<i>Just plan to stop by casinos en route and parlay your dwindling trip funds into a realistic budget!</i>

Aye.

Keep doubling down until you get $24k.

It would help if you gave your thoughts on a couple of tings:

Lodging - not hostels, but cheapest hotels (may often mean no elevator, toilet down the hall and no AC in very hot weather) - are you wiling to live like this?

Are you wiling to eat all your food outdoors or in hotel room - with mostly sandwiches, pizza, crepes etc for 6 months?

Are you willing to do without bar or pub for 6 months?
entrance fees to some of the major sights you want to see?

Do you understand that this means a lot of walking in most cities (bus or Metro is not free) and no shopping at all?

My younger D did about 5.5 weeks last summer - with 2 friends in a triple room in 2* or similar hotels and it cost her about $8K - including no air, but trains across europe, very little nightlife - and in student bars or cafes (no hard liquor) and only about $300 shopping - but lots of sightseeing.

I cannot fathom not stopping by a pub or Biergarten for 6 months. Madness.

As I've already said, the lowest budget anyone would suggest is possible is 50E per day per person. That's hostels, supermarket food and the odd beer. No transportation included. Until sammikins responds to that point, everything else is pointless.

However, I'd like to ask those responding, to raise their hand if they have spent 6 months travelling in an area anywhere themselves. If not, then your comments are NOT based on experience, only your opinion.

Long term travel is not the same as a few weeks or even 6 weeks. Nor is it the same as staying in one place for several months. The biggest mistake that people planning long term travel make is to look at money and time as being fixed along with planning an itinerary. In fact money and time are NOT fixed, they simply have a maximum available. They have NO minimum.

Trying to plan an itinerary for 6 months is fun before you go. Doing the research and getting excited about all the places you want to see is part of the fun of travel. But when you get on the plane to A, the thing to do is throw the plan out the window (figuratively since airplane windows don't generally open).

Long term travel is about freedom. The freedom to get up each morning and say, 'so what do we want to do today?' and then do it. It is about flexibility, not a structured plan. Getting away from everyday life and it's responsibilities and the need to keep to a schedule. Why then, would anyone want to self-impose a schedule on their time?

It requires a different mindset. Many people who travel long term for the first time have a budget and a plan. Few do that the second time around. Long term travel is about winging it and always being open to opportunities. Itineraries put blinders on you to opportunities.

For example, suppose you are sitting somewhere, perhaps a hostel and someone says, 'I've got a VW campervan and I'm looking for a couple of people to share fuel costs. I plan to drive to Pamplona next week for the running of the bulls.'

Someone responds, 'wow, I would love to do that but I can't. I've got a hostel booking in Rome from Friday and a flight to Istanbul on the next Thursday.'

That's a real life example I witnessed some years ago. Rome and Istanbul would still be there next month or next year but what are the chances of someone being offered a free place to sleep in Pamplona during the festival and transportation for just the cost of sharing fuel? That's a missed opportunity. Note the use of the word 'can't', that's the blinders pre-booking and pre-planning put on the person.

Now look at what that lost opportunity also means in terms of time and budget. Taking the opportunity could easily have meant a couple spent 2 weeks doing it for no more than 50E per day for the two of them. That includes being at the festival and drinking wine by the bucketful.

I have personally been offered temporary jobs; fuel sharing; crew berths on yachts; free accommodation and other ways of reducing costs if you are flexible enough to take advantage of the opportunites that come up.

Suppose you come to a small village on the coast of a Greek island. There is a village store where they have 2 studio apartments upstairs they rent out to tourists. They don't advertise them, they aren't on the internet, people just find them. They rent a studio for 25E per night. A bargain. Again, this is a real example that I personally know of.

You might find that room and decide hey, let's stay 2 weeks and explore this area. Again, you'll get by on 50E a day without much difficulty. But you have to have the flexibility to do that. You can't say, 'oh we've got a flight to catch on Wednesday or a hotel booked somewhere on Friday.

Long term travel is as simple or as complicated as you choose to make it. I follow a simple forumula when doing it as I have numerous times.

Buy a one way ticket to A and go. Spend as much money as you have to without throwing your money away and stay until you are ready to leave. When you are ready to move on and not before, decide where you want to go next. Go to B and repeat the process. Continue until either the maximum time you have available or the maximum amount of funds you have available runs out. Go home.

You may run out of money before you run out of time or you may not. It doesn't matter. What matters is whether you got the maximum experience out of each day you spent.

I've met a lot of travellers who were so busy trying to find the cheapest everything in order to try and stick to a budget, they had no time to enjoy where they were. That's pointless.

One thing I can say after having done a lot of long term travel, something ALWAYS happens that is unexpected. If you are in a position to take advantage of those serendipitous events, how long you will be gone and how much you will spend can change dramitically.

Long term travel is NOT a planned tour or package vacation, it is an adventure. An adventure by definition requires two things. The unknown and risk. That's why 'a traveller never knows where he's going'.

Either you are getting dumber, improviser... Or I have gotten smarter... As I finally understood one of your posts.

You make some great points... I have a friend who took a year off work and travelled (she actually worked for me, we gave her a one year unpaid leave).

But she did fix a few points along the way... She bought an around the world ticket as I recall... But only fixed 3 or 4 legs... Other than that, she was completely flexible... And she set up to teach school in Nepal for a month.

She returned a completely different person, within 6 months resigned, and moved to Australia to train as a vintner.... I think she married a New Zealander... And is still in that part of the world.

sounds like myself - took a leave of absence from teaching high school and bought an around the world ticket with major parts overland - came back and quit the teaching job to be a travel writer - I'd be zillions of bucks ahead with teaching but would never ever trade that for the priceless memories of traveling the world. Go for it.

Personally, I would never tie myself in to a RTW ticket regardless of how easy (debateble)some say it is to change a flight along the way.

It assumes you will continue in the same direction, never want to backtrack and will finish within the allotted time (usually 1 year max).

Here is a scenario. Someone is on a RTW ticket starting in N. America and going first to Europe. After 2 months of bumming around s/he ends up sitting in a taverna in Greece somewhere. A guy at the bar says he has a sailboat in the harbour and plans to spend the next month sailing back to Gibraltar before heading out the straits to the Canaries and then making the passage back across the Atlantic to the Caribbean for the winter. He is, by the way, looking for crew to join him.

That is again, a real life example I have seen happen. What's more, I've seen similar things several times but in different places. So what does your RTW ticket holder do? Say, 'I'm your new crew, when do we sail?' or does s/he say, 'Oh, I can't go, I've paid for a RTW ticket and I would have to lose the money it cost me. I've only used 1 flight to get to Europe.'

I've had numerous arguments with people about buying return tickets or RTW tickets. They're fine if you want to go on a 'tour' or 'vacation' of predetermined places over a predetermined amount of time. They're useless if you want maximum flexibility and particularly over a longer period of time. One way ticket to A and wing it from there, that's travelling.

I once left 'home' with no thought in mind but 'to do some travelling'. It was 14 years till I returned. I once went to a place expecting to spend a week or so seeing the place. I stayed 7 years. When I would meet tourists who heard I had been there several years (it was a highly touristed place), they would often ask, 'what made you decide to stay here?' I honestly answered that I had never decided to stay as a conscious decision. I simply hadn't decided to leave yet. In fact when I did decide to leave it was only a week between decision and leaving. I had not put down any real roots.

But that kind of independence to travel for an unlimited time comes only with financial independence. It makes the concept of 'home' a whole other subject.