When I looked for ways to finance my travel around the world, I tried to find how to give to my family, friends, colleagues and/or readers a solution to help me.

I found a solution while discussing with Antoine : I have to get them to microsponsor my project. Instead of looking for hypothetical “regular” sponsors, I’d like to go to people I know and who care about me, and include them into my adventure. They don’t have big money like a big sponsor, but they are a lot and they want to help me… So why couldn’t they participate?

What I’m proposing to my microsponsors is to travel with me. After financing one day of my trip (with a 15€ personnal donation), microsponsors will tell me things to do depending on where I am : special food to eat, a place to visit, a video message to record… and I’ll try to do my best to address these wishes. And there’s more! I’ll send to my microsponsors a postcard from where I am: the postcard can be a sketch, an instant photograph, some little souvenirs… it’ll be a personalised artwork, from me to the microsponsor. Before being sent, the postcards will be photographed and published on this blog, with a Creative Commons license. Then, the recipents will be invited to send me a picture of them with the postcard and post it on a Flickr or Facebook group…

And today, it’s the big launch. Well, in french only for now, but I’ll translate in about two weeks. If you know a bit of French, you should be able to register without a problem. The system is quite basic, I’m doing everything from a base developed by Samuel Martin and Stéphane Deschamps. After the registration, I’m doing the payment validations, the mails, etc. You might expect to wait a couple of days for a confirmation email…

Oh, and I discovered PayPal fees… for a 15€ donation, PayPal takes 75c… This could be quite heavy if I get lots of donation. Don’t hesitate to give more to compensate! (ok, that was shameless.)

What day will you choose?

To help you decide, please consult my plans, I put some dates to help you target a country and a date… but nothing’s written in stone. I’ll tell you if I change my plans :)

Go to the Microsponsoring »

The microsponsoring platform has been designed by Samuel Martin and Stéphane Deschamps. May they be thanked again and again, and may they know happiness and felicity in the coming eons even after the return and rise of the Mighty Cthulhu, which could come soon. If you’re still reading this, go microsponsor me already!

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And so this week-end I tried to calculate how much this project would cost me. The good news is, my estimations were correct. I was guessing a number between 12000€ and 16000€, and now I’ve made the calculations I’m at about 14000€. That’s $18 000, but I’ll write in Euros in this post. If you want, you can ask Google for guidance. Type the number, followed by ” EUR to USD” (e.g.: “14000 EUR to USD”)

I did I do my calculations?
Short answer : I guessed. Long answer : I guessed most of it. Fairly long answer : I guessed most of it, and I used websites to do it.
There are lots of websites who document the basic daily price of travelling abroad and run simulations. One of them is Saving For Travel, I liked the name. It is, though, in Pounds (like in £. The google request is “GBP to USD”). Oh well. This websites uses week-based estimates for the typical cost in a certain country, but using my calculatorial talents, I found the daily costs, it was easier that way. The weekly cost in Pounds (GBP) was then converted to Euros (EUR), and I added 15%, just because the £ lost so much these last months (and my point was, I don’t think that crisis-related price drops were mirrored in the cost estimates on the website. 15% might have been a bit much from my part though). As a result, I get a daily cost that’s following the estimates from the french travel guides website routard.com (e.g.: Vietnam : the daily cost on routard.com is evaluated between 16 and 25€. My own estimation is at 20.5€.)

The daily cost is lodgings (hotel, hostel, b&b…), food and other basic expenses. Lodgings amount to 1/3 of the daily cost, but I can’t find my source. If I do well on CouchSurfing and I find a host for half the nights on my trip, I can save up to 15% on my daily expenses. And it’s more than feasible : during my last trip, I slept 8 night with CouchSurfing and 4 nights at hostels (in Venice and Copenhagen)… And 4 nights in the train. 1/3 of my non-train nights were thanks to CS!

I estimated my stay in countries by the week, and with all the calculations I got to 9750€ for 52 weeks. If I save the 15% thanks to CouchSurfing, the daily expenses amount to 8300€.

And now, for the fun part… the air travels and transportations. I looked the AirTreks machine, who gave me an estimate between $3 000 and $4 000 (2300€ – 3000€). I spare you all the details of my subsequent examination of travel costs with Opodo or Expedia, but let’s say you can find it cheaper on low-cost airlines. In that part of my calculations there’s also the Transsiberian train. I think I should go deeper into that… the prices don’t seem right.

So here I am : 9750 + 3400 = 13150€ is the big estimate, 8300 + 2700 = 11000€ is the small one.(2700is the lowest AirTreks added to the Transsiberian).

Here is a table with my “large” cut :

Perhaps I should count everything else… Everything else? That’s the expenses before the trip. As you could see it on tourdumonde.be if you read French, on the page answering some Money questions, there’s the travel insurance (300€), vaccines + doctor (120€), medical pack (100€), backpack + new shoes + stuff (150€ + 150€ + 150€), passport (60€), visas (Russia 70€ + Mongolia 87€ + China 62€) That’s like 1250€ I have to pay before I go.

Of course, don’t forget visas from countries from SE Asia, but i’ll take them in Hong Kong and on the way.

My budget oscillates between 12250€ and 14400€ depending on the half-fullness or half-emptiness of the glass. Now, I prefer to consider the highest estimate, that way I can have some surprises on the way (“What? I have enough money to go to Eurodisney?”)…

Did you have fun? ‘Cos the next part is way more fun. It’s about the money I bring to the project to bring the balance to the Force.

If I bring all the cash I have (not much) and other things that amount to a little bit more, with, of course, a little something for the taxes (I’ll have 2008 and 2009 to pay, remember) I have about 7500€ in personnal funds. Oops. The lowest estimate doesn’t sound that low, now I have to find 4750€…

Now would be the time to press my trusted [SPONSORS] button, if I had one. My micro-sponsorship program will be at à 15€ ($18) per day, but people will be able to donate more if they wish so. If I get 182,5 friends/family members/nigerian princes to pay for one day each(50% of the 365 days) it will add 2737,5€ to my budget. not too bad, I’m just over 10000€, but there’s between 2000 and 4000€ to be had, if I want to bring balance to my budget.

Now I put a lot of thought into that and I found an idea. I should find a Sponsor and convince him to follow my micro-sponsorship program : if someone gives me 15€ for a day, the sponsor mirrors the amount, and gives 15€ to the project. Of that fund, 1/3 would go to a charity and the 2/3 left would go to my project. If I get to fill up 50% on my micro-sponsorship calendar, the Sponsor gives 2735,5€ to the fund, with 912,5€ given to a charity of his choice, and 1823€ go into my personnal project fund… If nobody sponsors me, I would get 0€, but I woud get 9125€ if the 365 days are taken and 1825€ would be given to charity.

Now, I have to find some sponsors to fill the big money hole in my previsions. Or find the hen, the one that lays them golden eggs.

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