USA BACKPACKING BUDGET | Our $45/day budget for travelling across America by train

okay hold up before the video starts quickly this was filmed before your unbelievable response to my usa video kicked off so i just had to get in and say that i'm so so grateful i appreciate all your comments i read all of them and they absolutely mean the world to me if you saw the video and you liked the trip that we did and you want to do something similar whenever it's next safe obviously then this video is my attempt to show you that you can probably do it for less money than you thought i hope that you find it helpful and like i said i'm so so grateful thank you so much i didn't expect any of this so our trip from new york to la without flying included new york city washington dc chicago salt lake city san francisco monterey and la it lasted 35 days and cost a total of 1 640 so that's an average of 45 or 46 bucks a day each or in my language that's 1 200 quid and 33 quid a day each and that's including everything accommodation amtrak tickets transport food that time i went whale watching travel insurance that we bought in the uk that time we got scammed by greyhound everything so i've broken it down to the average daily cost but obviously in a trip like this there's going to be days that are really cheap and days that are really expensive it varies a lot and we didn't think of it as a daily budget or a daily spending target we actually weren't that strict at all now if you've seen the video you know that we did house it in dc and obviously that brings the cost down and it's not for everybody so actually worked out as well what would the budget have been what the average daily spend have been if we didn't house it in dc and if we paid the rate that we were paying to stay somewhere in new york for the whole time we were in dc that would actually bring the whole trip average up to about 55 a day still really good and cheaper than a lot of shoestring backpacker budgets that i've seen out there if you follow a few basic things you should have no problem crossing the country and seeing a lot of cool stuff on quite a tight budget now i'm aware that even at 45 a day we're so so lucky to have been able to do this trip and it's not affordable for everybody but i think if you've got your mindset on doing a trip like this this is actually quite a reasonable way to do it and this is lower than most of the estimates i've seen online it helps that the prices we paid are based on two people sharing and always this will save you money not just in accommodation but also in cooking for yourself because ingredients are a bit more economical when you're buying for two people now these are all my personal opinions based on my experience of being an english tourist who knows absolutely nothing so if you're an american and you know even cheaper ways to do things let us all know in the comments i just want to share what i think might help people who haven't done this kind of trip before or to help people who would like to do something fun like this but think that you can't afford it if you don't eat in restaurants and stay in hotels all the time so that 45 dollars a day each broke down like this on long distance travel we spent an average of 11 and 29 cents a day each so that represents how the cost of our amtrak and greyhound tickets spread out if you share them over the whole trip if you've seen my main video you know that the advice about not using greyhound is good however cheap it may seem lots of people recommend a bulk bus for the same journey or just ride amtrak so to get cheaper amtrak tickets really the only advice is to plan early there's only a certain amount of tickets at the cheapest price for each service and they'll sell out quite quickly in fact i would say that at about 140 to 180 each in coach california's effort tickets are an absolute steal anyway if you see a good price like that and it's a journey that you want to take then snap them up it can add a little bit to the price if you do it in two or three legs with stops in between just because then you're traveling on different days but it's not that much of a difference we actually booked most of our tickets at the last minute and i know that increased our spend a bit in fact one time we actually paid to change our ticket and that's just that's included in my total but it's such an unnecessary expense that can be avoided with a little bit of planning and about which class to ride amtrak in only you can decide that for yourself i did a whole video about why we were happy with the coach seats and to just eat food that we brought on from the grocery store but if you want to have a cabin and eat in the dining car then great so on city transit so that's bus and metro tickets we spent an average of three dollars and 20 cents each a day in every city that we went to that had both of them we rode both the metro and the bus and we found it fine i'm not saying public transport can take you to like i don't know badlands national park or something like that but if you're in a city and you want to get around i actually found it to be not that much worse than europe and i mean in some cases it was better than europe like you've had to decide between riding the dc metro and the paris metro i know which one i pick so if you want to have a trip like this but you don't want to drive around the cities or get taxis everywhere you can still make it work and have a good time now if i arrive to a new city tired and without a plan i will spend the whole day's budget on a taxi to wherever we're staying so it pays to do your research beforehand so you don't cave in and do that this is how i try and find out how to get a travel card on my way to a new city on the train or whatever i'll look up a few things i look up the page for that city on a site called wikivoyage and they have a lot of sections of information about each city and one of them is to do with public transport and it's called get around and yes the beach boys plays in my head every time i click that in there they usually describe what public transport is available which modes are the best and how you can get a travel card to use on it then i go on google maps and i look up where we're staying look for directions to the directions from the place that we get off the train at and i hit transit directions and now it will show you what options you have between bus and metro how long they take and where they leave from yeah when i got home i had a wallet full of travel cards from different cities um most of them are great the ones that you can tap are great obviously the new york magnetic stripe card please swipe again please swipe again but the best one's actually in chicago um you can just tap a contactless bank card like you can in london if there's a few far away places that you want to see it's worth looking on wiki voyage again to see if they mention a 24 or a 48-hour travel pass if you can get one of those then you might be able to save some money because if there's a few far away places that you want to see you can see all of those while you have the pass and then on your other days in a city you can just do the ones that are walking distance from where you're staying and not have to pay for any metric tickets now one really cheapskate thing that we did that probably most people wouldn't do is we walked from salinas amtrak station to salinas bus station and we got a travel car there that you can tap on the buses and we rode the normal bus to monterey just because it was cheaper than getting the amtrak thruway bus at that time but once you do have a bus card for monterey that was actually pretty good because it meant that we could just walk as far as we wanted down the coastline we had a couple of really long walks and then we just ride the bus back instead of walking back and on some days you can use that bus pass to ride down the coast actually as far as bixby canyon bridge which is pretty cool so eating out that's every time we went to a fast food place or a coffee shop or a restaurant and we spent almost 60 bucks a week on this between us at four dollars a day each and that actually surprised me because normally we're pretty good at making all of our own meals of course this includes adding 20 to the price every time which we happily did because it's the custom in your country i think the cold played a big part in how much we spent here and that's one thing i will say about what season you go in we went in winter when demand is lower so probably places to stay are cheaper but do you really want to sit next to a frozen over central park trying to eat something that you packed but you can't because you're shivering no you want to eat a hot sandwich with fresh coffee next to a big heater somewhere however much it costs but we did end up spending in a bunch of local lunch places which was fun our favorite being pie hole in salt lake city we did spend 50 bucks on a good dinner once and yeah i have zero regrets we still got a budget solo and it was really good it was um a big feast basically at a diner again in salt lake city not the most healthy but i think probably that's what all the other meals that we cook for ourselves are for so to anybody worried that you need to eat breakfast lunch and dinner in restaurants every day or you won't be able to have a big fun trip just don't worry about it i mean if we just tried a bit harder i think we do normally do better than this at keeping spending in this category down and always cooking for ourselves but still not too bad a total for the usa i don't think and it's just a good thing that we didn't discover chipotle until we were already on the west coast because yeah after we had our first chipotle burrito this total did go up a bit so in grocery stores we spent almost seven bucks a day each we still made almost all of our meals for ourselves on this trip and that had a huge impact on keeping it down to 45 a day i know food is really personal and if you can't imagine traveling and going on vacation without eating in restaurants all the time then that's great it's just that for us to do such a big trip is this to see all the amazing places that we saw really the only way that it's actually ever going to be possible is if we cook for ourselves i don't know there's other people who would want to travel more but are probably quite intimidated by seeing on instagram people eating in restaurants all the time while they're on vacation so to you i just want to say hey we're out here if you think we had a good time in america we were eating pasta and ramen all the time so for me crossing the entire usa and seeing all the things that we saw if i had to do some cooking and skip some restaurants to make that even possible then that's fine by me we got groceries from safeway mostly trader joe's a few times and walmart sometimes as well i think trader joe's was the best obviously any americans will probably know better than me nowhere to get better cheaper groceries and if you go to safeway then you should ask for a membership card at the checkout and then next time you go and it'll be much cheaper way a lot of wholemeal bread jam nuts hummus fruit i thought fruit in the us was so cheap and really delicious when we're traveling we always have some fruit with breakfast and take some out with us for the day and i was surprised how cheap that was in the u.s we have bananas every day apples kiwis strawberries strawberries and blueberries really i was so surprised how cheap and delicious they were in america and the same thing with oranges actually i had so many oranges while we were in america and i probably destroyed my teeth doing it but i knew that it was so delicious and as soon as i went back home the oranges wouldn't be as good anymore i'm never eating a uk orange again these are so good so worth it and we'd make big dinners with pasta lots of vegetables maybe some meat-free meatballs sometimes or if we're in a hurry or just lazy or we didn't want to cook in front of loads of people in the hostel we were staying in then we just have ramen and to make that a better meal on a budget we add a can of chickpeas and some broccoli to the same pan i never told you this was a gourmet cooking video so everything else that isn't accommodation we spent almost five dollars a day on and this includes the cost of travel insurance cash that we got from atms and i don't know what category we spent it on that stuff just disappears i swear and this includes the expensive things we did do like i bought a t-shirt from that bookstore that i went to and we went up the viewing tower in chicago uh the john hancock not the sears tower the other one obviously i went whale watching that was so worth it and we saw two movies in salt lake city so i've always dreamed of going to these places and just being there there's enough entertainment for me so apart from what i just mentioned we didn't spend anything on attraction tickets if you can't imagine doing a big vacation without going to theme parks and skiing and whatever then that's great if you have a similar mindset if you're just curious and you want to travel and see new places then don't be put off because you can't afford those things we can and we still have the best time i do normally look up a couple of things first though i'll look up the best free or cheap things to do in a given city and loads of blogs will come up and give you ideas sometimes you'll find something that yeah you really don't want to miss i also look up unusual things to do in that city and there's a website called atlas obscura and for most cities i've been to they have a page with this title and there's loads of things in there some things that you would have never heard of but you'll be glad that you visit while you're there i can recommend some free things for you to do obviously americans will know about all of these things like all good tourists we rode the staten island ferry which was so much fun so amazing on our first ever day in america and while we were on staten island we went to historic richmond town which you can tell by the amount of footage of that that made it into my video how interesting that was at that time of year we rode the roosevelt island cable car which was so much fun and that's how i got those shots of flying over the taxis in new york and i went up to this viewpoint in dc it's the old post office tower and the people working there are so nice and talk to me for ages and there's some really good views up there and we did tours of the latter day saints conference center and office building these were both really worth it very educational interesting and in both cases we just walked into the lobby and there were people there who are just dying to take you on a tour for free now as far as museums go if you're into that we've been to a ton of museums and the smithsonian museums in dc are the best i don't care what anybody says about the museums in london i don't care if this means i have to give up my british passport because i'm saying this they're not as good as dc the ones in dc the smithsonian museums are interesting and educational and fascinating on a whole other level and they're all completely free but even if they were 10 bucks at time honestly i would still recommend them in this budget video because they're just that good so accommodation i've left this till last because it takes some explaining we have to talk about how absurdly low this is this is not even 35 a day between us for a room every night which i'm pretty proud of considering we were in the major u.s cities so two things contribute to this after 35 nights we're actually sleeping on the train for three of them this isn't free but it's included in the cost of amtrak tickets here not in the accommodation budget so that brings it down but the major thing is that we actually house sat for almost two weeks in dc so that's a long stretch of bringing the average down by not spending anything on accommodation but like i said i worked out and if we paid the new york rate that we were paying for our whole time in dc that would bring our daily average up to 55 so still a bit more achievable than some of the budgets you'll find online i'm going to talk a bit more about how sitting at the end but the other two main sites we used to find places to stay were airbnb and hostel world so on airbnb we like to go for a private room this is a bit cheaper than getting your own place you get your own room and you share the bathroom and kitchen with the people who live there and it's not just cheaper all the hosts that we met doing this in the us were so so friendly and welcoming and helped us explore their city and get to know their neighborhood and in new york in particular i think this is the only actual legal way to stay in an airbnb it has to be the spare room of the actual tenant but the laws are changing all the time so you might want to look that up so on airbnb we like to filter by private rooms and ones that have a kitchen that you can use to cook your own meals in and we in most cities we found really good ones of these a big choice of ones with different reviews that we could choose from um the only places where that didn't happen in la and san francisco we just thought the airbnbs were so so expensive and that's why we stayed in hostels and again on hostel world we filtered by one where you could have a kitchen that you could cook your own meals in um and both times we actually stayed in the dorm and we had a really good experience we had um friendly and quiet roommates who didn't bother us at all the beds were comfortable and we had a locker in both places too always check the reviews to see if the lockers are good um and if you're planning on staying in hostels while you're in america obviously invest on a combination padlock for your journey even if you're not cool with dorms you might want to check coastal world too because some of them have private rooms and then you share the bathroom and kitchen facilities with the people who have the dorms and some even include breakfast like the one in l.a they had fresh bagels pastries juice coffee probably fruit even and probably some hotels have a worse breakfast than that and the place we stayed in monterey that was kind of like a motel we found that on the app hotel tonight and i check google maps again whenever we're looking for somewhere to stay um i look at a few places i might want to go to in the city and how long it would take to walk or ride the bus between there and where the accommodation is and sometimes you'll find that even if you have to spend more to get somewhere to stay that's quite central in the city you can actually save money because you're not spending on metric tickets doing that so again like with everything a bit of research can save you some money here but basically find somewhere that has good reviews that you trust and where you can cook your own meals so that's all the categories and how what we spent broke down apart from a little bit of household talk at the end but first i just want to say that i think when you're making a budget for a big trip like this you should be as realistic as possible and i actually recommend that you plan for 10 a day to disappear i bet i could write up a perfect budget with nothing going wrong that was more like 35 a day if i wanted to but i would never go back to the us thinking i could actually stick to that and then it would be realistic because when traveling the perfect planned budget is just not realistic because all sorts of things happen and you need to plan for probably about ten dollars a day to disappear otherwise you're going to go over your budget and be really disappointed or get into trouble this happens in loads of ways and ends up getting spread out throughout all the categories i mentioned but you know for one thing there's actual mistakes and problems that can happen like when we had to give greyhound 93 for new tickets for no reason i mean probably real americans know to not use greyhound and won't make that mistake but somebody out there is probably going to get you or say you've been walking around all day and you can't stop yourself from walking into somewhere and buying hot food even though you've got groceries at home or you can easily have a longer day out than you expected or get a bit lost and end up spending more on metro tickets than you thought you would or you might want to give something to a charity collector all those impulse buyers like when i got my t-shirt from that bookstore in san francisco i couldn't help myself when i was there and that's fine and we bought four movie tickets to kill time with our bags in salt lake city things like that you you can't plan for them but something will come up and something will make you spend money in ways that you didn't expect and that you could never plan for you will make some mistake or indulgence or the world will find some way to scam you and that means ten dollars a day can disappear so it's best to plan for that otherwise you'll get yourself down you might have five perfect days in a row where no money disappears and then you go out and you have a nice dinner out and two beers so what is my advice for people commenting asking how can they find house sits and travel cheaply that way i know this isn't for everybody but for us we love cats and dogs so it's a big win-win house sitting is basically where you stay in somebody's house for free in exchange for looking after their pets while they're on vacation and if you google usa houses there's about 10 websites where people post listings saying that they want to find a house sitter and you can contact them and normally contact as many people as you want once you're a paid member of the website you have to pay to join but obviously that's cheaper than paying for a hotel or even an airbnb in most cases this has so many advantages for one thing we're animal lovers so we do just really enjoy it but you get welcomed by somebody our host in dc was so nice really welcomed us into the house in their neighborhood and showed us around and it's somewhere to stay while you're traveling that's almost free and gives you your own space to relax in for a while now obviously we would never leave a dog for more than a few hours depending on what the owners say so to even scratch the surface of like for example a smithsonian museum you have to go back in multiple trips but for me this is not so much of a problem i mean imagine us in every other city we went to we're staying in a little room and rushing around all day trying to see as much as we can in a few days right but in dc if we get to spend almost two weeks there then we can take our time really relax and see the city and little afternoons out that honestly that change of pace was really welcome to me so in that way by house sitting you can actually get to know a city better you know you walk the dog around it you go to all the local grocery stores and you spend more time there but you can actually end up spending less and my advice for finding a house it is just to be very very flexible at first in fact make this the first thing that you look for look on the websites see if there's any opportunities that you like in in areas that you want to go to with pets that you think you'll be able to look after and people who seem nice and then take those dates see if you know see if there's a train that can get you there that's a reasonable price see if there's a trip to the next place that's a good price see if there's a hotel or airbnb or whatever in the next place that is a reasonable price and do these things exist or does it clash you know with the time that the city's going to be really busy because of some festival or public holiday or something look into all these things and if you think the trip is feasible then go ahead and apply it and you might get lucky like us and get picked by some really nice people it helped that before we went in the uk we did a few shorter weekend houses just to get some good references and i think that probably made a difference and we were so lucky we got picked by those nice people with that lovely cat and that lovely dog who both of them we miss so much and yeah we they said we could come and we booked our flights to jfk for four days before we had to be in dc and that was that we were going to america for the first time ever and we were so excited oh and don't be late whatever it takes people have got to go on vacation and they want to show you around and leave the key with you and sure you have to look after their pets honestly amtrak is late so much so if you're coming and you think there's any chance of you missing the time that you have to meet just pay to stay in a hotel one night before you meet them get to the city and stay there one night it's still cheaper than paying for the whole time that was all the information i could come up with and i really really hope that's given you a good realistic target to have in mind for your next vacation whenever it's next safe if you have any more questions you can leave me a comment or follow me on instagram i'm posting pictures from our trip to the usa pictures from our new life we live in germany now which is cool um and you can message me on there as well if you want here in germany we're in a really good place to travel more and make more travel videos when we can obviously we can't right now my next videos are going to be just a relaxing calming look at the area that we're living in i shot a couple of walking videos when it was snowing in germany even though i didn't know i'd have this amazing audience um i really hope you like them there'll be a bit of a change of pace but i hope that there can be a nice calming part of your day when they come out and like i said at the start i'm just so so grateful thank you so much

Channel: Tom Thornton

Views: 48,863

Keywords: tom thornton, thornton, tom, backpacking, travel, vlog, honest travel vlogs, real travel, backpacking guide, use travel, amtrak budget, usa backpacking on a budget, travel america on a budget, amtrak across america budget, cost of travelling across usa, cost of backpacking usa, usa budget travel tips, usa budget travel, backpacking usa budget, backpacking usa cost, California Zephyr budget, usa train travel budget, cross usa without a car, New York City on a budget

Id: pTOhbOvjHr4

Length: 19min 47sec (1187 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 07 2021