My Big Dream

I have many dreams for my life, but for this project I wanted to focus on one I’ve been thinking about for a long time; a dream that is pretty attainable and needs to happen in the closer future. I have a traveling bug and insatiable wanderlust, much like many people my age. There are plenty of trips I want to take someday, but one in particular means the most to me!

So, I want to travel with my husband to Japan, China, and Taiwan all in one trip. My mom is Chinese and she grew up in Taiwan, where most of her family still lives. I’ve been traveling to Taiwan every 2-5 years since I was 3 months old, but I’ve never seen much of Asia outside that tiny island. Traveling to China would consist of seeing Beijing and the surrounding area. I’d like to see the Great Wall and go to the village where my grandfather lived as a child. I want to familiarize myself with aspects of my culture that I know nothing about by visiting our roots in China.

Next would be Tokyo, Japan, a city that I’ve always wanted to see because of its ties to so many cool things in pop culture that my husband and I love so much! Like Hello Kitty, Pokemon, and the Tokyo Disneyland park. We’d spend our time there just having fun, with a two day stop in Disneyland.

Then I’d want to wrap up our lengthy trip with a stop in Taiwan to see my aunt and my other relatives. My family lives in the middle of the island in a city called Hsinchu. My husband and I would spend most of our time there but we’d make special trips to the mountains to hike and see the towns and also spend a couple days in the big city Taipei. 

After looking online to see who else might have taken a trip like this, I found a couple people. One was a Reddit post whose insight was about cultural preservation, cleanliness of the countries, and the cost of traveling in these countries. What I took from their short post was that China is cheaper to travel in than Japan, which is really good to know. This factors into my plans by deciding to travel China first, then Japan. The money saved from traveling China can go towards some of the more costly parts of Japan. Then I came across this video about someone’s trip to Japan and China. It detailed the experiences they had in the cities/neighborhoods they visited. I was excited to see that they did many of the same things I want to do.

The Challenges 

But what holds me back from this dream is the major costs! The flights alone would be around $5000 for two people. I never have that much money just laying around to book a flight.

Laid out, this dream looks absurdly expensive. I tacked on around $200-$400 extra in nearly every category as a way to ensure that I save up more than enough money. Luckily, we already have passports that don’t need to be renewed for quite awhile and we already own all the luggage we would need. So, to cut down on costs of this trip we’d stay in hostels and we’d travel light. This would be more of a backpacking trip. We will set a strict budget for souvenirs and ship them home or to Taiwan so that my aunt can lend us a suitcase when we pass through on our way home. The souvenir budget incorporates the price of shipping things, so in theory, the budget for actual souvenirs is around $300. We will be staying in hotels for a very brief period of our trip, two nights in Japan near Disneyland and two nights in Taipei. The rest of the time will be in hostels, which are hundred of dollars cheaper than hotels. A majority of our time in Taiwan will be very cheap since we’ll stay for free with my family and they will provide us with food, so most of the travel budget is for China and Japan.  I budgeted our food based on several travel blogs that suggest you could eat well for $50 per day for two people. Since the trip would roughly span 20 days, I budgeted $1,000 for food, adding $200 for special meals. The extra expense of $400 for “incidentals” is my way of being overly cautious when traveling abroad. If something were to go wrong, that money would serve to keep us out of a jam. So, missteps like we lost our passports or we ran out of food money. The extra $400 would help us. The goal is to return home with that $400, never needing to use it!

The good part of all this though is that we have only support from our family. However, there will be challenges in making sure our employers are ok with the three weeks away from work. My employer could potentially have a big problem with it, but I think I would plan my trip around the time I intend to put in my two week notice. Zack’s employer is something he can do abroad, so that works our well.

Our families all support this trip, especially my parents who are thrilled that I’m going to be exploring my cultural heritage.

The Budget
This chart is our current income and expenses. I was very surprised to find that we have an extra amount each month of nearly $500 every month! This is because my income combined with financial aid helps us live on a less tight restraint. When I think about where that money goes, I know it goes to unnecessary spending like impulse purchases, going out to dinner, or other miscellaneous purchases that my husband or I make throughout the month. The savings already implemented into the budget is savings to buy a home someday when we are out of college and have our careers.  Looking at my finances laid out like this is very eye-opening. It helps me understand our spending habits too.

The Savings

After two years, we could have enough for the trip and then some.
 By putting aside that extra $480 per month away in our savings account for a year, we would have $5,760. That first $5,760 can purchase our plane tickets and even have leftover money to put the down payment on the hostels and pay for the hotels. Since I searched the flights by looking one year in advance, that’s when I would book them. Over the course of the following year, we would continue to put away $480 every month instead of spending it on frivolous things. By then, we would have saved up the necessary amount for our trip, with even a little extra money that could be spread out to be used for different parts of the trip.

Conclusion

This dream is 100% attainable. I didn’t know how possible it would be considering the cost, but I also wasn’t aware of what our finances really looked like. Not only will I be able to use this project to help me achieve my dream, but I can use this format in the future to achieve multiple dreams my husband and I have!