Expense Report - Year 1
Before we ever started making videos, this topic often came up between Tia and I: how much money are we going to spend on this trip? It was tough to pin down an answer. Most information we found was speculative, outdated, or focused on one specific region of the world. Since we make videos about our travels, our viewers have a really good grasp on our style of travel. The types of hotels we stay at, what food we eat, and so on. We thought it would be interesting to share the real, annualized cost of all the stuff we did in those videos.
We set out on this trip with the goal of spending no more than $100/day between the both of us. The number would be higher in places like Western Europe, and lower in areas like Southeast Asia. We figured the average daily spend over the entire trip, though, would be $100 (if we stuck to our budget). That’s $38,000 for 380 days of travel. A lot of money, but this is something we wanted to do, and we had spent the last 4 years saving for it.
AROUND THE WORLD IN 380 DAYS
$2,000 over-budget
…Which works out to about $105/day. So we came in 5% over-budget. A seemingly tiny number ended up representing $2,000, after the smoke cleared. Still, I think that’s pretty good considering how unpredictable traveling can be.
Now let’s go through the categories, and figure out exactly where all the money went.
Accommodation - $13,529.82
The costliest part of traveling is keeping a roof over your head every night. On average, we spent $37/day on accommodation. That is over 1/3 of our entire budget! But, to our surprise, it is significantly less than what we paid in rent & utilities for our 1 bedroom apartment before this trip.
As you may have noticed from the videos, Tia did a wonderful job finding nice hotels on a budget. Hostels were surprisingly absent, because we found that two beds in a hostel often cost just as much or more than a room in a budget hotel.
Beginning our trip in July 2021, we no doubt both benefitted and suffered in this area from the wildly atypical state of tourism that year. I expect this area to keep changing as we go into our second year of travel.
Food & Drinks - $12,054.38
$31/day on average.
I find this category to be the most interesting. Expectations were so different from reality here, and not just in terms of cost. Food is so wonderfully different everywhere you go, and we really enjoy experiencing that aspect of travel. We’re both generally quite open-minded when it comes to food, and will happily try new dishes at every opportunity.
So at the start of this trip, then, I would’ve never predicted that 8 months later we’d be seeking out the only Mexican restaurant in Siem Reap, Cambodia and paying $8 for a burrito in one of the world’s least expensive countries. Both mentally and physically, constantly changing diets for a year straight takes its toll. It sounds silly, but we really needed those burritos.
Everybody is different with food, and I freely admit we’re still figuring this part out. But if I’m going to recommend one thing in this whole post, it is this: give your budget some extra room here for the unexpected.
Transport - $9,396.95
About $25/day.
This is the last of the three ‘big’ categories, and I think we did pretty well here (with a few exceptions). You may’ve seen in the videos, we tend to pick the less expensive, slower form of travel when given the option. In many cases, this meant walking! It makes for a fun, or at least memorable, time. Keeping our itinerary flexible has also saved us thousands. If tickets to X are too expensive or sold out, we go to Y. Not for everybody, but it works for us.
Speaking of flexibility, the priciest tickets have always happened when our travel plans were rigid. We spent $2,000 getting from Morocco to Thailand as the former prepared to close its borders (Omicron). Flying home to see family this summer from South Korea was equally expensive.
The biggest transport-related misstep was probably the Eurail Pass in Europe. For many reasons, it is not really a good deal in my opinion.
I hope to improve in this area as we continue to get a better hold on things. I know some full-time travelers have this down to a science. Transport costs will also, hopefully, normalize in general as the world gets back to the way it was.
Entertainment - $1,196.65
This category encompasses attractions like museums, ruins, and tours. It also covers the one time we went to the movies in Thailand. Only $3/day!
Right at the beginning, Europe quickly taught us that we could spend a near-endless amount of money on this type of thing if we wanted to. In Europe it is churches and museums, while Southeast Asia is waterfalls and temples. Every place we go, there’s always the discussion about which attractions are the best for the money.
I don’t think this category will change very much. Everyone has a different idea about what a ‘must see’ is. We’ll keep paying for tickets to the things we really want to experience.
Covid Tests - $920.96
Would anyone be excited about this category? Tests accounted for almost 2.5% of our total budget. Not a big percentage but of course I’d rather it be 0%. Still, I understand why they were necessary. I’d like to think we saved at least $920 by traveling when few others were, but it is impossible to say for sure.
One interesting thing we noticed is that the cost of a PCR Covid test was wildly inconsistent everywhere. Here are some stand-outs:
Free upon entry, $40 per person on exit in the United Arab Emirates.
$130 per person, including mandatory ‘doctor signing fee’ at a nonprofit hospital in Cambodia.
$20 per person at a Covid testing tent one month, $40 per person at the same tent the next month in Indonesia.
In all seriousness, it was a necessary expense to travel in 2021 and early 2022. Hopefully you are reading this at a time when this category no longer exists.
Bribes & Scams - $107.70
Thankfully, we spent very little on bribes! Having it as a category in our expense sheet was kind of fun, in a weird way. We were stopped by the police twice while riding motorcycles, once in Indonesia and again in Vietnam. Both times we were immediately told that we did not have the appropriate driving permits, and both times the charge was changed to something else when we produced our international driving permits.
Scams are more difficult to define. All over the world, tourists pay a premium for anything from food to admission tickets. It’s tough to call these scams, though. Can you label it a scam when a number is clearly printed on the menu? When you voluntarily commit to the price beforehand, and receive some kind of good or service in return? I don’t think so.
For this list, I only counted a handful of interactions in Morocco as scams. Without getting into too much detail, we paid for a number of unwanted ‘services’ there. It was a learning experience and we don’t resent it at all. Hopefully, though, this number will be even lower in year two.
Miscellaneous - $2,803.93
This category is for everything that we didn’t know how to categorize! Hygiene products, hospital visits, medicine, clothing, phone data/minutes, laundry, travel insurance, etc. At just over $7/day, it is the 4th biggest category and amounts to quite a bit of money.
The single biggest item here is the hospital visit and MRI Tia had due to back pain in Thailand, which totaled $150 after insurance ($300 pre-insurance). Our travel insurance costs $40/month per person. When we were still using Google Fi for our cellphones, it was $60/month per person. Nowadays, we are spending $10-30 per person per month on local phone plans.
Moving forward I’d like to eliminate as much of this category as possible, simply by categorizing things better. I don’t expect the real cost of these goods and services to go down at all beyond (fingers crossed) the hospital visit, though.
THINGS OMITTED FROM THIS REPORT
The purpose of this report is to provide more detailed information on what it cost us to travel full-time internationally. I didn’t include expenses specifically related to making the YouTube videos because it is unhelpful for anyone that may be using this report as a tool for their own budget planning. The things listed below are not necessary expenses for traveling, and I’m including them for transparency and because I think some people may find it interesting.
$240 - The yearly cost to keep this website up and running
$2,800 - Two new iPhones. Waterproof + much better image quality.
$540 - DJI Action Camera for better filming on motorcycles and underwater.
$340 - DJI wireless lavalier microphones for better audio quality.
$2,100 - Second MacBook Pro laptop so we can both work at the same time.
$6,000 - Our complete year two camera upgrade including lenses, tripod, memory cards, batteries, etc.
The last one is the most expensive thing either of us have ever bought, besides cars! We are extremely fortunate that a combination of YouTube ad revenue and BuyMeACoffee has paid for almost everything above. It is entirely the people that watch our videos, you, that have allowed us to continue improving the quality of our videos.
-Cheveyo