Saving Money for Your Trip

How do people scrape together that much money?

Let's face it, many of the people you hear about that did RTW trips got major help from their parents or have some other source of funds. Saving up $20,000 or more is not something that most people can do in any short amount of time, but it can be done if it's a priority.

One of the keys to pulling this off is making and keeping a commitment to it. We see many people who intend to save up for a RTW, but of course not all of them make it. This isn't much different than saving up for the down payment on a house, and to be honest, this is sort of an alternative to that. For the money you save for this trip you could make a nice dent - or even more - in a down payment on a house.

But you can't start from zero and decide you want to leave on a RTW in 6 months. Most of the people who successfully save up money specifically for a RTW trip plan out years in advance. So instead you might decide you'll want to leave 18 months from now, or 30 months from now. Come up with a general budget and then figure out how much you'll need to set aside each month in order to get there.

For many people the idea of long-term travel is a passing fancy during a frustrating time in their life, but if you look around the message boards here at BootsnAll you'll see that thousands of people caught the RTW bug and then achieved their goal through hard work and some sacrifice. And we've yet to hear of a person who has regretted going RTW.

Speaking of the BootsnAll message boards, there is a great thread that discusses this exact topic that you should check out. Most of it is common sense stuff - like instead of spending $50 at the pub on Friday night, buy some wine or beer for $10, invite your friends over, and put the extra $40 into your RTW fund. But it's inspirational to read because the people who are contributing ideas are people who are currently saving up for a RTW trip or have successfully done it in the past. If you really want to do it, you can do it.

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