Expatacular tips are about making your first or next expat move easier. Think of them as the “Lifehacker” for Expats.
Whether you aspire to live, work or study in another country or if you are already doing that, then the word “expat” is part of your everyday language. In the most general sense, an “expat”, is anyone who is temporarily or permanently living in a country other than the one where they claim citizenship.
Every week, we take a look at “expat hacks” to help you make the next transition abroad seamless.
If you have any to suggest, leave them in the comments or send us a message.
Today’s tip: Smart travel starts with Budget Your Trip
Save by using BudgetYourTrip.com
Planning a trip abroad is never easy, especially when you want to take off from work and go RTW (Round The World) for a year. That’s where BudgetYourTrip.com comes along. Designed to help would be travelers, the site offers travelers the ability to estimate travel costs, a cost tracker tool and user generated travel tips.
The quick tutorial shows you how to begin, create and track your upcoming trips. Even without the tutorial, the process is straight forward and the interface is clean and uncluttered. You can even specify your currency and BudgetYourTrip.com will covert your dollars to euros, pounds, rupees or yen.
One of the most compelling aspects of BudgetYourTrip.com comes from the “RTW Trip Guide”: a multi-page guide to planning and going on your own RTW trip. It covers topics such as what to do with your car and apartment for the time you’ll be gone, to the essentials you should pack. Well written by the site authors, the guide is a list of practical tips and things to consider to go on that trip of a lifetime (or two).
In the “Estimate Costs” section, you are able to search or browse for a country and even drill down the specific city in that country, if it exists in the site’s database. BudgetYourTrip.com admits that it is relatively new and only has information on approximately 1,000 cities; one of the reasons why the creators encourage users to input trips of their own. Users can also create new listings for cities that are not included in the current database.
The country and city information break down cost estimates by line items (accommodations, food, water, transportation, entertainment, etc…). It also provides user generated travel tips and links to books that can be purchased about the area you are searching for. Little bits of information such as whether the water is drinkable, how much you should tip and whether prices are negotiable, give a more detailed picture of how to use the information.
The only challenge with the “Estimate Costs” section is that there is no obvious way to import the information to base your own trip creation. A solution is to open two separate tabs of the site, one with your newly created trip and the other with your destination costs estimates, copying and pasting the different line items wanted. This might not be a big deal with a one or two stop trip but when planning for multi-destination, this feature would be a necessity.
Overall, BudgetYourTrip.com provides a clean and user-friendly interface, useful cost information and an easy way to see all your expenses in one place. Because it is still in its infancy, it still requires a fair amount of user-generated content and down the line mobile accessibility.
Thanks guys! We hope everyone finds the website useful and will contribute their budget information to help other travelers plan future trips. By the way, when you are planning your budget for a future trip, the site will prompt you to view estimated costs for the locations that you’ve selected. Once you enter the location into your budget, a link will appear allowing you to quickly view the travel costs for that city.
We’re still growing and adding new features. If anyone has any suggestions, please let us know.
Thanks Bryan for providing the traveling and expat world with such a great tool. Please keep us posted on any new developments.
Cheers!