Hello friend!
Three weeks ago, I shared seven inspirations to uncover your dream adventure.
Two weeks ago, I talked about how to make time for it.
Now, I want to talk about how to fund it.
It’s the middle of the pandemic, and I’m sitting at my desk reading Tony Robbins’ MONEY: Master the Game.
I believed I needed to work harder, save more, and invest longer to retire into a life of travel. I thought the only way I could travel was with more money. So I sought personal finance books like the one I was holding to help me save and make more money.
I found my answer three chapters deep.
This letter aims to simulate when my goal of visiting 81 provinces turned from a vague idea into a visible destination.
What’s the price of your dreams?
Before reading any further, grab a piece of paper and write down how much it will cost you to accomplish your travel goal.
Don’t take more than 5 seconds.
PHP100,000?
PHP500,000?
PHP2,500,000?
Now, if you’re like most people, you came up with this number in one of two ways:
You thought of a reasonably large, whole number that sounds nice. Often this ends with a 0 and includes a 1, 2, or 5.
You thought of a reasonably large, whole number that sounds nice. You felt it was too small, so you multiplied it by 2, 5, or 10. Again, nice-sounding numbers only.
Unfortunately, top-down strategies like this (top-down because you look up at the sky and grab the first number that floats down) still leave you in the vague idea domain.
We are after a ground-up strategy of naming our price, an approach grounded in realistic assumptions we can number and name.
There are five questions you need to ask yourself:
1. How much will it cost for you to be eligible to enter?
If you’re a Filipino traveling within the Philippines, you won’t need to put so much thought into this. But if you travel internationally, you will need to look into visas, vaccines, or insurance.
2. How much will it cost for you to get to your destination?
There are three modes of transportation (surprise!):
Air: airplanes
Land: buses, minivans, jeeps, tricycles, cars
Sea: boats and ferries
In my Dream Adventure Calculator, I’ve separated how we calculate for public and private transportation. I’ve noticed private transportation can be more variable because of vehicle type and gas price fluctuations, while public transportation is more fixed.
Tip: Rome2Rio is a highly effective tool for estimating the time and cost of travel.
3. How much will it cost for you to stay at your destination?
The easiest way to think of this is by multiplying the days you plan to stay in a destination by your cost per day.
Accommodations: where will you sleep?
Meals: how many meals do you plan to have? where do you plan to eat?
Transportation: how will you move around inside your destination?
Fun/Tours/Entertainment/Gifts: how do you plan to have fun?
If your Dream Adventure has multiple destinations, you can be detailed and assume a different daily cost per destination.
4. How much will it cost to get home?
The cost of getting home typically equals the cost of arriving. Still, I separated it in case your Dream Adventure does not end where you begin.
5. How much allowance do you want to have?
In the spirit of making goals appear achievable, this bucket is the first to be compromised, which is why it becomes all the more important to set goals from the ground up. You don’t want to go on an adventure without some allowance.
In my Dream Adventure Calculator, I’ve assumed allowance to equal 20% of the total of the previous four buckets.
The cost of your dream adventure is the sum of these five questions.
Let’s compare what we wrote down from thin air with our number calculated from solid assumptions.
In my case, for a road trip around North Luzon, this is what I wrote down on a piece of tissue paper I found beside me while writing this:
In contrast, the number I came up with after playing with my Dream Adventure Calculator was a mere PHP 59,468. And that already includes a 20% margin for allowance!
The reason you want to think about your adventure this way.
Most people think they need more than they do.
Most people think a time will come when they have what they need.
Most people think that working hard will make that time come sooner.
The problem with this train of thought is how much you think you need will keep increasing as your income and expenses increase. This exercise aims to set goalposts that don’t move with your lifestyle.
Instead of estimating your costs from what you have now, start where you want to be in an obsessively specific way and be radically honest about where you are now.
No more hoping, no more dreaming, no more complaining.
BONUS: What can you do to reach your goal?
Save more. The Latte Factor. I Will Teach You To Be Rich.
Earn more. Increase your value. The E-Myth Revisited. Never Split the Difference. The Magic of Thinking Big.
Change your life — and improve your lifestyle. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. The 4-Hour Workweek.
Thank you for reading!
Until next week,
Atom
This post was inspired by ‘A Timeline Calculator for Tony Robbins’ 5 Levels of Financial Freedom.’
P.S. You can help me reach more people by hitting the heart button below. Substack promotes posts based on the number of likes per view, so your support would mean so much.
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