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Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

> travel a lot. That takes money.

Not at all. If you talk to a few dozen people who "traveled a lot" before they turned 30 (including me, the person to whom you're replying), the single most common thread in all those stories will be how cheaply they did it.

Life on the road costs ~$500/month. Life in an apartment costs ~$2000/month. One of the simplest ways to save money when you're not working is to ditch all your possessions at home and go find a nice cheap tropical beach to park it on.

Having "retired at 30", using the author's definition and a similar methodology, you'd be surprised at how much living I did along the way and have done since.

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$500/month? But a simple train ticket that takes you 600km away will set you back $100. Here in Europe at least.

And I probably spend $500/month just on food and caffeine.

Hell, the basic government fees (insurance, pension etc.) to keep my sole proprietorship running costs me 300 euro/month. I really don't see how you could live on the road on $500/month, you're making stuff up.

Sure, but how much are trains and coffee in Thailand? China? India? Malawi?

There's a lot of world out there beyond Europe. For the vast majority of it, $500 goes a long way.

Try to keep in mind that there are lots of things that are possible that you don't yet know how to do. It sounds like you're just now learning that you can travel cheaply on the road (from people who have actually done so, no foolin'). Rather than accuse us of lying to you, you might be better served taking some of it on board.

Then book a flight out here. I'll use 1/1000th of my monthly budget to buy you a beer!

I live half the year in Vietnam, half the year in NYC. I'm mildly frugal, but Vietnam still runs me about $2K a month, $1.2k if I don't leave my apartment. NYC, a frugal month costs me $3.5k.

SE Asia is cheap, but its not as cheap as people think it is.

My wife and I spent a month in Thailand a few years back. We paid $120 for an apartment in Bangkok for the month, including utilities, and spent about $6/day on food. Travel to and hotels in Laos, N. Thailand, a beach town, and Cambodia probably cost us about $300.

I do speak the language, but that only helped with finding a cheap (i.e. Thai-priced) place to rent.

> a few years back

There you go. Things develop at light speed down here in SE Asia!

That being said, GP's version of Vietnam living is perhaps like my Phnom Penh version: "costing as I would in Europe, but get way more bang for the buck" (to qualify---not that kind of bang, thank you very much..)

So down here I can get a furnished condo thingy with pool/gym/view/flatscreen/balcony for the same bucks that would get me an unfurnished hole without all of these in say Berlin, to not even mention other parts of Europe.

BUT, it's still a multiple of $120. If I were harder-pressed financially, indeed $120 would also rent me .. "something".

I knew a guy that would spend half the year living in Bali. He's a trippy-hippy dude who makes his money doing astrology readings.

Even though it didn't really fit in to how he wanted to live his life, he ended up getting a local housekeeper. She'd basically just do all of his shopping (groceries, clothing, whatever) and pay the local price, rather than the tourist price. With the money he saved, he paid her above market rates and still managed to save money on the whole deal.

Yeah, I agree. Don't spend money seeing Europe until you are old and have money. You won't be able to properly enjoy Europe unless you can stop worrying about your daily spend. Places like Laos and Bolivia are the way to go when you're young: super cheap and lots of adventure!

It's fairly self-evident that some places are cheaper to travel (SE Asia, South America) than others (Western Europe, Japan).

Most 20-something backpackers choose to travel to places like SE Asia precisely because it is cheaper.

It's nice to be able to do a mix of both though, there are definitely interesting and worthwhile places to visit that are also unfortunately more expensive (Japan comes to mind!).

> $500/month? But a simple train ticket that takes you 600km away will set you back $100. Here in Europe at least.

I'm from Europe (NL) and some friends of mine did pretty much that, during college. I don't know exactly how they did it, sorry, travelling's not for me so I didn't pay attention to all the details, but they did pull off travels for very cheap.

One trick is, there's a lot more to trains and public transport (also busses--yes it may not always be comfortable) than first meets the eye. Check out local and national train company websites, ask around at the station where they sell (sometimes you get a really nice person behind the desk, and they'll help you out way beyond expectations, pay attention to what they do and what it's called, so you can order that ticket again). There's probably a bunch of Internet forums sharing tricks as well. I've booked 17h return train trips to Vienna for about 70 euros.

Another trick is sharing rides, if you need to get around in Germany (to and/or from neighbouring countries), try mitfahrgelegenheit.de, it's a carpooling website. At first I thought it'd be crazy unsafe, but I've met the coolest people on those trips.

> I've booked 17h return train trips to Vienna for about 70 euros.

Yes, and that's about $100 :) Well okay, it's $91.

Anyway you're right about carpooling. I've noticed that when you're traveling in a group of more than 2 and less than 5, a car is always the best and cheapest option.

Back then it was even more! ;-)

Part of this affordable "life on the road" concept might also be the fact that gas prices in the US are about 2.5x as cheap as they are in Europe.

(this is always a fun conversion: https://www.google.com/search?q=1.70+euro+per+liter+in+dolla... not sure if that's the most recent gas price here, but it should be about right. This gives $8.36/gallon, and a quick google for gas prices in New York tells me they pay $3.60/gallon)

And combined with the exorbitant rent those guys pay.

I've talked to a New Yorker visiting Ljubljana, he was extremely excited about getting a flat for 1700eur/month because that was about half his NYC rent. It was probably one of the ten most expensive flats you can get in Ljubljana. And we have exorbitant rent prices compared to the rest of my home country.

So yeah, I can easily see how an american would think living on the road is super cheap compared to staying home.

New York City is the single most expensive place to live on the continent. It hardly affects how "an American" would think anything.

Hah, my luxurious studio apartment in Greece (new, fully furnished/decorated, good area, next to the sea) is 400 euros/month.

hi, can you elaborate a bit on this? is that countryside seaside or some major city? would love to try Greece. Going to Bulgaria for the next 3mo atm.

It's Thessaloniki, the second largest city. Countryside will run you around 150/200 euros/month. I'm not sure how much seaside will run you, but they get expensive in the summer.

> $500/month? But a simple train ticket that takes you 600km away will set you back $100. Here in Europe at least.

If you hitchhike, walk, or bicycle, you can avoid the trains. Even if you take a train every three weeks, that's only US$130 out of your US$500 budget.

> Hell, the basic government fees (insurance, pension etc.) to keep my sole proprietorship running costs me 300 euro/month.

Typically backpackers pay very little in taxes because they aren't making any money, or if they are, they're doing it under the table.

> I really don't see how you could live on the road on $500/month, you're making stuff up.

No, there are a lot of people who do this. You should meet some of them. Sign up with Couchsurfing and host them.

Eurobus is so comfortable and inexpensive, I frequently found myself opting to spend more nights asleep on the bus when a comfortable hostel bed was available. I've done less than $500/mo in South America and S.E. Asia (Much nicer tropical beaches and interesting places).

Also, American's wouldn't be spending 300 euro / month on insurance / etc. (Presuming this because the figure was quoted in dollars).

I really liked the link though. I think I've done almost everything on that list.

I'm very curious about how you traveled for so cheap in South America. Could I ask you to elaborate? What did you do, mainly (sleep in hotels, stay in appartments in cities, travel around by bus/car/bicycle, backpack and sleep in tents, ...)?

Based on what I saw traveling through South America for 5 months, $500 would be a stretch in Chile, Argentina or Brazil. A hostel or a really cheap apartment would probably be 2/3rds of that alone... especially as a white dude. You might be able to swing it in a place like rural Bolivia or an (for lack of a better work) economically depressed country in Central America (Panama, Guatemala), but I wouldn't really want to try. Think about it... your budget is $16/day. You'd basically be eating empanadas or similar for every meal, you'd have no travel budget, you'd be stuck living in either a really, really crappy apartment with 10 roommates or a hostel dorm... and even then it would be close. Honestly, a much more reasonable budget, where you would actually be able to enjoy your time and not stress about budget, safety and turning down a bunch of awesome experiences (soccer matches, trips to national parks, wine tasting...) is probably 2k/mo.

I speak Portuguese, which allows you to use websites like easyquarto to rent rooms at market value. R$1,000 is a typical monthly wage in most of the interesting parts of Brazil ($500US), and cost of living in Brazil has outpaced Chile and Argentina in recent years, although I'm not arguing I'm exempting Rio & BA since the cost of living is somewhat inflated. I've been to every part of Brazil on that budget (Outside of holidays), including airfare (Once you learn the pricing system), Even the super expensive island of Fernando de Noronha. We all cooked our own meals, with enough left over to splurge 2-3 times per week. In most places, travelers pay a steep premium for inexperience.

It is HIGHLY variable. A few years ago, Brazil was dirt cheap. Now, U$ 500 on Argentina would go a LONG way and will definitely get you there (if you avoid the "official" exchange rate) but Brazil is really expensive now and doesn't sound doable on U$ 500.

It fluctuates :)

When you travel on budget, you usually don't take trains, but hitchhike. And you can always get a bed with couchsurfing.org

Hitchhiking is pretty dangerous. Better to use a car-sharing board. I once took a long-distance Greyhound bus to Florida at Christmas, which was filled with homeless wanderers who had splurged for the bus ticket because they said hitchhiking was too dangerous. It isn't an option at all for women and most of the men had stories about being robbed, aggressively solicited for sex, or even having been shot at while walking roadside.

Hitchhiking has never been dangerous. Why would you take the word of homeless people you met on a bus over stats you can easily find online?

http://wandrlymagazine.com/article/roadtrips/hitchhiking/

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/10/10/where-have-all-the-hi...

http://www.socresonline.org.uk/6/3/chesters.html

Not my experience at all, having hitchhiked quite a bit in Europe and the US. Same with my friends, some of them female. This is pure speculation, but maybe these "homeless wanderers" we're too easily spotted as potential victims? If you are young, fit, smart and confident the risk of hitchhiking is totally, OK in my opinion. What I also like about hitchhiking these days, is that there a few hitchhikers but many car drivers who hitchhiked when they were young. People like to give back :-) The main reason I prefer car-boards, trains or planes these days, is that its faster and much easier to predict when you will arrive. I have more money and less time. But if it was hitching or not travelling at all, I would choose the former.

Not completely true. I live in Sydney and my friend came from France hitchiking, except for boats between Malaysia and Perth. He did all the countries in *kstan.

Can you show me an example of a car-sharing board? A quick google search showed me I obviously don't know what to search for.

Not true. I've traveled for months through S. America and Europe. Of the dozens of people we met, never were any of the hitchhiking as the primary method of transportation.

I travelled around the middle east for 6 months spending $100 per month in 1997. I hitch hiked and slept with Bedouin or in monasteries. It is possible in other parts of the world too - maybe not Europe though. Save Europe for when you are rich.

How did the sleeping with Bedouins thing work? Do you, like, walk into a coffee house in a Bedouin neighborhood and hope to meet someone who will invite you to stay at their house? Or is it more a meeting on the road kind of thing? Do the monasteries charge you hotel-room-like fees, or do you have to belong to their religion, or what?

Well...there are no Bedouin neighborhoods. I am talking about Bedouin that are still Bedouin traveling around in the desert. So yes...meet them, befriend them...sleep the night and get fed. But sometimes you can stay a week or so and help work, etc. Let them know where you want to go and they will tell you how to get there..and hook you up with more contacts. Sometimes those are family that live in towns and you stay with them at their house. The monasteries and convents were about $10 to even 7$ a night in Syria and Jordan and included a clean room and a breakfast. Convents were generally about $5 more expensive and the women there were kind of mean.....so we went to the monasteries most often.

We did meet people on the road that helped us out too...but most of the time is was from walking around in the remote parts of a town or area and looking lost or walking up to a Bedouin tent.

Cool, that sounds wonderful! Did you speak Arabic before you got there?

Your numbers are very skewed. Those are not average. Living on $500/m is going to significantly restrict the places you can go. "Apartment life" doesn't need to cost $2000/m unless you live in a very expensive city. Get roommates, eat at home, use public transportation / bicycle / motorcycle / scooter or an inexpensive car.

Traveling can cost significantly less than most people expect when you use points / miles and avoid hotels.

You can still visit Switzerland while living on $500 per month, especially if you can manage to avoid hotels. You probably can't stay there too long, but you can visit.

He's right. If you travel to the right places when you're young, you will actually spend less than if you were just carrying on with your life as usual. I did an around the world trip when I was 23 and only spent $8000 total (5 months on the road and 13 flights).

We like to travel (most widely in Central America)and always have, over the last three decades. And we do not generally go out of our way to stay in resorts or spend money wastefully. One way too common problem with coming across "shoe-string" and "Lonely Planet" travelers is how insanely boring they are, where every experience boils down to how cheaply they pulled it off.

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