Show me the money - getting the travel budget together

Best ever op shop bargain: my 60 Degrees North jacket
sourced from the Reykjavik Red Cross shop,
being modelled on the Icelandic island of Videy

Heading overseas for months is an expensive business, even if one is a) retired with a pension, and b) going to inexpensive India. 

We worked out that our daily travel budget should be $85/day.

No-one has actually been upfront enough to ask this question yet, but an obvious query is:

How can you afford to do this?

The responses to this can be summarised as: working hard and being frugal; making the most of what we have; and good luck.

Doing the sums about how much it would cost to travel for this long showed that it would be smart to make the most of all those factors. 

Working hard?

Let me point out first that we are both retired after long professional lives. 'Retired' as in, insanely busy: doing fun stuff like yoga, tai chi, bounding around in an unseemly manner at music festivals, going to the movies, hiking and gym classes. 

But also busy busy, as in serving in a voluntary capacity on professional boards and committees, volunteering at my Buddhist centre, trying to help our kids and their peers. 

Which doesn't leave a lot of time to earn extra cash - so I was fortunate to get part-time paid contract work with an agency where I volunteer at already. 

The downside was that I spent months waking up in the middle of the night worrying about deadlines and project outcomes (not part of the original retirement plan). But it's paid for the expensive bits of the trip and kept my professional resume alive (because you never know what's going to happen, do you?).

Being frugal

Or a tight arse. Depends how you look at it.

My Belgian friend MC is an Olympic-standard bargain hunter; during our long friendship she has mentored me in never paying full price for anything (merci cherie). So, combined with a nagging worry about the environmental waste of stuff going to landfill, over the years I have stopped buying new clothes. 

Apart from underwear and - I admit it - hiking gear, all my newest clothes are old ones. 

Op shopping has been the answer to my need not to spend money while fulfilling my love of retail therapy, plus I get a 'hunter/gatherer' buzz out of finding just what I need in someone else's throw out pile. I am also more adventurous in my clothes shopping now because if I buy something risky and it doesn't work - I've only wasted $5. 

Free stuff is good too, remember my big travel bag I retrieved from a dumpster. ( See Picking a pack post.)

So go op shopping, you've nothing to lose but empty space in your wardrobe.

Making the most of what we have

Which in our case was the spare bedroom in our apartment. Enter the concept of the sharing economy in the guise of Airbnb.

Our Airbnb listing page showing an unnaturally tidy spare room

I wasn't sure about sharing our place with strangers, especially because they would create extra housework for me, but it was worth trying to make money out of an asset that wasn't being used except by me and the cats. 

There were challenges to solve. Getting the room organised and maintaining it required start up costs for linen and extras such as tea making equipment, toiletries and flowers because Airbnb works if you go the extra mile for your guests. 

I also used a preparation task checklist to ensure that we kept up the same standards for each guest and to make sure that we got good reviews.

The back end of Airbnb isn't as intuitive as it's cracked up to be, but mastering the art of price setting and marketing was worth the time. 

Over the last six months we have met delightful couples and young women, one of whom moved back in as a friend and long-term lodger.  We even made a bit of pocket money, though I wouldn't recommend Airbnb as major source of income. 

We have also been fortunate to find a young couple who will live in our place while we away and pay us a low rent for the immense privilege of being bossed around by our cats.

So with a bit of good luck (cheap flights, good advice and recommended reading), we head out to Nepal, Tibet and India at the end of July with hard-earned cash in our pockets.

What would you have done to get that travel money?