How much do you budget for travel each year? E.g taking a couple of 2-3 week trips and maybe a couple of short-week/long-weekend type trips too? I'm finding the cost of flights and hotels to be climbing up to crazy amounts and need to budget something like $15,000-$20,000 a year just to satisfy straightforward needs. I'm not even talking about taking 3-4 month long trips across a continent here. Just a return flight in and out of a capital city, chaining together a few 2-3 night hotel stays around a country's more interesting regions, hiring a car or taking some trains/buses... a 2 week trip like that to a reasonably-developed/not-shithole country seems to cost at about $5K, probably closer to $7K, so 2 of those a year and a few long weekends at $1K each and you're at $15K easily - this is for low end basic accommodation (private room hotels not dorm hostels), base bottom flights etc. I'm sure you can do trips to places off the tourist trail for less, but getting there is usually hard and takes 2-3 days on its own and there's really not much to do in Northern Canada or Outer Mongolia so you have to stick to the main routes these days. I'm getting older so I know the $30/night hostels are no longer for me and I'm expected to pony up for the 'proper' travel costs, but I can definitely remember doing 2 week long trips for like $2000 10-15 years ago. I guess prices change and obviously COVID and Wars are the reason, but man... unless you dedicate a pretty sizeable portion of your disposable income to travel you're not going anywhere now.
