Sunset in Zambia

How do you plan a round-the-world itinerary?  That's always the question at the top of the Bootsnall message board for RTW travelers and everybody's got an opinion.  You should "not plan," some say, while others tell you to have a "vague notion" of where you're going, and others say that you should plan down to the nitty gritty.  You would think that, now, after planning a RTW trip and being a self-acknowledged planaholic, I would know how to plan a RTW itinerary.  You would think that, considering I get at least an email every couple of weeks asking me to review travel itineraries, I would know about the pitfalls and  the successes of a great RTW itinerary.  You would be wrong.  The truth is, I don't have any good advice for you on planning a round-the-world itinerary. 

The reason: there are no rules in planning a RTW itinerary. 

This is your trip.  Your travel.  Your dream. 

There is no wrong answer to a RTW itinerary.  If you are a planner --- that is, the sort of person who likes to know exactly where you are going to be on every day of your trip, don't let people tell you that you're a bad RTW traveler.  (We did that in our first three months and it worked out just fine.)  If you're a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pantser, that works, too.  (We flew by the seat of our pants in most of Asia and it worked out generally great.)  Whatever you decide, it is your trip.

And, the truth that nobody really mentions is that there are as many ways to travel around the world as there are people interested in traveling RTW.  Don't believe me?  Check out some of the unique RTW combinations out there:

Gary from Everything Everywhere:  90 countries in 48 months over 6 continents.  (This includes some short stays as well.  You can check out his very impressive lists of where he has been over here.  I should really put something like this together for ourselves because I have no idea how many countries I've been to in my life.)

Audrey and Dan from Uncornered Market:  65+ countries in 48 months over 7 (!) continents.  Yeah, they're totally our role models.

Danny and Jillian from I Should Log Off:  50 countries in 22 months over 6 continents.

Michael from Go See Write: 44 countries in 16 months over 6 continents, using entirely overland transportation.

Manali and Terry from Manali and Terry: 27 countries in 12 months over 4 continents.

Dave from The Longest Way Home:  18 countries in 72 + months over 2 continents.

Keith and Amy from Green Around the Globe: 17 countries in 10 months over 4 continents. 

Gillian and Jason from One Giant Step: 14 countries in 12 months over 4 continents.

The Vogel Family from Family on Bikes: 14 countries in 34 months over 2 continents, entirely on bicycles from the northernmost point in Alaska to the southernmost point of Argentina.

Me and Patrick:  13 countries in 13 months over 4 continents.  And, we spent 2-3 months in a specific region, returned home to the United States to check in on Chewy and Abby, and left to go to another region.  We never purchased a RTW ticket, instead using discretely purchased transcontinental flights when we wanted.

Ayngelina from Bacon is Magic: 9 countries in 12 months in 1 continent.  She just hit her one year traveliversary!

. . . keep reading an unhelpful guide to planning a rtw itinerary after the jump

I've been writing about money a lot lately . . . about funding, budgeting, working, and saving . . . because without money, you can't travel long-term.  It's as simple as that.  So, once you accumulate all your money, what do you do with said cash?  Personally, I'm all for the Scrooge McDuck gold vault because ---- come on ---- how awesome would it be to swim through gold coins, but I don't see it as a viable option in this cash and credit card driven society.  No gold vaults for us. 

Instead, we have discovered that the answer to "What's in Your (Travel) Wallet?" is Capital One.

 Foreign Transaction Fees Are Bad

Before we get into the nitty gritty, let's talk foreign transaction fees.  Foreign transaction fees are nasty little buggers biting at your otherwise-healthy bank account, so insidious that you don't even notice they're hanging around, until you get back home from your Caribbean vacation and are walloped with $70 of extra charges titled "foreign transaction fees."  So, say that you have a Bank of America credit card and use it to purchase a $100 item in England, in addition to the $100, you will be charged:

Bank of America's 3% foreign transaction fee:  $3.00 USD
Visa/Mastercard's 3% foreign transaction fee: $3.00 USD

Six dollars to spend $100 of your own money = ridiculousness.  And, our Bank of America card gives us a lousy exchange rate, too, meaning that we're much better off getting cash out of the ATM and using the local currency. 

Unfortunately, Bank of America's ATM fees are equally bad because to take $100 out of a foreign ATM, BoA charges:

The typical external BoA ATM fee: $1.50
Local ATM's fee:  $1.50 - $3.00
Foreign ATM transaction fee:  $5.00
Foreign exchange fee:  1% of the total amount = $1.00 USD 

Do you see why I say that foreign transaction fees are bad?  Unfortunately, BoA isn't alone in these ridiculous upcharges.  Check out FlyerGuide's exhaustive analysis and see where your credit card or ATM card stands.  If they are charging you anything to use your money abroad, don't use that card abroad.

Wait a second.  Let me say that again.

If your credit card or bank charges you any foreign transaction fees abroad, they are bad.  Bad.  Bad.   Bad.  Let's talk about my friend, Capital One, instead.

My Go-To Travel Credit Card:  Capital One No Hassle Miles Card

Unfortunately, Capital One doesn't know me and is not sponsoring this post, because I would totally do commercials for them.  I am much less annoying than David Spade, I promise you.  I heart Capital One.  Really.  I heart Capital One and you should, too, if you travel outside the United States. 

Capital One Awesomeness:

• No foreign transaction fees.  Not one pesky little percentage point and they even reimburse us for the Visa/Mastercard fees.
• No annual fee.
• Visa/Mastercard are accepted almost everywhere in the world.
• Platinum Mastercard Car Rental Protection.  When we rent a car anywhere in the world excepting Ireland, Jamaica, and a few other countries, our card automatically grants us CDW insurance, meaning that we don't have to pay extra insurance and we're covered if anything happens.  This coverage turned out to be very handy when Europcar claimed that we had to pay an extra $400 for some ridiculous claimed damage that happened after we left the car rental.  Capital One and Mastercard completely handled the issue once I mailed in all of the paperwork we received and reimbursed us for the entire fee.
• Fraud Protection.  Anytime a strange fee appears on our statement (which is relatively often since we use our card in many different countries), Capital One sends us an email.  We've had our card numbers stolen  and Capital One promptly remedied the problems and sent us new cards in two days because we were leaving to go to a different country.
• Points I Can Use on Any Airline and Many Hotel Stays:  Every dollar I spend on my card earns me 10 points and I can use those points on airplane tickets, hotel stays, and a variety of other options.  100 points equals $1, meaning that if I have 60,000 Capital One points, I can purchase a $600 plane ticket.  When we use random airlines that do not give us frequent flier miles, we often pay for those tickets using our Capital One points.  We are paying for at least part of our anniversary trip using Capital One points.

. . . keep reading travel credit cards and bank accounts after the jump

After describing our unusual savings tricks last week, I was delighted by the other unique ideas other travelers suggested in the comments: 

• Erica from Nonstop World Travel (yay for travel and food): Sleeper trains "saves you money on transit and on a hotel"
• Mike Lenzen from Traveled Earth (soon to be leaving on their RTW): Make a budget because when they spend more one month they take money off on the next month
• Dani from Globetrotter Girls (two digital nomads with oodles of girl power): Buy items shortly before the farmers markets close because items are half off, use discount vouchers (such a good idea and one we rarely do), and consider subletting an extra room in your house
• Jerri from DIWYY (all about Doing It While You're Young . . . travel, that is): Share one car per household
• Theodora from Travels With a Nine Year Old (if you think you can't travel with kids, this single mom with kid will show you how): Choose your battles - realize that it might make more sense to work than spending hours hand-washing laundry

And, then, our panel of current RTW travelers blew me away with some of the coolest savings tricks I have ever read:

Warren and Betsy Talbot from Married With Luggage
Throw a Reverse Birthday Party

When Betsy turned 39 she hosted a party at our house showcasing 39 of her "treasured items" and invited her closest friends.  Each item had a tag telling the story of how she had acquired the item and the memory associated with it.  Guests were then allowed to “shop” through the boutique in our living room and write their names on the back of the tags if they wanted the item.  If no one else wanted the item, it was theirs for a donation.  If more than one name was on the tag, we had a “style off” where each person had to model the items in a distinctive way that would earn them the most votes from the crowd.  The winner of the vote got to keep the item.  The end result was we were able to save money for the trip and Betsy was able to share her closest possessions with dear friends.  You can read more about the party here.

Betsy and Warren Talbot are on a mission to redesign their lives to travel full-time.  They are two reforming type-A personalities who are learning that living large is not necessarily living well.  They just returned from an enviable Antarctic expedition and are taking a transcontinental voyage from Argentina to England.  Their website is chockful of great information include month-by-month breakdowns of their budget.  Follow their journey on their blog, Facebook fan page, and Twitter (@warrentalbot).

. . . keep reading travelers talk back: unusual savings tricks after the jump

A Zambian market

Last night, as we moaned over the silky, salty, sweet chocolate budino at FIG, a truly outstanding restaurant in historic Charleston and one I will describe for you later, a glasses-clad wobbling man plopped down at our table, interested in why we had been photographing our meal.  When we explained that we blog about food and our world travels, he retorted, in perhaps a less than lucid state than he would have otherwise wished, "This is an expensive restaurant.  How do you travel full-time and afford this?"  We explained, as we have explained to y'all, that we budget and work to keep us in this lifestyle.  I could have mentioned to him the third step in how we fund our travels but it is not nearly as sexy as proclaiming our digital nomadic lifestyle. 

What we do: we save.  A lot.  We saved before we left for our trip, during, and after.  We are money-hungry savers and darn proud of it.

[Snores abound.]  That's okay.  I can take it.  Listen, I'm no Suze Orman or Clark Howard (our favorite) and I don't want to tell you how to save.  You've heard of the obvious savings tricks: cut back on coffee, drive less, eat out less, etc.  But, what about the less common savings tricks?  That's what I want to talk about.  For this round of RTW Planning in Retrospect, I am going to list my top 5 unusual savings tricks and ask the panel for Travelers Talk Back on Tuesday to do the same.

1.  Pretend that we only have one salary.  When I first started at my law firm, one of the partners cautioned me to avoid the Golden Handcuffs: that is, the BMWs or fancy houses purchased by fledgling attorneys and their inability to escape their high-income jobs, even when they want.  He told me to pretend that my legal salary didn't exist, sock all of that money into savings or investments, and live off Patrick's salary.  The advice was so good that we have been treating my income as nonexistent ever since.  Whatever money I make goes into savings or (when we had a house) into repairing the house or other investments.  Whenever Patrick gets a raise, we pretend the money doesn't exist.  Basically, we continue to live at the salary level we had when we were 25, which is why we've only bought one new car in our 14 years together.  [Obviously, this only works if you have a two-income household.]

Women at the Zambian market

2.  Shop at local farmer markets.  If you haven't noticed, we're a bit obsessed with food.  But, that doesn't mean we eat out at restaurants all the time.  Truth is, we get annoyed when we dish out $70 . . . or even $20 . . . for a mediocre meal.  When we travel, we usually stay in hostels or vacation homes and 90% of the time cook our own meals.  But, groceries!  Groceries are so expensive, are they not?  No, they don't have to be if you shop at local farmers markets.  In Jacksonville, we used to buy a pound of green beans for a single dollar and on our recent trip to Savannah, I found a quarter flat of strawberries for $4.  Aside from providing delicious sustenance, a trip to the local market is a cheap, wonderful excursion and way to meet many locals.

. . . keep reading unusual travel savings tricks after the jump