how the visa routine goes for the China to Russia routine, as my RTW has me doing that but the other direction via train from Berlin to Moscow to Beijing, i was going to plan on staying in Germany as long as it takes to get the visa for both and leave on the train on the following tuesday after i get it…. enjoy the time guys…
Hi Fred,
We will certainly let you know how the process goes. We are heading to the Chinese Consulate in Chiang Mai next week to get our visas for the first leg of the adventure. The process seems rather straight forward, but we will see. I’ve heard it is more difficult as an American, but we’ll find out I guess.
As for Russia, this will be a more complicated process and require more planning I suspect. We will need to decide if we can get it in Beijing or wait until Ulaanbaatar. If nothing else, it is sure to be an adventure for us all!
Hey there! I just found out about you guys through a Meet, Plan and Go email and I’ve been reading your stories and posts in the your blog and this website, too. We’re a couple planning to start our “big trip” in a month so I’m super excited to find out about other couples experiences… I’m loving all the info!
You mentioned above that you have 3 savings accounts… do you have another article with more info on how you’re managing/handling the money? That’s next in our list: which credit cards should we cancel, which ones should we apply for, how many cards to take, separate or joint accounts, getting and carrying cash, being ready in case we get robbed, etc, etc…
Any info on this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for sharing your experiences and inspiring other people to follow their dreams!
P.S. We’re planning to be in China in late July/August … you never know, maybe we can meet up sometime!
Hi Angie,
It is wonderful to hear from you. I know this time is full of excitement and a crazy amount of running around as you guys preparre for your adventure. I’d be happy to help as we know finances are a big question for people, and thus why we track our expenses.
We have 1 CapitalOne credit card. After a ton of research we found this was the best alternative in terms of fees and resources. In retrospect we should have gotten a second credit card for emergencies, but alas hindsight is nice that way. Your credit card is sure to be denied at least once on your trip as your bank things the charge is fraudulent, so being prepared for that will help a lot. Also, in the vast majority of our trip we could not use our credit cards so this has been less of an issue than we expected.
For our bank we have only a cash card. We specifically did not want a Visa/Mastercard which was tied to our bank accounts for security.
For cash, we typically only carry what we’ll need for the day along with a small reserve. You become extremely good, very fast, as gauging this in each new country. We also virtually never walk around with our credit/debit cards, except on travel days. Our theory on days when we travel is that if everything else was stolen we’d still be able to move forward if we have access to our money and passports so these stay with us.
I hope this helps and if you have more questions please let us know. Between Betsy and I and our new partners at Meet Plan Go there is a wealth of information to help.