Everyone wants the number. “Just tell me what it costs.” As a Sabbatical Designer, I get it all the time. The real answer is “it depends on who you are” — but I’ll attempt to break down actual costs based on my personal and professional experience as a full-time traveler for more than six and a half years, being around other travelers, plus four years of professionally working with others who set out on these big trips.
Before I start breaking down the real costs of things you will definitely spend money on, I want to quickly mention the real cost of getting things wrong during your trip. The wrong visa. The third-party hidden fees that resulted in a worse experience. The housing booked for the wrong month. The insurance gap you find out about in an ER in a country where you don’t speak the language. That’s the number that actually breaks sabbaticals. Not the flights and accommodation.
So here’s the honest version: every real cost category, four real budgets — budget, mid-range on a tight budget, mid-range and comfortable, and luxury — and where a $750 planning investment actually lands once you see it next to everything else you’re already spending.
Every figure below is the same one that powers my free sabbatical budget calculator, so you can run your own dates and group size against these numbers in about a minute.
The Main Categories
Housing. Rates here are per night for the whole party, not per person — one place to sleep, shared. On a budget, plan $30/night solo, $50 for a couple, $75 for three, $100 for four; that’s hostels, dorm beds and cheap apartments. $70/night is mid-range with an eye on the number — private rooms and simple apartments. $100/night is mid-range and comfortable, which is where most sabbaticals land and will get you something genuinely nice almost anywhere in the world. Want luxury? Plan for $350/night. The move that actually saves money: pull back on long stays, and push toward the high end — or splurge outright — on short, rest-focused stays, especially when the property itself is the point of being there.
Daily spending (food + everyday fun). Treat this as one number, and budget it per person, per day. If you don’t budget enough here, you’ll be in an amazing place without the ability to do anything, and you’ll ask yourself why you’re even there. $25/person/day is a real budget trip — cooking most meals, free activities. $40/person/day is mid-range with discipline: eating out most days, choosing your paid experiences carefully. $50/person/day is comfortable, with room to say yes to things when they come up. $200/person/day is easy to spend if you love good food and full days, but a blend of high and low days makes for a far more interesting trip than either extreme.
International flights. $1,500 per person round-trip is a safe number to start with in economy. You can do considerably better than that depending on where you’re going and when you book, but it’s the figure I’d plan against before you know your route. If you’re flying business class, start at $6,000 per person round-trip. This is separate from both the regional flights and the emergency flight fund below.
Regional flights. This is the line almost everyone forgets, and it’s the one that separates a country-hopping trip from a stay-put one. If you’re moving between countries or continents rather than basing yourself somewhere, budget per person, per two months of travel: $300 on a budget, $500 mid-range, $1,000 for luxury. Two people on a six-month continent-hop at mid-range is $3,000 in flights nobody planned for.
Emergency medical insurance. Non-negotiable. Budget a minimum of $60/month per person — that’s roughly what a plan like Genki runs. Luxury travelers with more comprehensive cover should plan closer to $167/month per person. You never know what you’ll need until you need it.
Medical evacuation coverage. Different from basic travel insurance, and worth adding separately if you’re heading somewhere remote — standard travel insurance often doesn’t cover getting airlifted to real care.
Emergency flight fund. Held, not spent. Plan a minimum of $500 per person on a budget trip and $1,000 per person for anything mid-range — that’s a safe ceiling for getting home from nearly anywhere in the world on short notice, in economy. Budget $2,500 per person if you’d want to fly home in premium economy or business.
A nest egg for restarting life when you return. Always plan for the trip to run slightly longer than intended — and plan the nest egg the same way. Re-entry has its own costs: temporary housing while you find a place, replacing anything you sold, a wardrobe refresh if you’re heading back into an office. Plan for the same monthly cost as you have pre-trip, even though it’s likely you’ll be able to re-enter life at a lower cost of living. This sits outside the trip budget below, but it’s part of the number you need saved.
Storage. If you’re not selling everything or able to keep your things in your current accommodation, a climate-controlled unit runs roughly $100–135/month depending on size and city.
Tips on Saving for Your Trip
Home expense audit. Comb through everything before you leave — most people can slash more than they think. Small example: switching car insurance to comprehensive-only coverage while the car sits parked can cut that bill by up to 75%.
Mail forwarding. A virtual mailbox service is worth the $15/month if you don’t have someone reliably checking a physical address for you. Some places offer it for as little as $50/year.
Phone and data. There are plenty of digital-nomad-worthy eSIM cards these days offering low monthly costs for unlimited data. My favorite is Pangea Pass at $27/month if you purchase the year up front, or $35/month month-to-month. Budget $27/person/month. I promise this will be better than using your current phone line internationally, which often runs around $10/day.
Visa costs. Wildly variable by country and trip length — but budget something. Visas run anywhere from free to $170 per person; $75 per person is a reasonable planning figure. And if your plans change, your costs change with them.
Local transportation. This adds up quickly, and it’s consistently the most under-budgeted line I see. Between gas, rental cars, extra luggage fees, and assigned seats, plan roughly $5/person/day on a budget trip, $8.50/person/day mid-range, and $16.50/person/day travelling comfortably — so $10, $17 and $33 a day for two.
Good luggage. Worth the investment upfront. Budget $75 per person if you’re keeping it simple, $150 mid-range, or $250 for rolling bags that will genuinely last — Away is the one we recommend most.
Shopping and the things you forgot. Only you can set this number. Be honest with yourself about it instead of pretending it’s zero. I plan $33/person/month on a budget trip, $56 mid-range, and $111 for luxury.
Four Real Budgets, for a Couple, Over Three Months
Three months is the number worth aiming for — it’s roughly where researchers studying sabbaticals (like Harvard’s DJ DiDonna, whose book Big Time Off digs into exactly this) find the real transformational benefits start to show up. Shorter trips are still worth taking, but anything under eight weeks may not be enough time to truly unplug and change for the better.
Take these numbers with a grain of salt. The reality is you can travel on nearly any budget.
| Budget | Mid-range, tight | Mid-range, comfortable | Luxury | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Housing (91 nights) | $4,550 | $6,370 | $9,100 | $31,850 |
| Daily spending | $4,550 | $7,280 | $9,100 | $36,400 |
| International flights | $3,000 | $3,000 | $3,000 | $12,000 |
| Regional flights | $898 | $1,496 | $1,496 | $2,992 |
| Local transportation | $910 | $1,547 | $1,547 | $3,003 |
| Medical insurance | $359 | $359 | $359 | $999 |
| Phone and data | $162 | $162 | $162 | $162 |
| Visas | $150 | $150 | $150 | $150 |
| Storage and mail | $344 | $395 | $395 | $443 |
| Luggage (one-time) | $150 | $300 | $300 | $500 |
| Miscellaneous | $197 | $335 | $335 | $664 |
| Emergency flight reserve (held, not spent) | $1,000 | $2,000 | $2,000 | $5,000 |
| Trip total | $16,270 | $23,394 | $27,944 | $94,163 |
| Kickstart Coaching | $750 | $750 | $750 | $750 |
| Total with coaching | $17,020 | $24,144 | $28,694 | $94,913 |
(Numbers are for a couple over thirteen weeks, economy flights — business class in the luxury column. Adjust for solo travelers or bigger groups: housing and coaching don’t scale linearly the way food and flights do, so a solo trip is nowhere near half the price of a couple’s. These figures are in no way exact and don’t reflect any one person’s true spending.)
One thing worth saying plainly: the same budget buys wildly different trips depending on where you go. The mid-range columns will get you far nicer options in Vietnam or Thailand than they will in France or Italy. Region matters as much as style does, and it’s the easiest lever to pull if the numbers above feel out of reach — usually a better trade than cutting months off the trip.
The Part That Should Change How You Look at That $750
Look at the coaching line against the trip total in each column: roughly 4.6% of a budget trip, 3.2% of a tight mid-range one, 2.7% of a comfortable mid-range one, and under 1% of a luxury trip.
The more you’re already investing in the trip, the smaller a slice expert planning takes — and the more expensive a single bad decision gets to make on your own. A wrong visa call, a housing booking in the wrong season, an insurance gap you discover in an emergency room: any one of those costs more to fix than the whole coaching package cost to prevent.
That’s really the whole argument for designing a sabbatical instead of winging one. The leap isn’t the expensive part. Getting it wrong is.
What’s in the $750 Coaching Package
Three calls — a one-hour Q&A and two 90-minute coaching sessions — plus the full Launch Kit and every material we build together along the way. Bought separately those pieces come to $846, so bundling saves you $96. The first consultation is free and sits outside the package. Follow-up questions are always welcome after.
If you’d rather hand the whole thing over, full sabbatical design runs $625 a week for the weeks I’m actively planning — six weeks before departure plus every week you’re away — dropping to $250 a week for the final six weeks home. That model suits people spending roughly $12,000 a month or more on the trip itself; below that, the coaching tiers get you the same expertise without the fee crowding out the travel.
And for anyone tempted to hand the logistics to ChatGPT instead: I get it, but if you’ve tried it, you already know how many hours you can lose fighting with details that are confidently, completely wrong.
Want Your Own Numbers?
The table above is a starting point, not a quote. If you’d like a version built around your own dates, group size, and travel style, run it through the free sabbatical budget calculator — it takes about a minute, and it will email you the full breakdown along with how long it’ll take you to save for it.
A Quick Disclosure
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