I’ve been running this Cheapest Destinations blog since 2003 and the 4th edition of my international travel book will come out soon, so I’ve heard more than my share of excuses on why people can’t or don’t travel.

In all fairness, some of the reasons are really legit. “I’m a convicted felon” is one that may give you some visa trouble. “I can’t leave the country until the custody case is settled” is reasonable. “I don’t really enjoy packing up and leaving home” was a response from a friend that I really didn’t have an answer to. Fair enough. We can’t assume everyone likes to travel.  And some people really can’t. There are not many travel agencies in Cuba or North Korea.

If you live in a free country and want to travel but don’t, however, the excuses you give are probably the same ones I’ve heard 100 times. Apparently these 71 other travel bloggers have heard the same ones too as their sample excuses and responses are amazingly consistent.

The b.s. travel excuses

1) I can’t afford it.

2) I don’t have the time.

3) I’m (scared about) not good at foreign languages

4) My family wouldn’t approve (I’m scared to leave my family).

Why these travel excuses are usually b.s.

1) Unless you’re in such poverty that you can barely afford groceries, you can afford to travel. Because if you choose the right places, it’s cheaper than being home. Try shopping less, buying fewer gadgets, brewing your own coffee—in other words, prioritizing. Do some basic research and you’ll find ways to couchsurf, get free flights, work abroad, and in general get by for far less than you’re getting by now. If you have a job you can do from anywhere, you’re just plain nuts to live out all your years in an expensive country anyway.

2) If you’ve been in your job a year at least and don’t have a couple weeks to travel, something is seriously wrong. If you’re self-employed, even worse. That’s called not taking the time; it’s not a lack of time. Nobody is so important in their position that they can’t take a couple weeks to travel unless they have “president” or “prime minister” next to their name. If you’re worried nobody will miss you if you leave and you’ll be easily replaced with another warm body, then you’re not making much of an impact when you’re there are you?

3) Based on my 20-odd years of travel, you can get by with English alone in about 90% of the places you’ll go on this planet as a tourist, with Spanish taking care of another 5 or 6%. So unless you’re going to visit rural China or some undiscovered tribal region, I think you’ll survive. If you’ll be somewhere more than a couple weeks, you can pick up some basics with minimal effort and a phrase book. Heck, these days you can even take a real-time translator on a smart phone, Star Trek style.

4) I’ve heard so many iterations of this sequence now it’s become a short story I could write in my sleep. Daughter (it’s usually a woman) announces to her family that’s she’s going backpacking for a month, for the summer, maybe even for a year. A family member (usually the mother) responds that it’s a horrible idea, that she’ll be raped or killed, that she’s abandoning the family. She forges on and goes anyway, sending them photos along the way about her fantastic time and telling them all the things she’s seen and learned. She returns home looking fit and radiant, she’s worldly-wise, and she’s exhibiting a new self-reliant streak that’s going to help her create success on her own terms in the future. Her parents can’t stop telling their friends about her wonderful adventure and they share her photos with everyone they know.

Of all the 71 responses on that long blog post, which admittedly get a bit redundant, I like this one from Benny at Fluentin3Months the best:

Usually people will latch on to what seems like a totally logical reason to not travel, such as lack of money, no time, unable to get off work, family responsibilities and so on. At times these are legitimate, but many times the true reason they are not following this passion is fear, and the reason they give you when you ask is founded in nothing but this fear.

They can repeat the mantra of “I have no money” all they like, ignoring stark evidence about how they should embrace minimalism and stop buying so much crap, or perhaps they think that learning a language is a rare genetic gift even though over half the population of the planet is multilingual. It’s time they stepped outside of their self-fulfilling prophecies.

Like most things in life, finding the time or money to travel is just like finding the time or money to do anything else worthwhile: buy a house, reach a sales goal, raise a child, get good at a sport, get in shape, learn a language, write a book, finish a painting, dance the tango, or build a fence. Make it a priority and it’ll probably happen. Put it no higher on your list than the latest slightly better gadget Apple is feeding you, then it probably won’t.

Do you want to travel this year or are you just saying it would be nice? Like winning the lottery would be nice?

If you’re not just fantasizing, stop dreaming and start finding ways to make it work. See all the excuses and answers here.

 

How can you afford to travel so long?

That’s a question familiar to anyone who has packed their bag and taken off for months, a year, two years…or more. In the eyes of most infrequent travelers, who only view travel through the lens of a short vacation, it’s an expensive endeavor. You save up all year or you put a fortune on your credit card that takes a year to pay off. So how can you do that for so long?

It’s a very different type of travel, of course, and a different mindset.

Three nights in Orlando equals _____ elsewhere.

I just took my wife and daughter to Universal Studios theme parks in Orlando. We could drive there from where I live now, so let’s take airfare out of the equation and just look at ground costs. I actually got three nights in a very nice hotel for free from winning first prize in a travel writing contest earlier this year. So I paid half this much, but the rate below is what most other guests staying there were paying. Here’s a 3-day tally of the damage (and we spent less on souvenirs and sodas than your typical visitor):

$780  -  Swan & Dolphin hotel 3 nights

$331 – 2-day park pass to Universal Studios & Islands of Adventure (with AAA discount), 3 people

$352 – meals at theme park and hotel

$ 30  -  parking at theme park, 2 days

$ 33 – parking at hotel, 3 days

$ 55 – souvenirs, locker charge, gas, tips, other misc. (No $100 Harry Potter robe purchased)

Grand Total – $1581 for 3 days

So, what do you think a backpacking family of three could do with $1,581? That would cover two weeks to a month in a whole lot of The World’s Cheapest Destinations. Or it could be a darn great week living it up in some of the “honorable mentions” even, like Mexico or Panama.

It’s a different kind of comfort and stimulation, which is part of the equation in long-term travel. But just taking what a typical family spends on the theme park tickets, overpriced meals, and parking for the day would cover a whole lot of thrilling adventure activities in a place like Guatemala, Ecuador, or Vietnam.

One last note: these theme parks are jam-packed every weekend and school holiday with families laying out this kind of money. Recession or not, people are obviously willing to pay a lot—and wait in line a lot—for a few minutes of artificial thrills.

Did we have fun? Absolutely. I love amusement parks and my daughter was overjoyed.

But go travel long-term in cheap destinations and you can make those thrills last much longer. (Well, unless you go to Petra…)

As someone who has a book out called The World’s Cheapest Destinations, I am naturally rather opinionated about which places give travelers the best bang for their budget. The problem with roundups and lists of any kind though is that things are seldom that black and white. The length of your trip matters. The cost to get there matters. How much comfort and convenience you require matters a lot.

So I’m always on the lookout for other well-informed round-ups that at least attempt to back up their assertions with some real numbers. Don’t get me started on those silly “Bargain places to visit this year” that throw in England because the pound is down a bit from its 2-to-1 high against the dollar or New Zealand because flights have dropped below $1,500 a person. (I once had a journalist interview me for one of those articles and she brought up Australia three times. After I insisted the third time that there was no aspect making it a travel bargain, especially factoring in airfare, the article came out featuring four cheap countries plus…Australia.)

Anyway, seven of the ten destinations in this Lonely Planet piece are covered in detail in my book, so it gets the thumbs up: Countries that can still be travelled on the cheap. Two it looks like they just stuck in to be controversial—Iran and Sudan. Boy sign me up for that package deal to Sudan. What a dream! And what a great political statement that would be to help support a war criminal and a Holocaust denier. For Iran they say, “What you won’t find is a glut of other travellers and the hindrance of mass tourism.” Um, maybe because of travel bans and widespread sanctions?

I won’t argue with Poland though. I’ve never had any burning desire to go there, but the countryside is pretty free from tour buses and they do have some good biking greenways.

People send me e-mails every day asking me to talk up their new website, but this one is actually worth mentioning. Called Budget Your Trip, it was put together by someone who obviously has a deep love of Excel and who likes to keep meticulous track of what the couple spent on the road. It’s got lots of holes and you could argue with just about any data point presented, but it’s still a pretty cool way to compare cost estimates across different areas. If you’re equally obsessive, you can use it to track all your travel expenses and then see the results in nifty pie charts.

You can check out the round-the-world cost breakdown from their own trip and see some interesting things. I say in my book that Africa isn’t really cheap despite the poverty and they confirmed that showing that Kenya was the most expensive place they visited on a per-day cost basis, thanks to a safari tour. In Nepal half their budget went to food. In much of Europe half went to accommodation. In Ethiopia half went to intercity transportation.