How will I pay for all for everything along the trip? It is a good question and one that has lots of potential answers. Everything from credit cards, ATMs, debit cards, and even the quaint American Express Travelers Checks. One of the greatest improvements in world travel has to be the globally interconnected banking system. The ability for an ATM in Vietnam to access your US based checking account, check the balance and allow you to withdraw 1.8 million Vietnamese Dong (about $100 USD) is quite amazing. That being said there are some things to be aware of as you look to stretch every dollar for your trip. We will be using two methods almost exclusively, credit cards and ATMs/Debit cards for access to local currency at favorable exchange rates.
International Credit Card of Choice
Credit Cards: The most important aspect when choosing a credit card to use while traveling is to get one without a conversion surcharge. Most major cards have them. American Express is 2.7%, and while here in the states I am a huge fan of the Starwood AMEX card, a 2.7% “tax” on everything we buy abroad for a year seemed excessive. So we went with a Capital One MasterCard, which has no exchange surcharge, and we get 1.25 travel points for every dollar spent with them. Not to mention you can put you own picture on the card. One last note on credit cards, along with almost all other financial preparation for a big trip: getting approved for a reasonable credit limit (greater than $2,500) is MUCH easier if you still are employed, so if possible take care of this before leaving your gainful employment.
ATM Cards: The key here is to make sure your card has a 4 digit pin, as many international banks will not accept cards that have longer pins. Also be sure to use basic ATM safety while traveling. Keeping your pin safe, only accessing ATMs in public and highly visible places, and making sure that the swipe does not look tampered with. This is to prevent your card from being skimmed and a duplicate card created without you knowing about it. In general, unless you are traveling to very remote places, access to ATMs and thus local cash is a great way to control your daily expenses as well as keep your accounts and yourself safe by not carrying significant amounts of cash or travelers checks.
“Do you want to take a year off to travel the world?”
It is a simple question. And I would guess that since you are reading this there is a good chance that you may have even considered that same question. The good news is that by reading further my wife and I will help you determine if world travel is something you not only can do but is something you need to do. But back to the question, when my wife asked me “the” question I was not sure she was serious, but my answer of “Sure, why not.” was very deliberate. Because “why not” is exactly the way I felt.
So after the question was asked be began to discuss the implications of this, what about our careers, our condo, our car, what would our parents/family/friends say? When do we tell people? So we came up with a list of question and figured we needed to be able to have at least cursory answers to all of them before we said anything to anyone. I would suggest that if you are considering a similar trip sitting down and writing down your answers to these questions is a great exercise.
Take a gander at our list:
- Why? Because this is the last opportunity we will both have to freely travel and experience the world for 30+ years (pre-kids), not to mention that the US economy stinks and instead of sitting here fearful for our jobs we are looking to expand our experiences to start something new. Follow our amazing adventures at Green Around the Globe
- Health insurance/access? (A timely question in the U.S. right now.) We will be purchasing health insurance while we are traveling from HTH Travel Medical Insurance for less than $600/month. When we return a comparable PPO to what we have today today will be about $500/month. Hopefully in a year there is a national health care plan we can opt into, go Obama.
- Isn’t this career suicide? No, we feel that is a great opportunity to grow our experience base and further our careers in a newly developing Green and Sustainable economy
- How much will it cost? Fixed costs, assuming we rent our place, will be less than $20K, variable travel costs will be approximately $50-70K, for a total of $70-90K. This estimate is highly dependent on where you decide to go. Europe is expensive, southeast Asia is not.
- What about (un)employment when you return? With our highly marketable skills we feel confidant that at least one of us will be able to quickly find a job upon our return. We will also be using the trip to stay connected with business contacts through extensive blogging and documentation of the professional and research aspects of our trip.
- What about your condo/car/stuff? We have begun to simplify our lives and will continue to shed unnecessary and easily replaceable stuff. Depending on how we rent our condo, furnished or not, we will put the rest of our stuff in storage. We plan on selling our car before we leave, and will use Philly Car Share on our return until we find a basic car option, that is if we need a car to use daily.
- Can we call you? What happens with emergencies at home? Yes, we will set up Skype online number to enable you to be able to call us on our current numbers (which we will forward to the Skype online number) and we will be able to get back to you in less than 24 hours.
- Would you want us to call you in an emergency such as a death in the family? Yes please call, we love our families and would want to know as soon as is possible.
- If something terrible happens globally, another 9/11 for example, how do we connect with you? Again if there is an emergency, please reach out to us, and if there is an emergency we hear about we will reach out to you immediately to let you know our status. If we can only connect with one set of parents we will inform them of that and they should call the others.
- What about handling state side issues? We will leave a limited power of attorney for someone locally that will have the ability to transfer funds and sign documents in our name.
- Can I/we come too? Sure, we hope to use this trip to connect with family and friends around the world. Feel free to meet us anytime for short visits.
That should be a good start in your planning and evaluation of taking a trip like this. We hope that this is helpful and if it is not please let us know below.
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