I understand the fun in planning, oh yes I do. I just think it's too early to stress over the exact amounts for a day-to-day budget. And what others have said: be careful to consider leisure days in all of your planning. Some of my favorite travel memories are composed of the times when things went "wrong" or during my unplanned time. I mean, I missed the last bus back to London from Stonehenge (printing error on my Salisbury bus schedule) and had to hitchhike with a couple who had driven their car over from the Netherlands. They were originally going to drop me off at the train station but we got on so well that they took me all the way to London (where they were going anyway, but still). I am still friends with them--and that never would have happened if everything had gone "right". So let yourself relax as well as get to all of the sites.
But definitely make sure any credit cards you do have (since you plan to pay off all of your debt with your inheritance, which is awesome!) are earning you reward points of some sort. I have paid for entire vacations (a week in Sydney for one) with the Starpoints earned on my Starwood Amex. I think it's a $30 annual fee, but it's well worth it. I use it every time I am going to use cash, and then I head right home and pay it online!
You're going to have a fantastic time, Susan, and I am excited for you. Plan away! It's fun hearing your enthusiasm.
(I guess I should admit up front that though I am a bit of a planner in my usual home life, when it comes to travel, I'm more of a "ooooh, that's a cheap ticket to Switzerland and I've always wanted to ride the trains" kind of girl. I just buy the cheap ticket and deal with whatever budget I have at the moment. When I head to Argentina/Chile later this month, I have a couple of things scouted out, but mostly I am going to play it by ear. Everyone is different in his or her approach and I respect that.)
My new iPhone was paid for entirely with AmEX points. We use our AmEx like a debit card an earn points for EVERYTHING.
I just think it's too early to stress over the exact amounts for a day-to-day budget.
Oh, I'm not doing that--I'm just thinking of trying to get a rough feel for airfare plus a typical day's lodging/travel/food/admissions costs so I can have a broad savings/budget goal.
I get points on my citibank MasterCard and generally trade them in every few months for an Amazon gift card. This time, I spent half the gift card on random stuff I needed but hadn't bought because it seemed like too much money for silly stuff (like a stepstool for my kitchen so that I could reach the top cabinets), and the other half on some jars and stuff for canning, in the hope that I'll can some stuff and have more farm-to-plate food. (Or, well, farm-to-jar-to-plate. Better than farm-to-factory-to-machine-to-warehouse-to-store-to-plate.) (Though I'm currently eating string cheese, so I don't have much of a processed food high horse to stand on.)
Oh, I'm not doing that--I'm just thinking of trying to get a rough feel for airfare plus a typical day's lodging/travel/food/admissions costs so I can have a broad savings/budget goal.
Gotcha. Anywhere the Pound is used, count on 3x the average Seattle price. For instance, if a hotel you like in Seattle is $150, times it by 3 at the least. Meals are expensive too, but there are Pret-a-Mangers all over the places, along with the food section of Marks and Spencer. When I am there for school, I practically live in Marks and Spencer's food section. Unlike the U.S., lodging is not significantly cheaper outside of the main cities. It's just a damned expensive country all around. If you don't mind not having internet, and only need a Motel 6 level of a place to stay, I recommend trying to get a Travelodge room. If you book them enough in advance, they're super cheap. And the one in Covent Garden is pretty awesome.
Hey, I'm a horrible misogynist who hasn't written anything interesting in ages so I have people flumping away from my LJ friends list in disgust. Because I dared write a post that said I dislike some women in general and that the gender-issues analysis of "why I like slash" annoys/bores me.
Wow. I havent been publically hated in decades, this is fun.
Misogynist. Hee.
Oooh! Amelia Earhart biopic!
I wonder if they will cover her time in the Delta Quadrant...
...actually, I found Buffistas via the Guardian, now that I remember - so it's a pretty good matchmaker, all in all.
My interest, she is piqued. How did that work?
I've been told that I need to be more social.
After the Guardian talk, I read that as 'more socialist'.
You know what I'd be really (irrationally) tempted to do if I had a sum of money I was planning to spend in five years on a trip to a foreign country? Invest just that trip fund in bonds or a savings account or something in that currency. Why is that irrational? Because if you were not planning to do high risk currency speculation anyway, the risk of currency losses potential for currency gains is exactly the same regardless of whether you planned to ultimately make expenditures in that currency. And yet the irrational part of me would saying "you are planning to spend in euros. Invest in euros."
Not irrational, in investment terms it's called asset-liability matching. Yes, your chances of financial loss or gain may be roughly the same, but if you have actual spending plans for which you kind of need the money to keep its value, then it's likely that a loss will hurt you more than a gain will benefit you. So it makes sense to reduce the volatility of any swings in the value of your investment relative to your spending needs.
However, note too that it isn't necessarily the case that your chances of loss and gain are equal. At the moment the US dollar looks to be undervalued relative to the Euro, which means that investing overseas likely gives you more downside risk than upside risk. It's not a guarantee, especially over the short term, but over five years it seems more likely the US dollar will have appreciated against the Euro.
(There's some more complicated stuff where some currencies seem to have a persistent bias too, but this isn't likely to be an issue with big floating currencies like the US$ and the Euro. It may, however, be an issue with the AU$.)
