Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Can you spare $50 a week?

Today I had coffee with a friend who had a couple of weeks in Samoa recently. We both agreed that Samoa in June was infinitely preferable weather wise to New Zealand in June. She was quite taken by the idea of buying property there, or a least a patch of land near a beach (in x years time, where 5 < x< 20). I thought this would be a little binding, and my preference would be to go there for frequent extended holidays.

This got me thinking: how much would it cost to go on holiday to Samoa, every June, for the entirety of June?

Cost of holiday: $50 p/day budget all inclusive once there => $700 for two weeks => $1400 four weeks. I reckon you could probably stretch your money further if you tried, but $1500 p/month is definitely quite doable if you are staying in a Manase / Taufua / Fao Fao level beachside fale.
$1000 flights return.
Thus for a total spend of $2500 you could spend next June in its entirety in a beachside fale, drinking copious amounts of Vailima and cocktails. When (If) that gets a little tiresome you could volunteer at the local school or similar.

How much per week? If you are away for four weeks, you will need to save for 48 weeks to fund this. Thus, $2500 /48 = $50 approximately.
So, if you can afford to put away around $50 a week for the rest of the year, you can take the entirety of June as a holiday and spend it on a beach in Samoa.

Annual Leave:
Another factor here is leave from your employment. Presumably this would take a little bit of negotiation, but if you managed to negotiate for a higher than usual annual leave entitlement- say six weeks- then you will be in the great position on holiday of having your income in New Zealand being higher than the day to day expenses you are incurring in Samoa. IF you could somehow negotiate eight weeks leave (which would probably entail taking a pay cut) you could extend your holiday to two months, but that is a pipe dream for me at the moment.
If neither of those are options you can always take leave without pay, which is not totally bad.

If you get bored of Samoa one year you could go somewhere else for a month- say Vietnam or similar- and then go back to Samoa the following year.

Can you spare $50 a week?

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