Japan-Korea 2019: The Budget

Traveling abroad isn’t cheap. As part of preparations for my potential return trip to Japan and Korea this year I’ve been saving up money and trying to figure out roughly how much the trip will cost. Thankfully I kept very careful track of all the expenses I incurred during my 2017 journey so I have something of a baseline that I can use to make some estimates. The total cost of my 6-week trip in 2017 came out to approximately $4,766.82. To be on the safe side, and for the sake of simplicity, I’ll round that up to $4,800. Based on this, if my potential trip is shorter than 6 weeks then I’ll need less than about $4,800 while if it’s longer I’ll need more.

My ideal journey through Japan and Korea, as laid out in The Dream Route, would last about 2-3 months. At the long end this new journey would be about twice the length of the 2017 one, but that doesn’t mean the cost would be automatically double of the previous trip. When I travel abroad my big expenses are almost all paid for at the start of the journey, so adding length to a trip only increases the budget by moderate amounts per week. The Dream Route also has the advantage of being more efficient than my 2017 journey in terms of how I’ve laid out the overall path, so I’ll not incur a few of the expenses I had in 2017 and thus save a little money that can be applied elsewhere. This might be rather bold, but as I’ve been thinking more about this trip I honestly think I could pull off the Dream Route with a budget of about $7,000 total. With that said, I’m thinking I should try to save up around $8,000 to be on the safe side. If the journey ends of being shorter then I’ll have plenty of funds available and if the opportunity for a full 3-month trip arises than I’ll be able to take it without fear of going broke while overseas. And should the worst happen and I’m unable to take this trip in the first place then I’ll have some money saved up that I can use for things like purchasing a new computer or finally replacing my car.