Unless you are obscenely wealthy, a budget is an important factor to think about when traveling. It is definitely possible to travel on a tight budget by buying groceries at the local market, eating all your meals at “home,” staying in free camp spots or cheap hostels and not bouncing around to every city in the country. Things start to add up if you eat mainly at restaurants, visit all the National Parks (especially in Costa Rica National Parks for tourists can be quite expensive) or blow through your gas because you have to see every destination in a country. You have to create a budget that fits your needs and interests. Mexico and Central America are more affordable areas to travel in and you can definitely do it on a tight budget or a exorbitant one.
While traveling, we had three sources of income. Savings, money from freelance work and money from renting our house. Based on what we were bringing in each month we set a conservative daily budget of $100. In order to keep track of our expenses, I input all purchases into the budget app TripCoin. We found this to be extremely helpful in keeping us aware and somewhat on track. Below is a breakdown of our daily average in each country.
We ended up staying under budget in two of the eight countries but keep in mind, some countries are more expensive than others. We only stayed in Belize for 10 days because it was way more expensive than we thought it was going to be. We also spent excess money in Mexico on our van and for a new drone and I got Scuba certified in Honduras. We knew unforeseen expenses would most likely occur which is why we budgeted a daily amount that allowed us some wiggle room. Overall, we ended up being about $1,600 over budget.
As a side note, this only represents our travel time as a family. When both sets of our parents came to visit in Panama, we treated that as a separate trip. We switched from “van lifers” to tourists planning several guided tours, eating out almost every night, staying in an AirBnB and charting a sailboat for three days…things we wouldn’t have done if it was just us three. Next, take a look at exactly what we spent our budget on…
Our top six expenses were Food (eating out), Gas, Accommodations, Groceries, Miscellaneous (drone, clothes, health, business expenses) and Activities. Based on your own interests, your top six may differ from ours. For the remaining categories: “Van” represents what we paid in order to fix the mechanical issues, “Transportation” is any local travel (ferries, boat rides, taxis, etc), “Tolls” we really only had to pay in Mexico and “Laundry” is what we paid to get our clothes cleaned at local laundromats. We knew that we wanted to experience as much as we could without completely breaking the bank. This meant planning some activities but not all, staying in campgrounds between $5-$15/night and occasionally eating out to experience local food and drinks. Honestly, I have no idea how our expenses compare to others because we didn’t ask…but I feel this is a good representation for those that want to travel on a decent “middle of the road” type budget. We weren’t cutting corners everywhere we went and we weren’t living lavishly. So, for our 8 1/2 months of travel…we spent a total of $26,404. I hope this gives you at least a starting point when budgeting for your own adventure and please reach out if you have any questions!! Happy budgeting!