Creating A Monthly Budget to Get The Most International Travel!

Creating a monthly budget to get the most out of international travel has been no doubt the biggest contribution to getting our dream of international travel to fruition; but it took us a bit to get here!

Some people say Material ‘things’ may make you happy but as a retired senior couple creating a monthly budget was essential for us in planning for our international travel adventures! Would we be one of those traveling couples who could leave their material possessions behind to travel? The simple answer is YES!

We had an epiphany of sorts that made us realize that material things meant nothing in the grand scheme of life. Sure we need food, shelter, water, transportation, etc but can we live without all the other extra stuff? We quickly realized that we are quite happy with being the owners of our own destiny +& what we could fit into our backpack & suitcase.

We made plenty of notes & had a pretty clear picture about what the things senior travelers needed to do to travel internationally, but we hadn’t really created a monthly budget on the costs involved. I admit that saying create a monthly budget was easier said than done. But when The Big Guy sets his mind to something….well lets just say the numbers were a real eye opener for our international travel adventures.

Our Life as Seniors BEFORE Creating A Budget!

We worked hard & struggled to pay off our house early thinking we would have a cash windfall, since we had no monthly mortgage. The real shocker for me was that no mortgage payment sounds good, but the reality was we still had to pay real estate taxes, property insurance & utilities to keep the house up & running! Yikes, the property taxes alone was enough to make us second guess if we would even be able to keep the house on our estimated monthly retirement income. Honestly, I just feel horrible for seniors who have paid their homes off because we know they continue to struggle to make ends meet into their elder years trying to keep their heads above water just to keep the home they paid off years ago!! They have their reasons for staying in their home & I get that but getting a full-time job after retiring to make ends meet just didn’t make sense to us.

What we did as Seniors to prepare for in creating a monthly budget!

Simply put, we knew that it was more than just creating a monthly budget – we would have to live with that budget so first phase was just to continue to curb any unnecessary spending. We used every dollar we could find to pay off credit card debt. It was a struggle but we did it. Now that we look back on the number of years we paid high interest on those card cards, we know that credit card debt had no place in our future travel budget so paying off debt was already on our plates. What I’m saying is paying off debt is no easy task & it took a bit of time but we got it done. Believe me when I tell you how stress free it feels knowing that you have no monthly credit card payments due!

Before we put our home on the market, I put feelers out that we were selling our house along with every piece of furniture, decor, etc in house. We Sold EVERYTHING in our house by word of mouth & garage sales – if it didn’t sell we donated it. Luckily the real estate market was in a good spot which made for a quick sale enabling us to pay off all remaining debt.

We sold our vehicles within the last couple days before we caught our first international flight. The money we saved from not having monthly car maintenance & auto insurance payments went toward our international transportation costs.

Creating our monthly budget for international travel!

We actually didn’t start a monthly budget until we hit Mexico last year. We wanted to track our expenses to see what the real cost would be. Problem was the ‘loose’ tracking we did. Oh, we knew most of what we spent but we didn’t have the full picture.

Jump ahead a month & The Big Guy got our budget on paper! To get to this point we read the fine print on every recurring insurance policy or subscription service we had. If it no longer benefited us or was not valid outside the United States, we canceled it. We canceled subscriptions that we had forgotten we even had [small $ amounts can easily be missed]! Blah, blah, blah, we fine tuned our expenses down to a list of Needs/Wants/Savings using a loose version of the 50/30/20 Budget Rule.

The 50/30/20 BUDGET RULE guides you thru determining your Needs [50% of your budget], Wants [30% of your budget] & Savings or Repayment of Debt [20% of your budget]. The 50/30/20 Rule is AMAZING! The beauty of this Rule is it is not in stone. Check out our video at end of this post for a visual.

Our budget ended up 55/33/12 as it is streamlined to our expenses. We as seniors naturally have different Needs or more Needs vs say a 40 or even 50 year old but the budget fits us perfectly.

Here is a look at our Needs: Housing – Utilities – Groceries – Medical/health insurance & Transportation.

Here is a look at our WANTS: Clothing, entertainment {excursions}, subscriptions, personal care {mani/pedis, salon}, etc. Anything that you might want on a monthly basis. You do You!

Lastly, the Savings/Repayment of Debt: Monthly transfer to savings or investment.

It may take a minute to get your Budget to make sense but…

Again, the beauty of a budget is that you can review periodically & see if you should revise amounts or delete a category. For example, we do have an entry for Laundry under ‘Wants’. We haven’t had to pay for laundry for months but the money is still allocated there as we know we may need laundry services at our next stop.

All I can say is honestly the 50/30/20 Budget Rule was a WINNER with us! We have a limited monthly income that allows us live quite comfortably using our monthly budget as a guide in spending. Take care, happy traveling & be safe.

Here is a short video we did on Budgeting that will give you a visual.