Creating a Budget
The Global Education Office Budget Tool
Stay on top of your finances while you are away by creating category budgets and track your spending each month.
Use this tool to calculate budgeted and actual expenses for categories such as bills, meals, local transportation, health insurance, and other personal expenses. You can also adapt this worksheet to create a budget for your current expenses to help you plan ahead for an upcoming program. View an example budget and instructions on how to update your own budget here.
Money Management Abroad Guide
Plan how you will manage your money while away.
The ways you access and use your personal funds will greatly vary depending on the program in which you participate. During your pre-departure orientation, your program leaders will speak more specifically about money matters, but this document will give you a good head start.
Numbeo
Find cost of living for cities around the world.
This site will also allow you to compare living costs in different cities, which may help you decide on a location or compare your upcoming program location to your current expenses in Tempe, Arizona. If you are concerned about finances, you may want to consider attending a Global Education program in a city that has a lower cost of living (Lima, Peru rather than London, England, for example). If you have already made a decision about your program location, knowing cost of living information can still be incredibly helpful as you create a budget for your time away.
The OANDA Currency Converter
View currency conversions around the world to plan and budget.
The OANDA Currency Converter can assist you in budgeting your expenses for your upcoming program. It is an online tool that gathers the average price of the worlds’ currencies over a 24-hour period, and can provide you with currency conversions. Simply choose either the drop-down menu of currency that you have or the menu of currency that you want, and enter the amount of currency that you wish to convert. Planning ahead to determine how many pounds, euros, reals, yen and more your US dollars will yield will help you create an overall budget.