Dear Rolf,

I’m planning on visiting Southeast Asia and beyond for at least a year and would like to know how much money you’d recommend for my trip. I know the amount of money really depends on what the person traveling is willing to put up with and the cost of transportation to get there. But could you offer a general estimate?

—Matt, Springfield, Missouri

Dear Matt,

You’re right that this is a highly variable question. It all depends on what comforts you seek/deny yourself, where exactly you go, how much you move around versus staying in one place, etc.  That said, Southeast Asia and India can provide some of the cheapest (and most amazing) places to travel in the world. I use $1,000 a month as a general estimate in this part of the world, though many people can travel and spend far less (or, for that
matter, much more).

My plan is usually to just build up my “nest egg” savings as much as possible and use those funds to determine how long I travel. That is, instead of planning to travel for a year, I’d save, say, $5,000. If that lasts me four months, cool. If that lasts me a year, even better. Either way, I don’t get too uptight about it—and I find that the longer I travel, the better I get at spending less and less money on better and better experiences.

Columnist Rolf Potts is the author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel.

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For more Rolf Potts, read a 2003 World Hum interview with him, or his dispatch from Thailand, Signs of Confusion.