We have maintained a very strict budget since January 2004, it's been hard at times and many sacrifices have been made. We have been saving 47.5% of our income after tax every month. We've been short of a couple of hundred dollars every now and then and we have had to juggle between bank accounts, but nothing is on credit.

Sacrifices
The main saving was going without a car. We had fairly high rent living in Melbourne CBD, but we rented out our car park space and not having running costs on a car more then offset this. Then we toned down our social life. Zoe dealt with this by hitting the gym every day and Andrew concentrated on websites and increasing his software knowledge for work.

We had 'champagne Fridays'. We would buy a cheapish bottle or two of champagne and play drinking games and watch our favourite TV shows - our own 'in-house entertainment'. Zo??s favourite drinking game is the 'Taggart drinking game'. Champagne is to be gulped every time the words 'murder, laddie, lassie, boss' are used. You've got to play it to see how good it is!

We took only one holiday this year at Easter. We used frequent flyer points for the flights and we stayed in a holiday home owned by a friend. So a very cheap holiday. We think it's important to have some treats and targets when you are saving up so hard, as otherwise it can quite depressing over a long period. You can't put your life on hold for a trip as then you are putting to much expectation into the trip and it can only lead to disappointment.

We also only bought clothes that we needed for travel, and this was bare minimal, as we knew clothes would be really cheap to pick up in Asia. This sacrifice particularly hit Zoe hard. Anyone who knows Zoe will be aware that she is a very avid clothes shopper. It's amazing how clothes and social life can really add up. Andrew is very dogmatic in his approach to budgeting and on his Palm Pilot he inputs all expenditure and creates a pie chart displaying where all our money has gone for the month. The word 'anal' may spring to mind, but it certainly makes you think twice about frivolous expenditure!

Spreadsheet
To get a comprehensive idea about how much we needed to target as savings each month, Zoe created a spreadsheet based on research from Lonely Planet's and other travelogues. We are on a real backpacker level budget, but not scraping the barrel. Enough to have our own bathroom and a fan in the room. Not enough for Western style hotels with air con and eating in restaurants every night. We have enough put aside for the occasional Western hotel and a decent restaurant meal once a week, the rest of the time it will be cafes and hawker stalls. So a decent standard but not luxury. If you want to see the full budget please click here.

This is a summary of the budget (based on two people). When we come back we'll let you know if we hit target! All prices in Australian Dollars.

China = $238   per day (on organised trip accommodation and travel paid for)

Tibet = $238   per day (on organised trip accommodation and travel paid for)

Nepal = $80    per day

India = $147.23     per day    (on organised trip accommodation and travel paid for)

Thailand = $48.22    per day

Laos = $46.27  per day

Cambodia = $74.62     per day

Vietnam = $66.81   per day

Malaysia = $62.46

Singapore = $71.25

These prices are approx average daily expenditure; trips and excursions have their own extra budget as detailed in the spreadsheet. As a comparison, our living costs in Australia are $103.25 per day.

These are the confirmed costs that we have paid for pre-trip:

Flights
Melbourne- Beijing $900 one way each
Delhi-Bangkok $500 each

Organised trips
Mountains and Monasteries 28 days (Intrepid) Covers China, Tibet and entry into Nepal = $3000 each
Back roads of Rajastan 19 days (Gecko)  = $1200 each

Visas
China = $50 Australian passport $80 UK passport
Nepal = $70 each
India  = $90 Australian passport $105 UK passport

Medical
Injections = $400 for Zo? (no previous travel injections) $200 for Andrew (updated vaccinations).

Please note you need to go eight weeks before your date of travel, just in case you need two rounds of injections - we did! We also picked up some anti malarial tablets for the first part of our trip (we'll re-stock in Bangkok) and some altitude sickness prevention tablets for when we get to Tibet.