Tips for Traveling with a Friend

First rule of traveling with a friend? Choose your travel partner wisely.

Emma and I have gone on a few small trips together and I’ve traveled with a few other friends on longer jaunts. Both of us have traveled with friends in the past and for the most part it’s been a pretty good experience. When traveling with friends it’s important to remember the following:

1. There will be days when you’ll want to wander off on your own – not because you don’t like hanging around with your friend (I mean, you’ve made the decision to travel together in the first place after all) – but rather because there will be times when you’ll just want – NEED – some alone time. Personally, I love my “me time” and heaven help anyone who gets in the way of that. 🙂

2. Communicate! You and your friend(s) should talk about what you want to do on this trip, where you want to visit, what activities you want to do and more importantly which ones you’d prefer to skip. Some people are thrill-seekers – you know the ones who want to go coast steering or bungie jumping, whereas others prefer a more laid back experience. Just remember that this vacation is a group vacation and that not everyone is going to want to participate in every activity with you.

3. While communication about trip expectations are important, even more important than that is BUDGET. Make certain that you’re budgets are aligned. There’s nothing worse than traveling with someone who wants to blow the bank account, while you’re trying to limit your spending, especially if you’ve agreed to share costs. The first thing Emma and I discussed was budget, we did some research and decided that we could each afford $10,000 for this 3 month trip. We’ve worked very hard to stay within the budget when booking our transportation and accommodations. I’ve created a spreadsheet to track our daily expenses and calculate our daily allowance at each destination, based on our travel and accommodation costs. Emma also found an amazing app (Splittr) that helps to calculate what each person owes the other(s) for any shared expenses. The app allows you to generate reports and send them to the people you’re traveling with. It’s fantastic!