Budget

Once you know where and for how long you want to travel for, the next planning task that needs to be nailed down is a budget. Some may argue that this should be the first step in the planning process however it's pretty hard to set a budget if you don't know what you want to do!

The way we came up with our budget was to use some of my past travels as a guideline. Here are some general criteria to set.

Level of accommodation required
Level of dining required
Level of alcohol consumption
Level of transportation
Number of big excursions
Shopping
Other expenses

First off, consistency is the key. If you decide to stay in budget accommodation and then a couple weeks into your travels you start deciding that you prefer hotels to hostels, your budget will get blown out the window.

When I traveled in 2004, my choices looked like the following. I'll rate them on a 1-5 scale.

Level of accommodation required - 1 (hostels only, some camping)
Level of dining required - 1 (mostly self catering, very limited dining out)
Level of alcohol consumption - 1 (hardly any drinking)
Level of transportation - 2 (mix of buses and flights)
Number of big excursions - 2 (2 or so long group excursions)
Shopping - 1 (very little shopping)
Other expenses - 2 (hiking boots, backpack, work visa, camera, etc)

Now in 2012 being a little older, married and with a few more dollars in the bank our criteria look like this.

Level of accommodation required - 2 (hostels or other budget accommodation)
Level of dining required -2 (some self catering, some casual dining)
Level of alcohol consumption - 1 (hardly any drinking)
Level of transportation - 3 (mix of buses, cars, trains and flights)
Number of big excursions - 3 (3 or so long group excursions)
Shopping - 1 (very little shopping)
Other expenses - 2 (hiking boots, netbook, camera, etc)

So once you've set your own criteria, do a little research to ballpark rough costs for each area. Multiply by the number of weeks/months you want to be away for and voila! I find the most money can be saved by utilizing reasonable accommodation, self catering and not drinking. I did not include flights in this list as there are so many variables such as seasonality, type of fair, conditions/restrictions, duration, etc. Even with a budget, expect to go over it. Lets face it, traveling to new and different places introduces many unknowns that you may not account for so be prepared to tweak things as you go.

Jobs

One of the really big decisions to make is what to do about your job. Leaving a job is hard when you aren't moving on to another one. The unknown can be scary especially if you've been working your whole adult life.

Some employers might offer a unpaid leave of absence, a paid sabbatical or nothing at all. In our case, we could have pursued a leave of absence but decided against it. Since we don't know exactly how long the trip will be and what we will end up doing, we felt it better to have more flexibility.

When approaching an employer with the possibility of a leave or leaving work for good, it's best to proceed slowly and be open and honest. We let our managers know well in advance that we would be leaving and explained our reasoning as we wanted to part ways on very amicable terms. Both Yasmin and I liked our jobs and the people we worked with so we wanted to make sure everything was on the up and up.

While the standard notice period is generally 2 weeks, we gave over a month. In this time we wrapped up all the work/projects we were assigned to and passed off what little remained. Providing a long notice period really helped our bosses as they could better transition our responsibilities. Both of us were working hard right up to the last couple hours of our last days!

-Andrew