Budget

One of the main things I am asked is 'Don't you need lots of money to travel?' Often it can be cheaper to go and travel than to run a household and life at home. 

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The biggest factor, I have found, is the speed of travel. When you go on vacation you often have a very limited time and you are trying to do and see as much as you can while you are there. You have lots of big expenses all at once, and you often swap money for convenience to ensure you can fit in all that you want to do.

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Slow travel means that you settle in one place for a bit and live like a local - eating and doing what the locals do. You can still get out and about and 'see the sights' but you do it at a much slower pace so expenses are stretched out much longer and further. 

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Another big factor is where in the world that you travel. 6 months in Europe is going to cost a lot more than 6 months in Asia or South America and when you make daily conscious choices about how you spend your money, you can travel for longer.

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There are lots of great resources online to help with strategies to make your travel dollars (or yen, pound, etc.) go further. Some even say you can travel on $10/day. Granted, for that you will be couch surfing, urban camping, never eating out and hitchhiking most of the time. 

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For me, I am aiming for $AUD50/day. Some days will be more and some less. I will be doing a combination of fast and slow (mainly slow) travel so I will likely go a bit over that basic budget. But I'm setting myself the challenge of $50/day overall -  only because I want to keep travelling as long as I can.