I’ve been on the road for nine months now. One of the questions I get most often is how can I afford to just travel all the time? And I try to explain that it’s not as expensive as you might think. The person I’m talking to then usually nods and smiles… and completely doesn’t believe me. So to be fully transparent, I’m sharing my quarterly spending for my nomad life. With words like “recession” and “inflation” making daily headlines it’s particularly relevant to show that travel and cost of living in other parts of the world is much more manageable (for those of us privileged to have or have had American incomes). Back in May I shared my numbers for the 1st quarter of my travels, in August I showed you my 2nd quarter numbers. Here are the numbers from my 3rd quarter of full time travel.
I was still in Ecuador at the beginning of this 3rd quarter, but then I headed back to the United States to celebrate my mother’s birthday, before traveling to Mexico and then Argentina. During my 3rd quarter of travel I spent two and a half weeks in Ecuador, nine days in Maryland, two weeks in Alaska, one day in Houston, Texas, two and a half weeks in Oaxaca, Mexico, and one month in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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Caveats and Addendums
A couple of caveats for how I am categorizing my spending:
- For housing, the amount is included in the month the housing was for, not when it was paid for, because I am booking my accommodations ahead of time.
- If an expense covers more than one month (housing/rent) it will go into the month when the spending starts. However during this 3rd quarter, I booked an Airbnb for over two months and the payment was divided into three installments automatically. So I will be attributing the first payment to October, and then next two to November and December, in Quarter 4.
- Spending at “home” (i.e. Maryland) is not included, unless it’s for my time overseas. Time in the United States other than “home” (i.e. Alaska) is included)
- Spending not related to travel will not go into total monthly travel spending (such as bar membership dues, charitable giving, and a few subscriptions like Adobe Creative Cloud).
- I realize annually Q3 is July-September, not August-October. But I did not leave until February. So for now, my Q1 starts in February, my Q2 starts in May, and Q3 starts in August. When I get to one year, I’ll probably re-adjust back to normal quarters.
Pretty Charts and Graphs
Quarter 3: August-October
Total Q2 Spending: $7,839.06
Avg. Monthly Spend: $2,613.02
| Category | Spending | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | $2,043.21 | 26.06% |
| Travel/Transportation | $2,062.93 | 26.32% |
| ATM/Cash | $1,303.93 | 16.63% |
| Insurance | $236.40 | 3.02% |
| Restaurants | $346.52 | 4.42% |
| Education | $440.00 | 5.61% |
| Groceries | $68.53 | 0.87% |
| Streaming Services | $139.43 | 1.78% |
| Entertainment | $67.22 | 0.86% |
| Telephone | $347.13 | 4.43% |
| General Merchandise | $299.77 | 3.82% |
| Healthcare/Medical | $451.56 | 5.76% |
| Personal Care | $32.50 | 0.41% |
| Clothing/Shoes | $0 | 0% |
If you don’t think quarterly, here is the breakdown month-to-month:
August – Baños, Ecuador to Quito, Ecuador to Maryland, USA to Sitka, Alaska
Total Spending: $2,631.14
| Category | Spending | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | $433.76 | 16.49% |
| Travel/Transportation | $607.96 | 23.11% |
| ATM/Cash | $304.00 | 11.55% |
| Insurance | $78.80 | 2.99% |
| Restaurants | $243.31 | 9.25% |
| Education | $0 | 0% |
| Groceries | $53.94 | 2.05% |
| Streaming Services | $96.47 | 3.67% |
| Entertainment | $0 | 0% |
| Telephone | $70.73 | 2.69% |
| General Merchandise | $280.69 | 10.67% |
| Healthcare/Medical | $428.98 | 16.30% |
| Personal Care | $32.50 | 1.24% |
| Clothing/Shoes | $0 | 0% |
Notes:
- Housing was so low this month because it only includes my stay in Quito. Baños was paid for in July, and once back in the U.S. I stayed with a friend and at Mom Hotel until our family trip to Alaska.
- The biggest expense in the Travel/Transportation category this month was the car I rented from Turo while I was in Maryland. Mom Hotel does not come with a car since I sold mine in May, and I couldn’t just rely on rides from Mom for reasons I’ll explain in a minute. This category also included fees for my three-leg flight from Quito to Maryland (I booked on points) and various Uber rides in Quito.
- When I say spending at “home” is not included, I mean things like eating out or car maintenance (had to get my car inspected to be able to sell it). I do include spending that was for my travel, such as filling a prescription to take with me and buying some new sneakers and shirts.
- Insurance includes my SafetyWing travel medical insurance, which renews monthly and covers my travel and health insurance needs abroad. I rely on my SafetyWing abroad and my ACA coverage for in the U.S.
- I switched to a T-Mobile phone plan before I left in February because I thought it would be better for international travel than the Verizon plan I had had for so long. But I have had nothing but issues with T-Mobile since I started with them, and in July I switched to MintMobile just so I’d have some coverage in the U.S. and to keep my U.S. phone number. I use Airalo eSIMs for data in each country or region I visit. In August, I paid my last T-Mobile bill, so I hope my problems with my phone service are over!
- Groceries are so low (and will be for the next few months) because I usually pay for them in cash. Speaking of which, my ATM withdrawals have gone up significantly because in Ecuador, cash is king. The majority of my restaurant spending was paying for a family dinner in Alaska, and buying pizza as payment for my friend letting me stay at her place for a couple nights. So maybe that should go in housing?
- My biggest expense this month is not actually shown in my spending, because it wasn’t “travel” spending. But it’s relevant to some of these other expenses. My mother had a milestone birthday this year and decided to celebrate, she wanted to take the family on an Alaskan cruise. Who am I to turn down FREE travel? I however, decided I wanted to celebrate her birthday by throwing her a surprise party. It was a lot of fun, she had no idea the party was coming, she didn’t even know I was back in the country. Since we were going to Alaska, and flights from Ecuador to Alaska are exorbitantly expensive and super long travel routes, it made sense for me to fly back to the U.S. and then book a separate flight to Alaska. So I told mom I would fly back to Maryland and fly to Alaska with the rest of the family. But I arrived back in the U.S. two days before the itinerary I gave her, and the day before the surprise party. So, I couldn’t stay at Mom Hotel for that first night, and I couldn’t have her pick me up from the airport. Hence needing to rent a car and stay at a friend’s house. I didn’t include the cost of the party in my monthly spending, but I did include the rental car and the pizza I bought my friend.
September – Sitka, Alaska to Oaxaca City, Mexico to Buenos Aires, Argentina
Total Spending: $2,799.55
| Category | Spending | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | $430.36 | 15.37% |
| Travel/Transportation | $1,454.90 | 51.97% |
| ATM/Cash | $349.93 | 12.50% |
| Insurance | $78.80 | 2.81% |
| Restaurants | $103.21 | 3.69% |
| Education | $0 | 0% |
| Groceries | $24.92 | 0.89% |
| Streaming Services | $21.48 | 0.77% |
| Entertainment | $67.22 | 2.40% |
| Telephone | $263.40 | 9.41% |
| General Merchandise | $5.33 | 0.19% |
| Healthcare/Medical | $0 | 0% |
| Personal Care | $0 | 0% |
| Clothing/Shoes | $0 | 0% |
Notes:
- I spent half of September on our family cruise in Alaska, and half in Oaxaca, Mexica, with the last two days of the month traveling to Buenos Aires, Argentina. My Travel/Transportation expenses were higher than usual this month because I did a week-long mezcal tour with Nomadic Matt in Oaxaca. The cost of that tour fell into this category this month. So did the fees for my flights from Vancouver (at the end of the cruise) to Mexico, and from Mexico to Argentina. Both flights were paid for with points, but even then there are additional taxes and fees. Getting from the international airport in Buenos Aires to my AirBnB was also a fairly expensive taxi ride.
- After my mezcal tour I stayed in Oaxaca for an additional ten days to explore on my own and paid for an AirBnB, so my housing cost is fairly low this month. Since I only arrived in Buenos Aires on the last day of the month, I included the cost of that AirBnB in October.
- The only other really noteworthy thing this month is my phone bill. After battling with T-Mobile for months, I switched to MintMobile. I had to have a physical SIM card sent to me in Colombia in May, but I had some trouble transferring my number so I didn’t start using it until July. When I signed up I started with a 3-month trial, which ended in September. I decided to pre-pay for a full year, so this month’s phone bill includes a year of service from MintMobile. Which should mean my future phone bills will be much lower, only the cost of the e-SIMs I purchase for international data.
October – Buenos Aires, Argentina
Total Spending: $2,408.37
| Category | Spending | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | $1,179.09 | 48.96% |
| Travel/Transportation | $0 | 0% |
| ATM/Cash | $650.00 | 26.99% |
| Insurance | $78.80 | 3.27% |
| Restaurants | $0 | 0% |
| Education | $440 | 18.27% |
| Groceries | -$10.33 | -0.43% |
| Streaming Services | $21.48 | 0.89% |
| Entertainment | $0 | 0% |
| Telephone | $13.00 | 0.54% |
| General Merchandise | $13.75 | 0.57% |
| Healthcare/Medical | $22.58 | 0.94% |
| Personal Care | $0 | 0% |
| Clothing/Shoes | $0 | 0% |
Notes:
- My spending got a lot simpler in October. I spent the whole month in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I did another four weeks of Spanish immersion classes. So my Housing and Education categories were about two thirds of this month’s spending.
- My ATM/Cash category was about a quarter of this month’s spending, and as before, I did not break down where I spent the cash, only when I withdrew/exchanged it. Suffice to say it includes all of my restaurant and grocery spending, a plane ticket to Bariloche, Argentina (more on that in November), and any other expenses since I arrived in Argentina.
- As in Ecuador, cash is king in Argentina, but not because they don’t take credit cards, which was the case most places in Ecuador. In Argentina, stores and restaurants are happy to take plastic, but paying with a credit card costs you about twice as much as paying in cash. This is because at the moment, Argentina has three exchange rates. The official rate, which is what you get when you pay with a credit card, the blue dollar/rate, which you can get for exchanging privately with a money exchanger and is almost double the official rate, and the Western Union rate, which for some unknown reason is better than both the official and blue rate, at more than double the official rate. The unofficial and Western Union rates are a result of the exponential inflation Argentina is seeing. Citizen like storing their savings in U.S. Dollars (and Euros) because those currencies are stable, and they are willing to exchange more pesos than the banks in order to get those foreign bills. Foreigners are happy to trade them for more pesos than they can get from an ATM or official exchange. The government is trying to combat this and recently (as of early November) announced that credit cards and ATMs would start matching the blue rate, but when I tested it a few days after the new policy was set to go into effect, I was still charged at the official rate. So the strong advice to foreigners visiting Argentina is to not use credit cards and to either bring cash to exchange at the blue rate or to wire yourself money to pick up at Western Union.
- Finally, I wasn’t sure if I should include this refund in the grocery category in my expenses, but I decided to. I did buy groceries, but all in cash. This refund is actually the result of about a month of back and forth with Rappi, which is like the Uber Eats of Latin America. I’ve used it in Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and Argentina. At some point, I signed up for their Prime (free delivery) 30 day free trial. When I forgot to cancel and got charged the monthly fee, I went in and cancelled my membership. But I continued to get charged for four more months. I went back and forth with Rappi, who claimed they couldn’t find my account, so I must not have been charged, even after I sent them the credit card statements showing the charges. Someone finally figured it out in October and refunded me the four months I was charged after cancelling. So instead of going back and subtracting the fee from each month, I’m just putting the negative in here, so that when I total up the year, hopefully all the numbers line up.
Tracking Expenses Made Easy
If you are worried that I am spending too much time tracking every cent, don’t worry, I’m not doing anything! I use Personal Capital to track all my spending. Which is also why my cash spending may be slightly off. If you are serious (or even just curious) about financial independence, you need to know where your money is, and where it is going every month. If you want to give Personal Capital a try, clicking the link here, signing up, and linking an account will get you a free $20 (and I’ll get $20 too). There are other applications like Mint or your bank or brokerage firm’s portfolio tracker, but this has become my preferred tracker in the last few months.
So What Does This Mean?
“Thanks for showing us all your spending Rachel, so, what does it all mean?” Fair question. So far, I’m well within my budget and on track for my annual FIRE spending. Hooray! My spending in South America has been, as I hoped, lower than my spending in Spain and Portugal, mostly because housing and food costs are lower. But it also means that my month-to-month spending is not as important as what it adds up to at the end of the year. I will be blowing my budget out of the water next quarter with my EXPENSIVE trip coming up in December. It’s a bucket list once-in-a-lifetime thing, so even though I will go over my annual budget, that’s okay. And while some people may subscribe to the belief that FIRE means living on rice and beans and never spending money (I just met someone who mansplained to a group that that’s what I was doing when I said I had FIREd), I am not in that camp. I would not have quit my job to travel if it meant I could never enjoy the places I go. And sometimes, it costs a little more. My budget has some cushion, and I’ll make it up in the future.
This budget also only tracks my EXPENSES, it says nothing about income. Since February, I also sold my possessions including my condo and my car, received some income from investment dividends and sold some of my photography in a gallery. I have yet to draw down anything from my FIRE nest egg.
So what it means is that despite worldwide concerns about inflation and recession, I am able to travel and enjoy my time exploring new countries without breaking the bank. In Q3 I’ve taken day trips, paid for organized tours, gone out to eat and experienced everything the places I’m visiting have to offer; I’m not sitting at home trying to spend as little as possible. Full time travel is not as expensive as the nodders and smilers think it is, and here are my numbers to prove it!
This post contains affiliate links and referral codes. By clicking these links and signing up/ordering items I’ve linked to or recommended, I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you. If I have linked to a product/service, it is because I have used it, liked it, and would recommend it.