Can I afford to travel to …….?
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How Can we Know
if we Can Afford to travel to any Destination?
-> Our Trick is Calculating the Food Cost in that destination:
Way back in the days, the question “Can I afford to travel to this place?” came to mind whenever I saw a social media post about a travel destination or just a thought of going travelling to another country.
How do I know if I can afford the travel destination? The answer is almost straight forward, well at least, for me. Majority of your cost of travel would be on transportation (flight, bus or train), food and accommodation.
By now, most of us already know that we can check on cheap flight or transportation tickets online, and also accomodation could be from a Hotel, Motel, B&B or a Hostel stay. But how do we know if we can afford the food cost in the particular destination?
I personally use the McDonald’s chain of restaurants website food prices to scale-up how much I could possibly spend in the particular destination. Why McDonald’s? Because they are almost everywhere (except North Korea, Bolivia, Ghana, Macedonia, Bermuda, Zimbabwe or Iceland data from year 2020).
Choose your Favourite Brand:
Just to make things clear, I’m neither suggesting you to eat McDonald’s for your travels nor promoting McDonald’s food. You could also use other food outlets such as Costa Coffee, Starbucks, Five Guys Burger, Chilli’s, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Carl’s Jr, Jollibee or any other international brands that you’re familiar with and the ones that has a restaurant in your particular destination.
If can’t think of any, zoom-in on the destination city on GoogleMaps, you could see the food outlet symbols, pick one that you’re most familiar with and check out their online menu (with prices).
For example :
You’re living in the UK (GBP – British Pound Sterling) and going to visit Prague (CZK – Czech Koruna).
For you to buy yourself a standard ‘McDonald’s Big-Mac Burger‘
On the UK website – GBP3.75
On the Prague website – CZK85.00 (or GBP2.70)
With this scale, you can check if you can afford meals in Prague. If your destination’s prices are lower, you can definitely afford the food there.
Now, compare that to Japan – JPY390 (Japanese Yen) or GBP2.93
or
Going to Bali (Indonesia) – Rp35,000 (Indonesian Rupiah) or GBP1.69
Well, you get the idea, and yes, that’s still affordable on my scale.
And…
Do note that these currency exchanges were converted directly on Google and some prices are just an example figure, and does not reflect actual pricing on website.
Also, just so you know, McDonald’s in airports tend to be more expensive that the ones on high-street due to the taxes and their expensive premise rental rates.
This is one of the best ways of eliminating the worry that your food costs to break your bank on your travel whether its a week or a month long.
Best case scenario, you’d find more cheaper food outlets on that particular trip and most probably they are not listed on GoogleMaps or not have a website or don’t even exist on social media.
If all fails, you can always fall back to shopping at a local supermarket for food such as Carrefour (International), Tesco (International), Franprix (France), Auchan (France), Alcampo (Spain), Sainsbury’s (UK), Albert Heijn (the Netherlands), etc.
We would recommend our readers to try out the local delicacies (within reason -not those ‘exotic’ foods) as that’s part of the main reason of travelling, especially when you’re in a new continent or country that has a very different culture from where you came from.
So with that said, you won’t have to shelf off the idea of exploring the world, visiting more countries and learning new cultures.
» OUR SERVICE : We do offer Travel Planning Services!. If you need any assistance or if you don’t have time to plan for a trip. Click HERE
If you are going to travel, don’t forget to buy a Travel Insurance. You’ll never know what could possibly happen! We recommend you “World Nomads“. They are specialised in insurance for travellers or backpackers who wish to travel around the world without any worries.
