Budget calculations

One of the big questions when planning a trip like this is what kind of expenses to expect.

We decided to make a detailed travelplan for the first month, and then take the costs needed as an example. Our travelplan included information like:

* Accomodation – Where do we sleep, how much does camping cost pp

* Distance travelled – How many km do we drive to get from location A to B, Expected diesel consumption, local diesel costs

* Activities and extras – Entrance fees and activity fees of things we want to do (Game parks, Cheetah feedings, etc), books, souvenirs, etc

For the cost of food and drinks we looked at our normal expenses at home and rounded that up. This got us to a total allowance (for two people) of 65€

• Accomodation 20€
• Diesel 10€
• Activity: 15€
• Food+drink: 20€

Not included in the 65€ are repairs and maintenance on the car and additional equipment. For this we included some contingency and took care to have enough money on our bank accounts accordingly.

Now after 7 of the 8 months we realize that the planning exercize was quite good as we seem to have levelled out at expenses of 71€ per day including the maintenance and repairs on the car. The accomodation and food+drink budget proposal with 20€ is exactly what we spend in reality. The diesel costs are in reality a bit higher with 12€ per day and we also seem to have spend a bit more on extras with 16€ per day.

Still the overal the costs for our trip are exactly as calculated and hoped for: 25.000€ for two people including our flights and the container shipping (Germany->Namibia->Germany) of our trusty car.