The following tables shows the total costs for the two of us for each location to which we’ve travelled, and will be updated on an ongoing basis. Details for these figures can be found in the blog post for each location.

2021

We spent December 2021 – April 2022 selling our house, cars, and getting rid of all our possessions before heading out on our full-time nomadic lifestyle.

2022

2023

2024

Location Avg/day – These are our expenses directly related to being in that location, which includes accommodation, groceries, restaurants, entry fees and activities (museums, scuba diving, etc), and local transportation for getting around that location.

Nomadic Avg/day – These are ALL of our costs while living our nomadic lifestyle, which includes the Location Avg/day expenses above, plus flights or other transportation to get to that location, health expenses and insurance, data packages, subscriptions (Netflix and other streaming services, web site hosting, Adobe Lightroom, VPN, misc apps, etc.). We have a nomadic daily budget of $160/day (Canadian,  $122 US$, €111). So far we have averaged out to $145.33/day, so feel pretty good about staying within our budget.

Nomadic Total Spent – The total amount we spent in that location, including our full nomadic expenses like travelling between locations, health insurance, our subscriptions and blog hosting, etc.

Nomadic Annualized – This is the Nomadic Avg/day cost multiplied by 365 days. This would theoretically be how much it would cost us to live in that location the whole year, but in reality we should be able to get better rates on accommodation if staying for a full year – we move around pretty quickly, so often can’t take advantage of monthly discounts, and our costs if staying a full year should be lower than shown here.

Major Takeaways and Costs Explained – As can be seen in the table above, we are currently averaging $53,046k Canadian$ per year ($37.6k US$, €35.7k). This total includes all accommodation, transportation (including gas and road tolls), groceries, restaurants, entrance fees, parking, health insurance/care, phone/data packages, and subscriptions (Netflix and other streaming services, software costs like VPNs, Adobe Creative suite, Quicken, web hosting, etc.). These tables reflect all our expenses for living a nomadic lifestyle.

Some of the lowest priced regions were eastern Europe and SE Asia. Also, the longer we stayed in a country the lower our costs became because transportation costs to the region are spread across a longer time, and AirBnB rentals usually offer discounts for weekly or monthly rentals. Road trips usually raise the spending, but you can see  in places like Portugal where we stayed for almost a month in one location, taking advantage of the discounts for longer stay accommodations and less gas and road tolls, it averaged out comfortably below our $160 budget.

Our Travel Style (Will our costs match yours?)

Quick vs Slow Travel: As you can probably tell from the table above, we move around pretty quickly, often staying a week or less in any one location. Even for the countries with longer durations we often stay in a few different cities to get a good feel of the region. So far we’ve been moving around like this so we could experience as many locations as possible, but it means we usually aren’t taking advantage of weekly or monthly discounts on Airbnbs, plus we’re spending money on transportation. Many nomads we know are slow travellers, staying in one location for at least a month to lower their costs and get the discounts, but so far we like the pace we’re going so will stick with it since we can do it and still stay within our budget

Accommodation Choices: I consider our accommodation tastes to be pretty average, but we do a lot of searching on Airbnb, Booking.com, Agoda, VRBO, and other sites to get as good a deal as we can. You can check out the links in the middle of our About Us page to see the type of places we stay and what they cost. We know nomads who spend way more and way less than we do on accommodations, so figure out what you’re looking for and how that will impact your budget.

When staying more than one or two nights we’re normally looking for a highly rated Airbnb or apartment style unit that’s well reviewed with the following amenities:

• • A decently outfitted kitchen. We cook most of our own meals, but we’re not that fancy, so as long as there are some pots and pans, glasses, dishes and utensils we’re normally fine.
  • A defined bedroom (not a studio, although we have done them for shorter stays if choice is limited).
  • A comfortable seating area with a couch and TV. We’re not on vacation with our travels – this is our life – so relaxing watching Netflix is a normal evening activity. We also check the pictures of the TV on the listing to make sure it’s relatively new so we can attach our Firestick to use our own streaming accounts, along with news and other apps. Quite often the only stations you can get on the TV are in the local language, so it’s nice to have a consistent source of news and entertainment we can understand.
  • A work area where we can set up our laptops with accessible plug-ins. Usually this is the kitchen table.
  • A washing machine if we’re going to be staying a week or more.

What’s not included in these costs? Our nomadic costs don’t include spending on long-term items like clothing, luggage, electronics, or cooking items that we bring with us (small utensils that we often find missing in Airbnbs). Because these items will be used a long time, often years, it’s not feasible to include them in the total for each location, but those costs are quite low since we don’t buy much due to lack of space in our bags.

We average $4,000 – $5,000 Canadian$ for these additional costs each year (up to $3,700 US$ / €3,400), give or take a thousand. These costs can fluctuate quite a bit over the years, and we hope it’s less in 2024 since we’ve now acquired the luggage and electronics that work well with this lifestyle, and hopefully we won’t lose another phone this year and have to buy a replacement.

How Can You Save Even More Money?

• Credit Card Points – As Canadians we don’t have access to the points that our American friends do, but if you live in the USA you can probably take advantage of these to save a lot of money. Do a Google search for “Travel Hacking” to find many websites that explain how to do it.
• Travel Slower – As mentioned above in the Travel Style section, we tend to move quite often, averaging less than a week in a location over our first three years of nomadic travel. If you stay for 28 days in an Airbnb it will usually get you a monthly discount, which we’ve used a few times to get up to 50% off the cost of an apartment. Staying a month or more also allows you to search in local forums (local Facebook groups, local websites, real estate sites, etc) for furnished short term rentals that normally require at least a month or two of rental, but will be quite a bit cheaper than Airbnb or hotels.
• House Sitting – There are a number of websites that help you stay in other people’s homes while they’re away on vacation, mainly to look after their pets. Trusted House Sitters is the largest. You can also often join House Sitting Facebook groups for the location or country you’re visiting to arrange house sitting directly with owners. Many of our friends do this on a constant basis, and it helps them save a LOT on travel costs.
• Home Exchanges/Swaps – If you still own a home or apartment you could offer some time for others to stay in it while you stay in someones home elsewhere in the world. We haven’t used this service since we don’t have a home anymore, but a Google search for “Home Exchange” will find quite a few services that will help you do it if you want to check it out.

How Can We Afford To Do This???

I’ve been tracking our spending for years, so I compared our 2023 full year of nomadic travelling to a year in our old life in Calgary with a house and two cars (all paid for and no mortgage). Now that we have no property taxes, utilities, home and car insurance, maintenance, and the elevated cost of living in North America, we spent about $5,000 LESS doing this travelling than we would have spent living in our home in Calgary.

People sometimes think we must be rich to live this lifestyle, but for us it’s actually saving us money! It’s a decision we’ve made to eliminate everything else in our lives that would be a drain on our finances, and spend this phase of our lives fully embracing the travel we’ve always enjoyed to get to experience as much of the world as we can. We know this mindset doesn’t work for everyone, and personal situations will differ, but we’re lucky to have hit a point in our lives where our sons are self-sufficient, our health is good, and we were able to retire, so this is what we’ll do until we decide we want to enter a different phase of life.

How did I create these spending charts and the maps I use on our Dashboard? If you want to create these charts and the maps we use for your travels you can read the post where I wrote about it: Tracking and reporting our spending & stats

Please check out the blog post for a specific location to view the detailed costs, and feel free to post a comment or use the Contact form if you have any questions.