The banks make it so easy, throwing money at your feet in the form of a credit card or a personal loan.
Maybe you have even saved up part of what you will need. But whoa – stop there: what will be the real cost? It will be the grand sum at least $80,000. You don’t believe this? Well, start counting.
There is a concept called “opportunity cost” which is defined as “the money or other benefits lost when pursuing a particular course of action instead of a mutually-exclusive alternative ” which means that you have a choice to work instead of traveling.
If you would be earning the average Australian wage for the year your take-home pay would be about $47,603 after tax plus superannuation of $5,500 that gives you a total of over $53,103. That is money that you will not be earning.
Then you have to fork out cash for airfares, buses, hiking boots, travel immunization and medications, a good backpack, a passport, visas, insurance, backpacker accommodation, mobile phone cards, a camera, food and seeing the sights for the whole year. $20,000 for all of this is a conservative figure.
If you have borrowed this from the bank there will be an interest cost of twenty percent or so for every year that you have not paid it all back. Obviously you will not be able to pay it when you are away, so you now have to add another $8,000 which is effectively forty percent interest, which rounds out to a total of above $80,000.
Do you really want to go backwards by that amount in one year? And suffer for the next couple of years paying back the bank? Yes, you can still see the world at a tiny percentage of this! Get that job and go during your four weeks’ paid annual leave. Way to go!
GET THAT JOB
