Originally Posted by
acantor
If you plan to camp and prepare all your meals, count on $30 - $55 per day: $15 - $20 for camping, $10 - $25 for food and drink, and $5 - $10 for miscellaneous (tourist attractions, laundry, replacement parts, replacement clothes, tools, toiletries, medication, etc.) So in the extreme cheap case, that's $1200 for 40 days, but I would suggest budgeting $1000 or more, just in case.
Those numbers are a bit high to my way of thinking, but it might vary with the route and will obviously vary from rider to rider. The following is my perspective. Please don't assume that everyone would be happy on what I would spend, but it demonstrates what is possible. Also realize that I am not on the cheapest end of the scale some people do with a lot less than I do.
Edit: I misread, my bad. Changing food from $30-55 to $25. I still think that is high though, but not by as much.
Meals $25 per day if preparing your own seems really high. You must buy a lot more expensive stuff than I do and that the folks I have hung out with on tour do. That budget should be plenty to eat fairly nice restaurant meals every meal. I'd figure about 25% of that if not eating in restaurants at all and if fairly frugal.
Camping, $10 - $25 also seems high. With either of his (her?) proposed destinations the expenses can be pretty low. Free camping is pretty plentiful for much of either route. Where there isn't readily available free camping there are a lot of places that are $10 or less. From San Diego thru Texas on my last trip we had a lot of free places to camp, many of the RV parks charged cyclists only $10, and I don't recall ever paying as much as $25 there.
$5 - $10 for miscellaneous (tourist attractions, laundry, replacement parts, replacement clothes, tools, toiletries, medication, etc.)? I don't recall many (any?) tourist attractions that I was tempted to spend on on the Southern tier, so on a similar route that was $0 for me. It seems to me that replacement clothes, tools, toiletries, medication are likely to be either a very minimal or non existent expense. All of those were just what I took from home. Why would you need to replace clothes, tools, toiletries, or medication on a 40 day trip. Replacement parts I can see, but on a trip that length they are part of the cushion rather than part of the expected expenses since they may or may not occur.
I think the $1200 is far from the extreme case, but more like the planned case if no