I love to travel, but it has one huge, insurmountable drawback: it costs money. Yes, there are writers out there who claim you can travel for next to nothing but they are either outright lying or trying to sell you something; usually both. Yes you can and should spend much less than the average person when traveling but traveling costs money. You can talk a tough line of stoic bare-bones travel stories, going all Jack Kerouac or vagabonding but the reality is you need to pay to eat and pay to be someplace and pay to move from place to place, unless you walk or hitchhike–the former largely impractical, the latter fraught with perils. Money for travel is over and above the money for everyday life. You still have to pay rent or the mortgage at your home while you travel and keep the utilities on, pay insurance, etc. The Big Ride was possible because we were able to live without rent and utilities for three months, which is not something we can do every year. The budget will be much smaller, but one can’t not travel!
