Spending

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 on these figures can be found below these cost tables, along with links to the blog post for each location.

2021

We spend 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

Travel Treats were funded prior to our retirement so not part of our normal Nomadic lifestyle, some were delayed from 2020 due to Covid

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 $137.23/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 $50,087k Canadian$ per year ($37.2k US$, €34.5k). 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 Bulgaria and Türkiye where we spent almost three months before prices started to creep up in 2022 after the pandemic ended, but you’ll also notice that you can live quite inexpensively in SE Asia. 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.

The great thing about this average is that it’s actually less than we were spending living in our house in Calgary, Canada, even though we were mortgage free and had no loans on our cars. With no property taxes and utilities, home and car insurance and maintenance, the relatively high cost of living in North America, not to mention the other things we found ourselves spending money on even though we lived a pretty frugal life, we can do this for less than living in one spot. So why wouldn’t we travel the world like this when we’re healthy and our kids are now independent?

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.
A pretty standard Airbnb for us, which also had a small kitchen, bathroom, and this one had a loft bed

What’s not included in these costs? Our nomadic cost don’t include clothing, luggage, electronics, or cooking items that we bring with us (small utensils that we often find missing in Aribnbs). Most of these items will be used a long time, often years, so 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.

For 2021-2023 we also didn’t include the first flight each year to reposition from North America (where we normally spend Christmas with our families) to Europe or Asia where we started a new year of travel. This cost would be onerous on the budget for the first location, and should really be spread across all locations in the region, but for simplicity sake we just left it out. Also, for people looking at our costs it would be misleading to have this large up-front cost skewing the numbers for a location, and each person would have a different starting point, often within the same region of the world, so we just left it out and know we need to add it into the figures we use for our full yearly spending. For 2024 we decided to include it in the cost tables (you’ll see the 2 days travel from California to Cambodia) since we’ll be going around the world, so decided to include it to figure out the full trip around the globe starting and ending in Palm Springs.

For the initial flights for 2021-2023 we were normally in the $1,000 – $1,500 range for the two of us, and the other costs (clothing, electronics, luggage, and other miscellaneous items) run about $3,000 – $4,000/year, so we normally run around $5,000 Canadian$ in additional costs each year, give or take a thousand ($3,700 US$ / €3,400). 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 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 a week in a location over our first two 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.
  • 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. We’ve never been pet people, so haven’t bothered taking advantage of this, but for many of our friends 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 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.

We spent less money in 2023 travelling full-time than we would have living in our house in Calgary (picture from 2022 having sold the house and setting out on a nomadic life)

People sometimes think we must be rich to live this lifestyle, but for us it’s actually saving us money living like this. 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 know 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.

Links to the blog posts with cost details for each location:

Nomadic Travel
Bulgaria: Sofia
Bulgaria: Plovdiv
Turkey: Istanbul
Turkey: Selcuk to Denizli Roadtrip
Turkey: Fethiye
Turkey: Antalya
UAE: Dubai
Spain: Alicante
Spain: Alcázar de San Juan Roadtrip
Italy Hungary: Perugia to Budapest Roadtrip
Romania: Bucharest
Serbia: Belgrade
Croatia: Zagreb/Istria Peninsula
Croatia: Dalmatia Coast to Hvar
Bosnia & Herzegovina: Mostar and Sarajevo
Bay of Kotor, Montenegro
Road Trip: Dubrovnik and the Heel of Italy
The Republic of Malta
Road Trip Italy: Sicily, Herculaneum, Orvieto
Italy to Malpica, Spain
Portugal
USA: Coachella Valley
Japan: Tokyo
Japan: Kyoto
Western Japan: 5 Cities in 10 Days
5 Nights in Seoul, South Korea
A Month in Vietnam
Malaysia: Kuala Lumpur & Langkawi
24 Hours in Singapore
Borneo – The Wild Side of Malaysia
Bali – A month on the Island of the Gods
Laos – Luang Prabang, Waterfalls, & the Mekong
Chiang Mai – A month in northern Thailand
Hong Kong 3-Day Visit
Bangkok & Hua Hin, Thailand
Discovering Stockholm and hunting Runestones
Helsinki: A week in the Finnish capital
Tallinn: Estonia’s fairy tale capital
Riga, Latvia: The heart of the Baltics
Vilnius, Lithuania: Baltic Finale and a Hospital Visit
Andorra: The Little Country That Could
Benicassim & Barcelona: Beautiful beaches & buildings
Homeward bound on a transatlantic cruise – yay or nay?
Death Valley & Palm Springs, California
Phnom Penh – A week in Cambodia’s capital
Travel Treats
Jordon tour
Egypt tour
Tanzania: Sarengeti to Mafia Island
USA: Alaska Cruise

Please feel free to post a comment or use the Contact form if you have any questions.

5 thoughts on “Spending

  • Tamar Kohn Marks October 24, 2022 at 7:54 am Reply

    I am fascinated by your detailed website on your Nomad life. thank you for sharing!
    Is the $US 3,231` for your 2021 travel or a whole year??

    Thanks for all your information.

    • D2DAdmin October 24, 2022 at 9:37 am Reply

      Hi Tamar. The $3,231 US$ I mentioned for the travel was for the “major” travels between locations (Canada to Europe, Egypt to UAE, UAE to Spain) for 2021. The costs of travelling between close locations (like Bulgaria to Turkey by bus, or flying Turkey to Jordan) was included in the report for the destination location. If you look at the cost breakdown in the Istanbul and Jordan reports you’ll see a “Transportation” category where those costs are included. I broke out the $3,231 US$ differently because those were major costs that would be different for each person depending on where they were coming from, and not fair to dramatically bump up the cost for that location in our report, since we try to make it the cost of living in that location, along with minor transportation items. I hope that makes sense.

  • Tamar Kohn Marks November 6, 2022 at 6:18 pm Reply

    Thanks!
    I noticed that your health insurance expense is quite reasonable… what does it cover?

    • D2DAdmin November 6, 2022 at 11:44 pm Reply

      Hi Tamara. It depends on the timeframe you’re looking at. For 2 months after we leave Alberta (we left at the end of July this year and last) we have travel insurance thanks to Whitney’s insurance coverage for being on her family business board of directors, so no charges. After that we get coverage, which for last year was Safety Wing with $250k coverage. This year we’re going with IMG’s Patriot International Lite package with $1M coverage at the highest deductible they offer of $2,500. It covers a long list of standard stuff, including repatriation to get home in the case it’s needed for long term care, and works out to be about $167 US$ per month for both of us which covers us anywhere except the US.

  • Susan November 20, 2022 at 8:59 am Reply

    Your plan is great if you are under 65, if not their max coverage is 100,000 Another reason to travel sooner rather than later 😉 Enjoy your travels, we are having fun following along.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *