In May 2019, we left our jobs to travel the world full time. During the two years prior, we searched the web to learn how much an around the world trip cost. And, how much we should budget for each country we planned to explore.
In our months of research, we found some helpful articles and some not so helpful ones. We found websites that calculate “average” travel costs based on destination and travel style. But, as useful as those are, they didn’t give us enough detail and information about the inputs to really trust when building our around the world trip budget.
So, during our time traveling throughout, Africa, Europe, Oceania, and Asia from May 2019 thru March 2020, we tracked every single purchase with the goal of sharing our world travel cost data with others.
Fast forward to today and we have a travel cost database with over 1,600 rows of data including 77 travel spend categories, 697 vendors, 38 countries and 113 cities from 5 continents.
We understand that everyone has a different travel style and budget, which requires more information when budgeting your around the world trip cost. As a result, we analyzed our data to create the best travel cost ratios to help you budget for your next trip.
For example, we calculated Meal Costs Per Person Per Day for each country and city. Providing more detail, we calculated the data by travel sub-category. For example, we can break down the Meal Cost Per Person Per Day by breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. We can also analyze Meal Cost Per Person Per Meal, which is broken down by groceries abroad versus dining out overseas.
Now, we’re providing our detailed around the world trip cost data in the following three (3) formats:
- Travel cost by Continent & Region in this article
- More Travel cost by Country in our free digital download
- Detailed Travel cost by City + full Excel database for our Patrons
Head over to our Travel Cost page to obtain our travel cost data and learn more about what’s included in our trip cost database.
Moving on, let’s dive into our around the world trip costs by region!
Table of Contents
Around the World Travel Costs Depend Heavily on Your Travel Style
Travel costs depend heavily on your personal travel style and cost constraints plus the destinations you explore.
Some choose to backpack around SE Asia while others choose to stay in private accommodations in Europe. Some want to explore fewer countries with more time in each country while others want to explore more countries with less time in each one.
So, before diving into our travel costs, it’s important for you to understand our personal travel style, how we categorized our trip costs, our travel budget and where we traveled.
To actually see what our travel style is and experience everything we did, you can watch our travel adventures on our YouTube channel here.
Having said that, all travel costs can be categorized into seven (7) travel spend categories, including:
- Accommodations
- Meals & Snacks
- Transportation
- Tours & Activities
- Visas & Tourist Fees
- Vaccines
- Insurance
For our year of travel for two (2) people, we spent $70,015 excluding U.S. Health Insurance or $77,318 including U.S. Health Insurance.
This equates to $35,007 per person excluding U.S. Health Insurance or $38,659 per person including U.S. Health Insurance.
We know…U.S. Health Insurance is ridiculous.
Below is a breakdown of our travel costs by spend category.
Excluding U.S. Health Insurance, our top spend categories were Transportation, Accommodations, Meals & Snacks, and Tours & Activities. Those four categories account for 97% of our around the world trip costs.
As you can see, our total budget excluding U.S. Health Insurance was $70K for two people for a full year. But, our total costs by category do not provide the full picture of our travel lifestyle.
For that, you also need to understand where we traveled, for how long, and what experiences we were aiming for.
Let’s start with the first two. We traveled across Africa, Europe, Oceania and SE Asia, with a few stops back in the United States. Yes, we could’ve saved a lot of money, or traveled much longer, by staying in cheaper countries longer, such as SE Asia or South America. But we had different goals and a different budget.
As you can see in the chart below, we spent a LOT of time traveling throughout higher cost countries. Specifically, we spent 70% of our nights in high cost countries and 30% in low cost countries.
Note, to calculate Cost Per Night in the chart above, I excluded the costs of (1) U.S. Health Insurance, (2) flights to and within destinations, and (3) Staying with family at home.
Across all countries we traveled to, it cost us $99 per person per night, on average, excluding the same costs mentioned above.
There are a lot of other variables regarding travel style, such as how often you eat out or cook groceries, or what type of accommodations you stay in while traveling. I will explain our travel style under each of the seven travel spend categories throughout this post.
With that said, let’s start with our accommodation expenses during our around the world travels.
Accommodation Costs for Around the World Trip
During our year of travel, we spent $23,887 on accommodations, including tips. Below is a table breaking down the various housing options we stayed in along with the percentage of nights stayed in each accommodation type within each region. This will give you a good idea of which housing options are common in each region and which ones we chose to stay in.
The above table does a good job reflecting our personal travel style. We stayed in Airbnbs 68% of the time.
We generally sought airbnbs wherever we were. Specifically, since we’re traveling full-time and aim to save money on meals by buying groceries and cooking two meals per day, we booked airbnbs that had a kitchen. We also booked airbnbs with a washer to do laundry and high-speed internet so we could edit videos on the road and stream shows online.
Another thing to know is we never stayed in hostels. As a married couple, we wanted our privacy. Especially since we were doing this full-time. Also, Guesthouses are the way to go in Southeast Asia. For one, they’re really affordable. And two, they almost always include breakfast!
Alright, what about the accommodation costs?
Outlined below is the associated Cost Per Night for the places we stayed around the world.
We tracked our accommodation costs by whether it was an Airbnb, Regular Hotel, Budget Hotel, Luxury Hotel, Guesthouse, Riad or All-Inclusive Resort. By having this detail, you can better budget for your next trip based on your own personal travel style!
I want to mention a few things behind the above numbers.
- Normally, you’d expect Subsaharan Africa to be affordable. Well, we chose to stay in an all-inclusive resort style tent camp in Kenya’s Masai Mara and a luxury hotel in downtown Nairobi. The tent camp was for our safari, which included all meals and our safari guide the entire duration of our stay.
- The all-inclusive resort in Oceania was during our stay in Fiji. This cost includes the mandatory meal plan for the resort and includes almost all water activities from the dive shop.
- We typically wouldn’t have chosen a luxury resort in SE Asia, but we booked this at the last minute when COVID-19 got serious. We had to end our year of travel short and booked a last-minute flight back home. To treat ourselves, we booked a luxury hotel in Bangkok for three (3) nights while we practiced social distancing.
- The high cost in North America was when we stayed in Las Vegas for Ashley’s 30th birthday celebration.
In summary, our average accommodation cost per night came out to $87 across all regions. As you can see, some were more expensive than others.
The most expensive places we stayed were Kenya, Oceania, North America, Northern Europe, Western Europe and Southern/Mediterranean Europe.
The least expensive places we stayed were Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and North Africa.
Next, let’s dig into our meal and snack costs around the globe!
Meal Costs Per Person for Around The World Trip
When considering meal and snack costs while traveling, you need to consider how often you plan to eat out at restaurants versus buying groceries to eat in at your accommodation.
To save money, our plan during our around the world trip was to buy groceries primarily for breakfasts and dinners in each destination. I highly recommend grocery shopping while abroad. It saves you money and it’s a fun thing to do as you get to experience different grocery stores and food items from around the world. Make sure you pack your own shopping bag!
Now, trying the different cuisines and famous dishes in each country is one of our favorite things to do when traveling. So, we almost always ate out for lunches and daily snacks from street vendors or coffee shops.
Regarding our meal cost data, we tracked our food and beverage costs by two variables: whether the expense was (1) Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner or “Food Other” and (2) Groceries or Dine Out.
Food Other is anything other than one of our three (3) daily meals. For example, it includes coffee, street food snacks, water and more.
With that said, the below chart shows the percentage of time we dined out versus ate groceries or had our meal included with our accommodation.
As you can see, we ate groceries 47% of our meals, ate out 41% of our meals and had 11% of our daily meals included with our accommodations. Note, these percentages do not include snacks; they reflect our three daily meals.
Also, the chart below shows what percentage of Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner came from dining out, groceries, or included in our stay.
Moving on, let’s dig into the cost numbers starting with a breakdown by Dine Out and Groceries.
The table below shows that our meal costs around the world average out to $6.10 per person per meal, including snacks.
On average, dining out cost us $9.60 per person per meal, dining in with groceries cost us $3.10 per person per meal, and Included meals were free with our stay.
You can also see how expensive or cheap it is to eat in the various regions around the world. Note, Oceania is high due to the mandatory meal plan during our stay at an all-inclusive resort in Fiji.
Also, dining out in the table above includes the Food Other category, so the cost per meal should not be analyzed without looking at Cost Per Person Per Day broken down by Food Other, Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.
The table above reflects our daily cost per person across the nine (9) regions we traveled. In total, we averaged $21.20 per person per day during our year around the world.
As you can see, your daily meal cost per person would be much lower if you stayed in Southeast Asia or Africa most of your time. Or, it would be much higher if you stayed in Oceania longer.
Breaking down our average daily meal cost per person, our Breakfasts cost us $2.90 per person per day, Lunch cost us $8.90 per person per day, Dinner cost u $7.40 per person per day, and Food Other cost us $2.10 per person per day.
Again, your daily food and beverage costs will be different based on your mix of eating out versus cooking.
Another thing I should mention is that we rarely bought water anywhere we went because we each had a GrayL water purifier bottle. Feel free to visit our travel gear page to learn more. That bottled allowed us to filter all tap water around the world and we never once got sick afterwards.
Plus, you don’t create a lot of unnecessary plastic waste by constantly buying bottled water!
Hopefully, this gives you a good idea of food and drink costs around the world. If you want this same data by country, then head over to our travel cost by country page to download the free spreadsheet.
If you want the detailed meal cost data by city and country, plus the ability to slice and dice the data however you want by obtaining our full dataset, then head over to this page to learn more about getting exclusive access as one of our Patrons.
Moving on, let’s tackle our transportation costs from around the world.
Transportation Costs Per Person for Around The World Trip
Transportation costs can be segmented into two main buckets: Major Transportation and Local Transportation.
We define major transportation as the modes of transport that get you between countries and states or between regions within a country. For us, these include flights, rental cars, trains, and ferries.
We define local transportation as the modes of transport that get you around within a city or destination. For us, these include Taxi or Rideshare services, Metros and Public or Private Buses.
In total, we spent $24,552 for both of us across all modes of transportation during our year of travel. This comes out to $12,276 per person for all transportation costs.
Refer to the table below for a breakdown of our travel costs by mode of transportation.
As you can see, we spent the most on Flights, then Car Rentals and Trains. The major modes of transportation accounted for 93% of our total transportation costs. And, the local modes of transport accounted for the remaining 7%.
With that, let’s jump into our major transportation costs starting with flights.
Flight Costs Per Person for Around the World Trip
In total we spent a combined $15,361 on domestic and international flights, which comes out to $7,681 per person for the year. We flew on ten (10) international flights and thirty-one (31) domestic flights each during our around the world trip.
Now, to better understand the flight costs, we need to break them out between Award Flights and Non-Award Flights, as well as, Domestic versus International flights. Let’s start with the former.
Regarding Award Flights, we booked six (6) international flights using either airline miles or credit card points.
Prior to taking off on our year of travel, we prepared for travel hacking by earning airline miles and credit card points by applying for the best travel credit cards. If you’re new to travel hacking, the main concept is to earn hundreds of thousands of loyalty points and miles at a minimal cost and then booking expensive flights or hotels using the least amount of points possible.
Everyone’s travel hacking goals are different. You can choose to redeem your miles and points for more flights in economy. Or, you can choose to redeem your miles and points for fewer flights in business class. You can also choose to use your points for hotel nights. Either way, the goal is to decrease your out of pocket travel expenses and earn a higher dollar amount per mile or point.
For us, we chose to get the most value for our points by flying international business class four (4) times and international economy class two (2) times. We could have flown more award flights by flying economy every time, but it’s hard to pass up flying business class for as low as $34 per person, especially on those 12-hour long flights.
If you want to learn more about travel hacking and how to fly business class for almost free, then read our travel hacking articles here.
Below, you can see how much we spent on award flights per person for one-way flights.
Note, all Award Flight costs include taxes and fees when redeeming loyalty miles. And, the country listed is the destination traveled to during the flight.
Moving on, let’s take a look at our Non-Award Flights, or those that we paid full out of pocket costs for.
During our around the world trip, we averaged $148 per person on domestic flights and $203 per person on international flights. In total, that averages out to $187 per person per flight for one-way tickets.
One last thing I want to call out about flight costs is that they will ultimately depend on how many destinations you visit and if you choose to take more or less other forms of major transport.
For example, we traveled to 38 countries in less than a year, which means a lot of flights. But, we also rode over 30 trains throughout Europe. So, our flight costs ended up lower in that regard.
With that said, let’s continue by analyzing our train costs.
Train Costs Per Person for Around the World Trip
In total, we took thirty-four (34) trains during our year of travel and spent $3,008 in total train costs for the two of us. We only took trains in Europe, which is one of the big experiences we wanted to have in Europe.
Therefore, we splurged and bought two (2) Eurail Global 1st Class Passes each for our six (6) months traveling throughout Europe. With a Eurail Global Pass you get to ride on the majority of trains in Europe either for “free” (no additional cost) or for a small reservation fee, if required.
We spent $2,446 on four different Eurail Global 1st Class Passes, which we were able to use for 85% of the trains we took across Europe, or 29 trains.
Since we spent 81% of our $3,008 in total train costs on the Eurail Passes, we had to determine the best method to allocate the Eurail Pass costs to each train ticket we used. Luckily, we also tracked the actual cost of the trains we rode so we could see if we saved money with the Eurail Passes and if they were even worth it (stay tuned for that post!).
As a result, we were able to allocate the Eurail Train Pass costs based on the % of the actual cost of each train we took. That gave us the below Train Cost Per Ticket in the table below.
The train costs above include the allocated Eurail Global train passes and the seat reservation fees and taxes. As you can see, our average Domestic train cost per person was $40 and our average International train cost per person was $50. In total, we averaged $44 per person for all trains throughout Europe.
Now, the high cost you see in Southern & Mediterranean Europe is for our cross-country trains in Spain. That cost is primarily due to the trains we took to get from Cadaqués, Spain to Seville, Spain.
And, the high cost you see in Norther Europe is primarily due to a train we took from Oslo, Norway to Stockholm, Sweden, which we could not use with our Eurail Passes.
Next, let’s move on to our rental car or car hire costs from around the world.
Rental Car or Car Hire Costs for Around the World Trip
One of our favorite ways to get around in another destination is with our own personal mode of transportation that allows us the freedom to load up and go on our own schedule. That way for us is through rental vehicles and motorbikes.
As a result, we ended up doing multiple road trips, including around Iceland’s Ring Road, down the Romantic Highway in Bavaria Germany and around the entire United Kingdom. We also rented motorbikes in Capri, Italy and throughout SE Asia.
In order to best track our rental car costs, we tracked (1) rental car days, (2) cost of the vehicle itself, and (3) all other costs associated with the rental vehicle, such as fuel, insurance, parking and toll fees. Therefore, we were able to calculate all-in rental car costs per day in each destination.
Let’s take a look at the tables below.
The first table below outlines our total rental vehicle costs.
As you can see, we spent $4,036 in total on all rental car and motorbike related expenses during our year of travel.
The table below shows the rental vehicle costs per rental day. The “Grand Total” represents the all-in rental vehicle costs including insurance, fuel, parking and toll fees.
In total, our all in rental car costs came out to $81 per rental car day. As you can tell, we broke out the vehicle type by car, van or motorbike.
I want to call out the Van costs in Norther Europe real fast. The total cost for the van rental and associated costs was our portion only. This was for a rental van we booked for our 7-day road trip around Iceland’s Ring Road with two other couples. So, we split the total 3-ways with two other couples. For the per day van rental and associated costs, I went ahead and included the total cost so you’d know the actual total per day cost.
Also, another thing to know is that a lot of motorbike rentals include fuel costs and you rarely pay for parking for those.
With that, let’s move onto our ferry costs.
Ferry Costs Per Person for Around the World Trip
Ferry’s are a fun mode of transportation. They mean you are near oceans and beaches. Who doesn’t love that?
In total, we took 8 different ferries or water taxis during our round the world trip and spent $255 per person.
The table below shows how our ferry costs break down per ticket.
Overall, we averaged $32 per ferry ticket. Our Domestic ferry tickets averaged $32 and International ferry tickets averaged $31 per ticket.
The most expensive ferry tickets were for our transport in Oceania to get us from Nadi, Fiji to the Yasawa Islands. The cheapest ferry tickets were for our transport to Nusa Penida from Bali, Indonesia.
Moving on, let’s dive into our local transportation costs starting with taxis and rideshare services.
Taxi and Rideshare Costs for Around the World Trip
We spent $662 in total on taxi and rideshare services during our year of travel. Under taxi and rideshare, we included all rideshare services (i.e. Uber, Grab, Lyft), taxis (including tuk-tuks), private drivers and scooter rentals.
Below is how our total costs for these broke down.
As you can see in the table above, rideshare accounted for 63% of our total taxi and rideshare costs.
Drilling down further, the table below outlines our taxi and rideshare costs per ride.
On average, it cost us $11 per ride across all destinations during our round the world trip. One thing to note is that all of these transport methods were for two (2) people, except for the scooter costs.
Also, the high cost in Western Europe was in Paris to get us to Paris Orly airport from our Airbnb using UBER. That was an expensive ride!
Moving on, let’s dive into our metro costs.
Metro Costs Per Person for Around the World Trip
During our year-long trip, we took over 100 metro rides and spent a total of $326 per person on metro rides. This cost includes underground and above ground metros and trams.
Depending on how long we stayed in a city, we’d either pay for the metros with a local pass or per ticket. The local passes can either be pre-loaded or have set ride amounts per pass depending on the city. So, we broke our costs down per “Ride” or per “Pass”.
Refer to the table below to see our metro costs per ticket.
On average, it cost us $2.94 per metro ticket (or ride). We tracked the number of rides we took so we were able to calculate the cost per ticket/ride for both “rides” and “passes”.
Note, the high cost in Northern Europe was due to mistakes we made in London pre-loading the Oyster Card. We added too much money and didn’t leave enough time before our flight out to get our money back. So, we took a hit on that one!
Overall, taking the metros and trams in a destination is a fun and convenient way to explore each city. You get to mix walking with public transport that gives you a good understanding of what it’s like to wander through a destination as a local would.
Moving on, let’s take a look at our final local transportation service – buses.
Public and Private Bus Costs Per Person for Around the World Trip
Another great way to get around a destination is to take the public bus system. You can pair buses with metros and walking to get all around most developed cities.
And, when needed, you can take a private bus between many cities or to get to a major attraction outside of a city.
In total, we took forty-five (45) buses during our around the world trip, which cost us $160 per person.
Take a look at the table below to see how much bus tickets cost us depending on whether it was a public or private bus.
On average, we spent $2.57 Per Public Bus Ticket and $7.54 Per Private Bus Ticket.
The private bus ticket costs in Southeast Asia was for a really nice luxury bus. You can definitely get cheaper there, but depends on what style you have.
Alright, that wraps up our transportation costs around the world. So, let’s jump to our Tours & Activity costs during our year long trip.
Tour and Activity Costs for Around The World Trip
Tours and Activities truly make your experience in every destination. In fact, they are so fundamental to your experience that they are now being referred to as “Experiences”, as we can see with the launch of Airbnb Experiences.
During our adventure year around the world, we had the pleasure of doing 120 different tours and activities. From museums to white-water rafting and safari drives, we made the most of our travels!
In total, we spent $5,807 on tours & activities, which equals $2,903 per person for the year.
We tracked each ticket cost for all of our tours and activities, which include three primary categories: (1) Entry Tickets, (2) Tour Other, and (3) Cruises.
Entry Tickets include all Attractions (i.e. Museums, Religious Places, Cultural Places, etc.).
Tour Other includes all Activities (i.e. biking, kayaking, snorkeling, boat tours), Day Tours, Cable Cars, etc.
And, Cruises include ocean and river cruises.
The table below lists our tours and activity costs per ticket (or per person).
As you’d expect, Cruises were the most expensive at $214 per person, Tour Other was the next highest at $27 per person, and Entry Tickets were the cheapest at $18 per person. On average, it cost us $24 per person (or ticket) across all experiences.
Although this data is neat, it isn’t that helpful because there are literally millions of different tours and activities you can experience.
Therefore, we broke these three categories even further into twenty-one (21) sub-categories, which are way more helpful in budgeting for your travel adventures.
The table below breaks down our tour and activity cost per ticket, or person, by sub-category.
This view of the tour and activity data does a better job of showing the cost per person. However, it was quite difficult to show this level of detail along with each region we traveled to.
Don’t worry, you can still get this detail by region and country by downloading our free travel cost data by country at this link.
And, if you want more detailed tour and activity data by city and which vendors we used, you can become a patron to get our full dataset.
Moving back to the table above, you can see that we did a good mix of adventure activities, city attractions, cruises, and day tours. We also included any main transportation that was part of the activity itself, such as a cable car to get to the top of a mountain for sledding.
I hope this helps give you an idea of what to budget for the tours & activities you want experience during your travels.
With that, let’s jump to our other travel service-related costs from our year of travel.
Other Travel Service-Related Costs for Around the World Trip
Outside of transportation, accommodations, meals and tours & activities, there are a lot of other costs related to traveling around the world. Those include Visas & Tourist Fees, Travel Insurance, Vaccine Costs, and depending on your home country, health insurance premiums.
In general, these are relatively smaller expenses in the grand scheme of traveling around the world for a year. Except if you’re a U.S. citizen and have to pay for our outrageous health insurance premiums!
With that said, let’s dive in.
Visas & Tourist Fee Costs Per Person for Around the World Trip
Many countries require a visa for entry and travel within the country for a predetermined amount of time. Visa costs depend on which country you’re a citizen of and if the country requires one for you. Also, Visa costs depend on whether you get an electronic Visa, or e-Visa, a Visa on Arrival (VOA) or go through a third party that does the work for you.
Luckily, as Americans, most of the countries we traveled to didn’t require us to have a paid Visa. We did, however, end up having to pay for six (6) visas though.
In addition to visas, there are also various other tourist fees and taxes you’ll have to pay along the way. These include Tourist Taxes, Bank Fees, Toilets, and more.
Let’s take a look at all of these visa and tourist fee costs per person in the table below.
First, let me start by saying we made a BIG mistake with our visas in Vietnam. We applied for our Vietnam e-Visas with only two (2) full days between us applying and our flight to Vietnam from Laos. The e-Visas take a minimum of three (3) business days to be approved and could take longer, which their website states.
Unfortunately, we applied too late and the Laos airline wouldn’t even let us board our flight to Vietnam without having the eVisa approval forms. So, we had to use a third-party service, which was EXPENSIVE to put in an urgent application on our behalf. We ended up changing our flight to the next day and the 3rd party had our eVisa approval forms in our hands THE NEXT MORNING! I still don’t know how they do that; they must have someone on the inside in Vietnam that has authority to approve visas for the right price.
Moving on, in the above table, you can get an idea of what to expect regarding visa and tourist fee costs per persons for all categories.
We ended up spending only $476 per person for all Visa and Tourist Fees including our huge mistake.
The final thing I want to mention here is that we saved a TON of money on bank fees when withdrawing cash from ATMs by getting the Charles Schwab High-Yield Investor’s Checking Account. This account provides a Visa debit card that rebates you for every ATM fee in the Visa network worldwide that gets charged to your card. If you plan to travel overseas in cash heavy countries, you need this card!
Also, make sure you have a good travel credit card with no foreign transaction fees.
Both of these bank and card fees add up and could end up costing you hundreds of dollars if you’re not careful.
Next, let’s move on to travel and health insurance.
Travel & Health Insurance Costs Per Person for Around the World Trip
If you’re traveling overseas, you need to protect yourself. Whether it be a stolen suitcase, broken laptop or broken bone, you need to manage your risk.
Please understand, this is not health or financial advice; I am simply telling you what we did to insure our around the world trip.
There are two main categories of insurance we considered for our year: (1) travel insurance and (2) health insurance. Refer to the below table for our total travel insurance and U.S. health insurance costs.
U.S. Health Insurance is outrageously expensive. It cost us $7,303 for the entire year for only a family of two (2)! And that’s only for the premiums to have insurance coverage!
Since we are U.S. citizens, without full-time jobs, we had to pay for our own health care coverage for medical and pharmacy service in the U.S. This includes managing the risk if one of us is randomly diagnosed with a lifelong disease that gets classified as a pre-existing condition. And, let me tell you, us Americans don’t want to have a pre-existing condition that cannot be covered under our health insurance. That could lead to personal bankruptcy.
Therefore, we decided to purchase separate U.S. Health Insurance that would (1) cover us back in the U.S., (2) cap our total OOPM (out-of-pocket max costs) for the year if we did get a major illness or injury, and (3) give us better (ideally) healthcare and pharmacy rates when back in the U.S. for medical care.
I won’t go into all of the details about U.S. Health Insurance, but purchased an ACA-approved Bronze Plan for a Family of 2.
Moving on, we purchased international travel insurance to cover our property, pre-paid travel costs and personal safety and health. I won’t get into the details of why you need travel insurance and what all it covers in this post. I’ll write a separate blog article later for that.
Just know that we highly recommend using the Travelex Travel Select insurance plan. It’s backed by Berkshire Hathaway and provides the best coverage at the most affordable pricing we could find.
In total, we spent only $408 per person on international travel insurance for the entire year to manage our risk while traveling abroad.
Next, let’s talk about vaccines.
Travel Vaccine Costs Per Person for Around the World Trip
Finally, our last travel cost – Vaccines. Depending on where you plan on exploring, it is recommended, and sometimes required by the country, to have certain vaccines.
Two regions we traveled to, Southeast Asia and Africa, resulted in us paying for a Typhoid vaccine and Yellow Fever vaccine.
Below are our vaccine costs per person for our adventure year.
Unfortunately, these are not covered by our U.S. Health Insurance coverage. Go figure.
So, our two vaccines cost us $235 total per person. Thankfully, those are one-time costs.
Quick tip if you’re in the U.S.: We purchased our travel vaccines from the Texas County Health & Human Services centers, which provide a much cheaper price than the private travel vaccine clinics. Some of those private clinics charge double what the county charges!
Before you travel to any country, please search the U.S. CDC website by country to see what vaccines are recommended or required and protect yourself before boarding your flight.
Get Your FREE Spreadsheet of Our Travel Costs by Country
If you made it this far, I applaud you! That’s a lot of data and information to absorb in one post.
I hope our travel cost data helps you plan and budget for your next trip, whether it’s an around the world trip or a two-week vacation.
In summary, we spent approximately $35,000 per person to travel the world full-time or $70,000 as a married couple, excluding U.S. Health Insurance.
Your costs will depend largely on your own personal travel style and chosen destinations.
Now, if you want our travel cost data by country in a free spreadsheet download you can sign-up for that in the form below.
And, if you want a copy of our full spreadsheet dataset including city level data and vendor information, you can head here to learn more about being one of our awesome Patreons.
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