What’s 120 Days of RTW Travel Cost?

Holy crap, it’s already been 120 days! When we told people we were selling everything and traveling the world many people asked the same underlying questions:

• How can you afford it?
• Are you rich? It must cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, right?
• Are you a trust fund baby?
• Don’t you know it costs a lot to retire?

Every penny has been counted. Checkout the stats, it may not be as expensive as you think.

When analyzing the data, it’s nowhere near the hundreds of thousands of dollars that most people think it takes to travel the world for a couple of years. Those with budget savvy minds are probably wondering how the cost is so low considering that we went to Antarctica. That’s a good question. The cost of the Antarctic cruise is not included in the expenses listed above because we began saving for the cruise years before the concept of a RTW trip was ever contrived. With that in mind there are nine full days where we didn’t incur any costs for lodging, food, or transportation. However, the miscellaneous daily costs incurred during the cruise are included.

Overall, we feel good about staying within the budget while traveling through Patagonia. Patagonia is known to be extremely expensive during the high season and we were concerned that costs could get out of control. We ate well, we traveled comfortably, when something/somewhere didn’t feel right, we moved on. Remember, our travels are about finding value not pinching pennies.

It does feel good to know that our two week vacations (where we’re in a big hurry to see everything) cost more than our four months in South America. Surprisingly, our four months didn’t feel much different than some of the luxurious travels we’ve done in the past. For example, our two week trips to Peru, Vietnam, New Zealand, and Africa all exceeded the cost of our four months in South America. The main difference being that this time we didn’t have a knowledgeable guide to baby us along the way.

Of course we have some other fun stats to share. Yes, you are reading that correctly. We did purchase 95 bottles of wine. It kind of looks like a lot on the graph. We should have added glasses of water to make it look less obtrusive. Trust me, it was purely research based. And don’t forget, we needed to prepare our palates for South American wine country.

How did we do? Share your comments here.

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