In this three-part series I'm going to finally tell you how to plan around the
world itinerary, how much will it cost and how you can definitely save enough
money to make it happen. I'm going to be approaching this video as if you are
planning a big multi month trip to multiple locations. Extra bonus, all three
of these videos that come with digital downloads. I've got lots of fun spreadsheets for you
that you can check out on our blog so I will link the website down below and if
you are willing to part with your email address we will award you with a couple
freebies down in the description box. The world is a book and those who do not
travel read only a page I'm sure you've heard this cliche st. Augustine travel
quote before. Okay, but do you know how long that book would have to be if it
really was the entire world? No one would even want to open the book! It would be
way too intimidating, way too many pages. Planning a round-the-world trip can be a
daunting task even if you are an experienced traveler just because there
are so many places to visit and let me tell you the more that you travel the
more that you learn about and the less you feel like you've even seen. In this
video we approach planning and itinerary in a systematic manner that helps you
make decisions along the way no matter whether you're traveling solo or with a
friend.
Step one in the process is your destination bucket list this is probably
one of the more fun stages of the process you probably can name a lot of
these off the top of your head because you and maybe your travel partner have
been chatting back and forth of all the places that you want to see and the
things that you want to do when Tim and I were planning our round-the-world trip
that we left on in 2015 and had been planning for and saving for for two
years before that we knew that we want to do things just by conversations that
we were having it was really important to Tim that he go to Oktoberfest in
Munich there I knew I wanted to go to Santorini it was just like the most
quintessential travel destination location that I remember seeing as a kid
during this step of the process even though this is all very conversational
you might already know it in your head start to get these ideas down on paper
somewhere I'm going to give you a location to put all this in just a
second but maybe if you even have just a saved note in your phone of your bucket
list destinations there at least all in one place if you think about something
one time in bed before going to sleep you can add it really quickly to your
bucket list
once you feel like you are out of the daydreaming stage of the process and you
are ready to get started and start planning that is a great time
to use our free downloadable spreadsheet I already mentioned earlier the video
you can go to the blog article in the link in the description box and then
grab is just an Excel spreadsheet this is going to help you start to map out
how all of this is going to fit together in this crazy big puzzle because now in
step two we're going to use all of those bucket list destinations and start to
determine the length of stay at each of these destinations now of course your
list of destinations likely will grow from just these couple big bucket list
activities but before it grows too big we're first going to determine the
length of stay so for an example like we were talking about Tim really wanted to
go to Oktoberfest now did that mean that we needed to spend three weeks in Munich
just to make oktoberfest happened likely not because oktoberfest is incredibly
expensive and that would have drained almost our entire budget just taken
oktoberfest too long so if our trip to oktoberfest meant that
that was going to be three nights in munich then I would put Oktoberfest as
the destination or event not just broad like Germany put Oktoberfest and then
three days look we already have three nights of the trip planned you know
apart from accommodations like all the transportation to get there my example
for Santorini what's an appropriate length of time in Santorini well by the
time you fly to the island or take a ferry from Athens
we'll definitely want to be staying more than one night ten nights on the island
so maybe that's a bit much so since this is such a priority for me I'm going to
put in a number seven so one week in Santorini is just part of my personal
bucket list now already just from two bucket list activities and you might
already have five or ten you can start to see how when I think about this big
picture there's some aspects that start to fall into place and makes
if I'm already going to be in Munich for Oktoberfest perhaps there's other parts
of Germany that I want to explore or hey it's a quick train ride over to Salzburg
and maybe I want to see a bit of Austria while I'm there
not to mention intercontinental flights within Europe are so extremely
inexpensive heck where else in Europe do we want to go visit once we're already
there it's so much cheaper to travel close we know that we're already going
to be in Santorini wouldn't that be a great time to visit Athens as well so
I'll build out the list a little bit by including other destinations that would
be advantageous to have a layover in when I'm visiting these destinations or
just they're close and inexpensive to visit so I'll add them to the list now
with just these two quick bucket list activities we have over two weeks of
travel planned okay I shouldn't say planned we have two weeks of travel
scheduled if we're adding in a couple more destinations especially if they're
on other continents all of a sudden now we are increasing time and budget also
going to want to add at least a window of dates of travel so some specific
events have specific dates Oktoberfest is a great example believe it or not the
festival is actually not in the month of October it is in September so also don't
just assume you know when the festival dates our other events like if you
wanted to you know attend the full moon party in Thailand or the Chiang Mai
Lantern Festival the Hoya and Lantern Festival on the 24th of every month
that's really hard to narrow down especially if you will be visiting
multiple different specific events
similar to the third step the fourth step applies dates to locations based on
weather so it might not be a specific event but in the center any example I'm
not going to a specific event there but there are very specific times of year
when people even travel to Santorini I not even sure that the well maybe the
ferries run a lot of the restaurants and a lot of the hotels are closed
offseason taking shelter season into consideration and visiting locations at
the right time for you or the right time of the type of trip you want to have is
essential for example if you are traveling to Paris and you know that
you'll be wanting to do a lot of sightseeing museum tours food tour you
wouldn't necessarily need to travel in the height of summer with the crowds if
you plan on spending a lot of your time inside maybe it would be better to
travel to Paris in November if you are a museum goer when you're researching
weather for the location the country you plan on visiting might be smaller
geographically than the USA for example that doesn't necessarily mean that the
weather at that location and the entire country is all the same so be as
specific as possible for the weather research on your location another kind
of bonus tip or side step in this process they also want to look at is
different wildlife patterns in that area so there is a lot of wildlife tourism
available to you and you are traveling and if you are going to a destination
because you want to do some type of experience if you are visiting the
Yucatan in Mexico and you want to swim with whale sharks and Alma Harris you
have to be there at the time of year that the whale sharks are passing
through if or if you are heading out on safari in Africa the herds of animals
are doing different things at different times of the year don't I sound like a
wildlife spirit what I do know is that it varies
and you don't want to naively book your trip at a time of year that isn't
catered towards the type of travel that you want to do then the fifth step the
fun part you can start to take this spreadsheet and move pieces around so
let's say that you don't even know when you want to do this trip
now that you've narrowed down the length of stay for different locations and the
time of year that is the best time of year for you to go you can start to map
it out so I would map it out in rows down the list chronologically from when
you'll be traveling so if you plan on leaving in July you can start your first
month in July and start to piece all the things together okay Europe July 7 days
here 10 days here 7 days here ok now it's working into October we're gonna
want to start to leave Europe if we don't want to be there when it's too
cold and that would be a great time to head to Southeast Asia
and another tip that I just thought about while I'm editing make sure you're
also documenting the visa requirements of the country that you're planning on
going to so we've been talking a lot in this video about Europe for the u.s. we
only have 90 days in Europe so make sure that you're staying within your visa
requirements you guys know that we've traveled a lot with in Vietnam Vietnam
only a 30-day visa on arrival you need to get an e visa Bob I won't go into all
the details right here but just make sure that you aren't exceeding the visa
limitations within the country you're traveling and coming from just a planner
someone that just likes I mean I made this a spreadsheet for goodness sake I
like planning but what I will say to you is do not over plan your trip the only
way that you can kind of get bogged down into trouble is if you over plan travel
is so flexible especially in other parts of the world
I'm UK you guys can like last minute booked a flight in Europe anywhere you
want in this an expense for the US you know you're going to
spend $400 if you book a flight last minute to travel domestically just get
that out of your head there is always a cheap way to get to your next
destination in many other places in the world so don't feel like you need to
plan all of your activities your accommodation or your transportation in
advance when we traveled on our 10 month trip around the world in 2015 and 2016
we booked the long-haul flights in advance because those were the most
expensive and we were also using credit card points to book those so when you're
using credit card points to book you want to book them far in advance to make
sure that you get a you know a good deal on your points from there that set the
framework for us and it was really easy then to start to make smaller plans
within the confinements of those big long-haul flights for really inexpensive
countries like for us in Vietnam we don't even book accommodations until
like the day before we're there and the reason for that is because we don't
necessarily know how long we're gonna be staying somewhere we don't know if we're
gonna have food poisoning we don't know if we're gonna be jet-lagged so on this
last trip to Vietnam we just booked our flight there we booked the first two
nights and then that was about it we knew where we were going to be and what
we wanted to do and if we were staying at a competitive price e hotel like when
we stayed at Tobi's eco-lodge we had reservations there for a specific date
but those eight days in between and we didn't have concrete plans I love
talking money and in the second part of this series we're gonna dive into how to
budget for all of these destinations using the same spreadsheet so I'll see
you in the next video
you