twelve countries twelve months

I was both looking forward to, and dreading, living to a budget in roughly equal measures. I’m still not quite sure if I love it or hate it, but it is certainly a change recording everything you spend. Whether it be 20 pounds on a bus or 20 pence to spend a penny! As it turns out Rach is much better than me at jotting it all down – I think she may have a hidden talent as an auditor!

After almost a month away we are doing pretty well and surviving on about 60% of our daily budget, although this may be a false economy as we think Colombia is going to be one of the cheapest countries that we visit. Here are a few tricks we have learnt so far:

1. Do we really need water?

We realised after a few days that we were on course to spend well over 1000 pounds on water over the year. We decided we couldn’t really stop drinking water altogether, and we didn’t want to test how robust our typhoid and diphtheria vaccinations were, so that ruled out drinking the tap water. The only remaining solution was to buy this weird purified water sold in plastic bags (yes plastic bags!) and decant.

2. Stop Rob being so greedy

I like my food and like to have three hearty meals a day (and snacks in between if possible) so was not very agreeable when Rach suggested we could save money by cutting back to 1 meal every 2 days!

I’m going to have keep a handle of this kind of suggestion from Rach, else next she will be suggesting we cut back to a getting a hotel room only once a week!

We currently seem to be compromising on 2 meals a day with a small snack in place of the third. This is good for the budget, but I’m still not completely happy with the situation, however, I have recently convinced Rach to let us have an emergency biscuit stash, so things are looking up!

3. Love the supermarket

Soon after arriving I realised my packing wasn’t as good as I had thought – I didn’t have any shirts that were cool enough and also hard wearing enough to survive the dusty heat of the Colombian coast. I needed some new T-shirts and fast, but how could I fit this into the tight budget?

There was only one solution, I couldn’t believe I was doing it, it was unthinkable, especially considering my pre-trip mocking of Rach for her love of Primark. I found myself in the clothing aisle of the supermarket, making a purchase – the shame! But job done – two T-shirts up and still under budget.

4. Keep Rach under control

Rach is great at keeping costs under control, until, that is, she spots a nice café or restaurant. When she will think up all sorts of excuses as to how we can afford to go to it (generally involving missing a meal the next day!)

Not many relvant photos for this post, but then the photos we post on the blog are only a small selection anyway. If you are interested in seeing more then have a look at our flickr gallery. The link can be found on the Photos page of this site.

~ by robcheek on August 13, 2009.

Posted in travel
Tags: money