Planning For The Unknown

Written by Karen

Our Packs

Optimism abounds with numbers, budgets, itineraries, rail/plane schedules, ideas, suggestions, things to do, places to see; all considered, some kept, some tossed aside. A Gap Year. Wow, time to go slow, explore, savor life. 

We both now maintain long lists of computer bookmarks to travel events for 2012, newspaper articles, travel blogs, couple travel blog sites and general research of places and activities that interest us. We have created multiple “To-Do” lists.  Somehow, this will all have to come together into some coherent plan.  It’s T-minus 6 months until life as we know it begins to change.  

Orsay Museum, Paris

Eventually, sooner rather than later, I should probably put together everything that we’ve gathered on excel spreadsheets, word documents or folders, assign dates, who is going to do what, break down the information into countries, or regions, or something easily accessible when we are on the road  – but doesn’t that feel like a work assignment?  Am I over-thinking this?  Making it more complicated than it is?  Our goal for this trip is to go slow, blend into the culture as much as possible, take life as it comes, see and experience whatever makes itself known to us, be on unscheduled time, and figure out what our next life chapter will look like.  

Salzburg, Austria

But, I’ve always been a planner, especially with the financial stuff.  I love to “crunch the numbers”, figure it out, and come up with the end result.  Develop a plan.  And a plan B.  And, even a plan C.  

And my number crunching reflects that. I’ve determined what our actual costs are: the annual costs of maintaining our home and life not covered by the rental income; the expected costs: the annual costs of travel, transportation, food, miscellaneous, and entertainment for the two of us; and, the worst-case scenarios of both.  What has to be shifted around; how much savings we will have to dip into...

But – and this is a big but – I also know that you can shift things around on the ground to make up for unexpected costs, or the occasional splurge. After all, this will probably be one of those watermark trips. The overused slogan of a “Trip of a Lifetime” might actually be appropriate in this regard. So, it’s about finding a balance between budget and experience.  

After reading some good couple blogs out there… A big shout out to those who went before and spend a lot of time putting information out into the internet universe. Many thanks to all of you. Doing a “gap year” when you are past your early twenties or before you retire in your sixties, isn’t widely done, accepted, or even understood in the United States. These couples have done it and have generously shared their experiences and information.  

Our travel budget is roughly $38,325. This breaks down in the following ways: 365 days at $105/day; or 90 days at $150/day and 275 days at $90/day; or 90 days at $175/day, 125 days at $90/day and 150 days at $75/day. We can control how much we spend by how much time we stay in a particular city, area or region. The lower cost regions will offset the higher cost regions, and hopefully, will eventually balance out at around $105/day.

We have additional funds available if I’m completely off base or if we want to splurge a bit, but based on everything that I’ve read, I think we should be ok.  This travel budget doesn’t include the costs that we are absorbing in advance.  Costs like our one-way plane ticket to Paris, some of the apartments that we already made arrangements for, visas, shots, etc.  So, this is a rough guesstimate.  But, I think we are not too far off the mark. 

River Seine, Paris

For example, Europe is pretty pricey. You’d think that we’d be up in the $150 - $175/day. And you can, pretty easily. But, by looking a little deeper and thinking more like a local, rather than a tourist, I think you can find some deals. We have rented a self-accommodating flat in Rennes, France for two weeks for around $56/night. We’ve also rented a self-accommodating flat in Budapest, Hungary for 3-1/2 weeks for around $42/night. In both cases, because we were staying longer than a few days, we were able to negotiate a better price. The pictures of the apartments look great, but it is still a leap of faith as there are no reviews to look at or to consider. Both of these apartments were found “off the beaten track” and not on the typical tourist vacation websites. (The Google Translate tool is a great resource to help you with the communication part. I had visions of getting “lost in translation”, so I used pretty simple sentences. It seemed to work out ok.) When we arrive at these locations, we’ll explore the area by walking, sipping coffee, people watching, cooking our own food, and trying our best to blend into the community. Our daily costs shouldn’t be that much more proportionately than our current daily lives are now.    

Salzburg, Austria

I have found from my research into planning for the unknown that you may find more options than you would have expected if you take the time to dig around a bit, begin thinking of yourself as a local in a bigger community, read what other people have experienced, and be willing to take a chance.