Well, we’ve been on the road for a few days now, and it dawned on me that we never quite finished our pre-trip “how-to” type posts. So today, we’re officially releasing our daily budget.

Our daily budget for two people is $100 Canadian Dollars per day. This figure includes airfare, food, lodging, new clothes, replacing stolen cameras, and each and every other expense we may incur on the road.

To keep on budget, we have the following tricks up our sleeve that we intend to use at some point:

• Volunteer in exchange for food and lodging, or a portion there of.
• Avoid pre-arranged tours, and the tour operator’s cut.
• Travel overland where possible, avoiding expensive flights.
• Buy groceries and cook for ourselves more often than not (we love cooking anyways).
• Do our own laundry.
• Don’t buy “stuff” unless necessary.
• Couchsurfing.
• Stay in locations long enough to get a good price on accommodation. Often there are discounts for stays of a week or longer, over a month apartments can generally be rented cheaply.

Our running daily total can be found on our statistics page. Ashley diligently writes down our expenditures in a little notebook and later transfers them to a nifty little site called budgetyourtrip.com, so we always know how far above or below our goal we are.

Country Summary (so far):

These numbers do not completely jive with our goal, as they do not include airfare, or other transportation between countries.  But none the less, they give you an idea of what it costs by day for the two of us country by country.

Mexico: $51.80 CAD
Guatemala: $43.04 CAD ($24.97 excluding Spanish classes and camera replacement)
Belize: $42.44 CAD
Honduras: $52.97 CAD ($25.28 excluding diving)
Costa Rica: $52.68 CAD
Nicaragua: $31.84 CAD
El Salvador: $23.26 CAD
Austria: $55.00 CAD
Bulgaria: $12.32 CAD (not including buying a house and car)
Turkey: $42.44 CAD

European Cities
Barcelona: $52.97 CAD
Paris: $107.16 CAD
Vienna: $80.01 CAD
Zagreg: $20.97 CAD
Belgrade: $16.73 CAD