How These Couples Travel The World On A Budget?

the expensive of the bigger International trips would go something on the north of 4.5 lakhs it has varied from 1.5 to three times or four times of that Indian tourists have been spending big on travel but only 1% of these spends account for international trips so is international travel too impractical or too expensive for Indians we spoke to three couples who have been planning their world towards one country at a time to find out how expensive it really is to travel the world and how you can

plan yours better on different budgets we have traveled to about 75 countries we have done 12 countries together and we've traveled seven countries our first international travel was when my daughter rishona was as young as uh 6 months and my son was almost three and a half so our initial travels were to places which were very close to Chennai like Sri Lanka after year and a half he went to Singapore are actual you know the the meaningful and the big travel started in 2015 we did uh France we di

d uh Luxembourg a very nice interesting segue from there our friends were there we did Netherlands and we did Belgium we largely have bucketed our travel into three primary uh price groups of sorts one one for the first budget being under 1.5 lakhs and uh within that budget we uh we end up covering countries like Thailand Bali Georgia SRI some of these countries can be covered under one lakh as well the second group is below 2 lakhs and the countries where could cover in this budget are turkey K

enya South Africa Dubai Singapore Singapore yes if you're planning for a trip uh in the range of three lakhs and above then you can consider the countries like any European country will come within that uh New Zealand um United States uh Japan Japan yes Japan will come under that even in Europe your Eastern europes are much cheaper than your Central and other parts of Europe you do a just one place and uh just for 4 days 5 days the cost increases you know so to break the cost you add on more cou

ntries or uh places which are nearby and then it as a as a you know uh average it kinds of reduces so one more thing we end up saving on is uh we figure out when to travel so there are certain places that you have to travel during a certain duration but in most places we end up traveling during shoulder season so that we can one is avoid a lot of crowd otherwise it becomes too crowded and other is of course you save a lot more cost because stays are expensive flights are expensive uh everything

is expensive during the peak season and especially if you go to Pure tourist places so we try to avoid that we travel during shoulder Seasons as much as possible I think 2017 and 2018 we averaged about 2021 countries for both the years each year so that's about a hall of 40 42 countries right between those two years a lot of travel I think again you're able to do these things only because some framework wireframe exists in some form so there is no escape to solid planning for any travel the majo

r expenses that we have looked at are your flights of course your stay your Visa charges your local commute in that particular area um and the last is food so we basically have an Excel sheet where we've mapped down all the countries that both of us would like to visit so we have around 60 countries in total that we 57 to be prec 57 to be precise so we usually plan our travel one year in advance so we know next year what are the places that we are going to travel so this year's plan is already s

et I don't think there's any cheap there is only affordable and uh less affordable that's really the only two ways to categorize in a budget trip we end up with less number of days because we don't have to travel into too many places so usually countries like Thailand or Sri Lanka um the time taken between travel time taken for travel between a couple of places is is just a couple of hours um and it's very close by but for a expensive trip because we have to travel in multiple cities uh we take

more more number of days for a budget trip what we end up doing is taking one week leave from the office but for a big trip an expensive trip we end up taking 2 weeks of leave that helps us cover more places one of the core differences between the two is in planning uh right because uh in lowbudget RP we don't end up spending too much time planning our itenary while we always have an itenary just to decide what all primary places we want to cover ensure that you know we don't want to miss out on

certain places but largely the difference like whenever we end up planning for a more expensive country that's extensive planning yeah that that takes a lot of planning a lot of research but wait even spending 1 to two lakhs on a trip every year is a big expense so how do these couples plan their finances for their travels I think it's roughly we try to cap it within 20% of our annual expenses towards travel that's how we try to budget and try and operate I put it on the Excel sheet it's her jo

b to make sure that the Excel sheet comes into real life everyone has a different life situation so that number again 20% is is when you are comfortable and we were comfortable only when we were in our mid-30s did that only after we squared off a lot of other key Investments that are more traditional in nature and that's what allowed us to make this number more practical in the beginning 20% would been unimaginable the budget only gets decided how much uh savings we have done like let's say out

of 70% of the Investments done like 30% is left so we have to figure out our budget only from that 30% we never touch our investments like we have done our investments and now we are left with 2 lakhs so then we should think of Thailand or Dubai or if we have now 5 lakhs so then we should think of Europe or Australia or depending on any other country so I quit my job in 2 2022 post that we have done multiple trips across so our expenses for travel are not a separate booket of Investments for tra

vel travel purposes when we planned our fired number the travels were factored into the yearly expenses which we are going to incur all our travel expenses is going to get funded by her salary so that's already factored in that she would continue working in and our investments would passively keep on keeps on in growing which would finally give us the liberty at a later stage of life when we she finally decides to move on from our corporate career to explore different expensive places which we w

ere not able to do right now travel is our priority there is everything else will have to work around travel the budget that we have allocated is 60% is for International trips then we have 20% for the uh domestic trips and 20% for local plus our hometown uh trips together when it comes to travel fund that would amount to around 10 to 12% of my total portfolio so one thing which is clear is that whatever instrument we choose it has to be a fixed income instrument because we need an x amount and

we need to know that amount that we will get at the end of the uh year month whatever the plan is right what what has suggested is that we invest in an U Equity Arbitrage fund what that does is is basically has post uh tax yield is the highest compared to FD and other fixed income uh instruments and that is the reason why he's basically suggested that we use this and we also have uh different funds for different kinds of vacations that we do so for international we have put it in uh different U

instrument we for uh domestic we have it in a different fund if you're not able not utilizing some fund some from some place we can either like carry it forward or we can optimize that cost and utilize that for some other travel that we would want to do so the major expenses while we are traveling across happens in flights and hotels these are the two most expensive things so for flights how it is is that different cards have different days what discount you can get and what is the maximum disco

unt limit for adya two and for Journey cost 50,000 the maximum discount is 15% what at 15% what we can can get is 6,000 rupes it is scabbed accordingly by different card so then we'll not book our both tickets together I'll book my ticket she'll book her tickets so that the discounts get B forged across two different bookings so when we are doing this planning in when it especially when it comes to expensive trips inter city travel uh is also something that we have to figure out and we book thro

ugh that website so it's cheaper it's very very important so this is something that we figured out uh while we were doing the research uh for Turkey um when we were trying to book inter city flight on the uh Turkish Airlines or Turkish Airlines Turkish Airlines website the price was almost half of what we saw in less than half it was less than half we booked through the Turkish Island website and which was less than half of what any of the Indian aggregators would price for that inter city trip

uh in Turkey yeah one very very important thing is luggage so in any international flight you can carry about 30 Kos of luggage but uh sometimes in inter city flight you are only allowed to carry yes yeah so uh you know it's important to know how much is that luggage allowance so that you ensure that you travel light uh if you're going to travel into City by flight or at least check if you know what the baggage allowance is accommodation is probably the second accomodation is something we really

work on and we spend a little more time but we uh do is we ensure that we look for a state which has maximum Metro connectivity your bus connectivity maximum 500 M away we should have a bus stop or a Metro so that's a primary criteria we actually prefer buses to metros as well because when you take bus you can actually see the city and you then you can figure out okay I like this place maybe I'll come back here also I think visas visas is something which you really need to study a little more m

ost countries would would not give you a Visa before three uh 3 months so 90 days is typically the period before which you do it unless you get the long-term Visa or you apply well in advance for like let's say the UK or maybe the US so these are your pre-trip expenses which are easier to plan and manage but managing realtime Spence like commute sseeing or food during your trip can be a way more difficult task since a lot of it is more unplanned the first step is to know how you want to spend we

have cash for those Petty transactions every day you you are hungry you take a banana you take a bottle of water is that where you use the cash for but for things any major spends uh any tourist attraction where we know it's a good reliable company where you can take your credit card and tap it there we use our credit card so right now we are using new X Card most of the cards give you a Forex markup of around 3.5% so we have tried to avoid that by getting a cards which have zero Forex Market t

hat also gives us the liberty of not getting a foreign currency from here also you can go to an ATM you can withdraw the currency from there itself with Forex what happens is in some places where the local currency itself is not super regulated right the dollar rate exchange changes rapidly even between days right so uh you have to be smart about when you're doing the exchange uh more technically speaking sometimes when you're doing a border run across a country there will be a point where you c

an exchange uh you know that local currency for the next country's currency which you can do before the check post but you can't do after the next step is to try and map out as much of the unplanned expenses as possible to have a certain level of predictability in your budget I think commute is most mostly unplanned but that actually when you see at the end of the day actually amounts to a decent amount so you optimize it of course by doing local by taking the local transport that includes even

while coming from airport to the hotel yeah most of the countries usually have this kind of Vans and shared Vans and across so we take that thing if you save are able to save only 15,000 I using the word only but yes you Sav 15,000 it increases to a bigger Quantum a lot of these have those commute cards which works across all modes of transp Hong Kong also had it even Singapore had it also when kids were younger the travel costs were much cheaper in in Europe till age 10 everything is free and p

lus I would say various attractions whatever they want to visit it like you can always put down in your Excel file let's say five lakhs has been allotted he has already put like wherever we are going to visit this p this is our daily budget for the food as well the sightseing basically is a is a family gathering on a dining table and we decide as no more than one Museum a day if you're traveling with kids involve your children when you're planning your travels it's very important if they are not

enjoying your holiday really you know it it it really uh takes a backseat what is important is we also check there are a lot of attractions which are only available for like which are closed on certain specific days I think the major attractions uh like for example the Disneyland in Hong Kong uh they are expensive as as an attraction and so before you go there before you book anything just go to their official website and just see what days are they available are they under maintenance or not a

nd look at reviews as well because they'll tell you which days are not crowded correct yeah most of these tourist attractions if you book online you also have something called as an Express Pass or if you book a tour guide you will always be able to cut the line especially place that you know are very touristy like Istanbul was very touristy every single spot had like some history some huge line huge line for this particular mosque it was was I think four hours 4 hours line and then because we t

ook a tour guide we were able to get in in half an hour they're definitely more expensive than your regular uh like it's free most of the places uh some of the places are free some of them have passed but like things like um Disneyland or Universal Studios we took Express PA we didn't even think about it twice yeah one thing that I want to tell everyone uh the first time travelers is basically is that budget for surprises uh and be open to that because a visit to a country a new country will hap

pen to you once or twice maximum right so you don't want to come home and regret that oh you wanted to do something but just because you had some budgetary constraint you were not able to do it so be open to surprises I would say if we had to go back to younger us and give us dish out some advice I would definitely say aim small Miss small is the way to put it so start with something predictable like Singapore and I say predictable uh with a grain of salt nothing in travel is predictable but ide

al to keep the uh the an the you know the things that can the variables that can awfully go wrong minimum stable currency good geopolitical uh situation uh comfortable weather maybe do a Singapore figure out what your resistance levels are like right so there is no escape to solid planning right now also if you will open shax's laptop there'll be five plans already ready so you know it's a free time to keep adding on those countries in the Excel and there are some countries which we've not even

heard names of so sometimes it happens like that yeah and for for us specifically the travel planning has helped us become more organized we look at our finances also in a certain way because of our travel so we know how to save we become more uh confident on how and when and and where we can travel travel is the word itself right it's it's a journey like I think for us it was a journey in discovering a common passion that bind the four of us together I don't think this will ever change it's it'

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