I’ve been on the road for well over one year now! After a lot of slow travel last year, so far this year I’ve been moving at a sprint. But, after two quarters of moving around a lot, I’m looking forward to slowing down for the rest of the year. How did this fast travel in Q2 affect my spending? Stay tuned…
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 its 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).
In 2022, my quarters were a month off because I did not leave until February 2022. So my Q1 started in February, my Q2 started in May, Q3 started in August, and Q4 started in November. Now that I have crossed the one-year mark, I’ve switching back to a calendar year. Here are the numbers from my Year 2, Q2 (Y2Q2) of full time travel.
Where we last left off in March I had just started walking the Camino Frances to Santiago de Compostela. I walked for the entire month of April into the beginning of May. Then I returned to the U.S. for about six weeks, spending time in Maryland and Puerto Rico in May, and Boston, Chicago, and Washington, DC in the first half of June. From DC I flew to Bucharest, Romania, and ended the quarter in Brasov, Romania.
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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.
- I switched to a T-Mobile phone plan before I left in February 2022 because I thought it would be better for international travel than the Verizon plan I had had for so long. But I had nothing but issues with T-Mobile and in July 2022 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. I pay my MintMobile bill once a year and I bought a 6-month Global eSIM at the end of December so I had almost no phone expenses this quarter.
- During my time on the Camino, most of my spending was in cash, including paying for food and housing. So a lot of these costs are rolled into the ATM/Cash category and not reflected in their separate categories. I’ll do a separate post at some point about my spending on the Camino.
- 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 and Smugmug).
Pretty Charts and Graphs
Y2Q2: April-June
Total Y2Q2 Spending: $11,251.31
Avg. Monthly Spending: $3,750.44
| Category | Spending | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | $3,686.26 | 32.45% |
| Travel/Transportation | $2,432.71 | 21.41% |
| ATM/Cash | $1,679.06 | 14.78% |
| Insurance | $502.86 | 4.43% |
| Restaurants | $1,525.37 | 13.43% |
| Education | $109.00 | 0.97% |
| Groceries | $351.54 | 3.09% |
| Streaming Services | $70.10 | 0.62% |
| Entertainment | $131.28 | 1.16% |
| Telephone | $0 | 0% |
| General Merchandise | $146.41 | 1.29% |
| Healthcare/Medical | $193.65 | 1.70% |
| Personal Care | $61.75 | 0.54% |
| Clothing/Shoes | $361.32 | 3.18% |
If you don’t think quarterly, here is the breakdown month-to-month:
April – Camino Frances, Spain to Finisterre, Spain
Total Spending: $2,979.01
| Category | Spending | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | $1,109.67 | 37.25% |
| Travel/Transportation | $0 | 0% |
| ATM/Cash | $1,345.94 | 45.18% |
| Insurance | $78.62 | 2.64% |
| Restaurants | $359.16 | 12.06% |
| Education | $0 | 0% |
| Groceries | $14.38 | 0.48% |
| Streaming Services | $24.31 | 0.82% |
| Entertainment | $0 | 0% |
| Telephone | $0 | 0% |
| General Merchandise | $0 | 0% |
| Healthcare/Medical | $46.93 | 1.58% |
| Personal Care | $0 | 0% |
| Clothing/Shoes | $0 | 0% |
Notes:
- It’s kind of eye-opening to see where money is spent when you are really limited to only spending on necessities. I was on the Camino the entire month of April, walking from town to town, so for the first time in a LONG time, I had no transportation or entertainment expenses. Though, the spending in Healthcare/Medical was mostly on band-aids for my blistered feet, which were my mode of transportation, so this amount could have been in the Transportation category I suppose. But I’m gonna keep it simple.
- As mentioned before, I relied heavily on cash on the Camino, so a lot of my Restaurant/Grocery/ Housing spending is hidden in the large ATM/Cash category. Suffice to say most of that cash was spent in these three categories.
- For much of the Camino I stayed in dorms and paid cash for my bunk, but when I was in larger cities and/or was taking a rest day, I splurged on a private room in a hostel or a hotel room. And for the last two weeks of walking I decided I had had enough of the dorm beds and I booked private rooms every night. The cost was still pretty low except right toward the end of the Camino when there were more people walking the last 100km so there was more demand for beds. But even the most expensive room I booked was at the very end, in Santiago de Compostela, and clocked in at $80 per night. I spent more on housing than I had to, but I decided that it was worth splurging to be able to relax and recover comfortably at the end of each day.
May – Finisterre, Spain to Galena, Maryland to San Juan, Puerto Rico to Gaithersburg, Maryland to Galena, Maryland.
Total Spending: $4,061.25
| Category | Spending | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | $515.35 | 12.69% |
| Travel/Transportation | $1,987.35 | 48.93% |
| ATM/Cash | $200.00 | 4.92% |
| Insurance | $78.62 | 1.94% |
| Restaurants | $487.69 | 12.01% |
| Education | $0 | 0% |
| Groceries | $126.52 | 3.12% |
| Streaming Services | $21.48 | 0.53% |
| Entertainment | $0 | 0% |
| Telephone | $0 | 0% |
| General Merchandise | $106.39 | 2.62% |
| Healthcare/Medical | $114.78 | 2.83% |
| Personal Care | $61.75 | 1.52% |
| Clothing/Shoes | $361.32 | 8.90% |
Notes:
- Other than a few days in Maryland transiting from Patagonia to the Camino in March, I haven’t spent any time in the U.S. since last August. So I was due for a nice long visit. I was stateside for six weeks, for most of May and the first half of June. This is clearly reflected in my travel/transportation this month, which includes my rental cars before and after my trip to Puerto Rico, my roundtrip flight to Puerto Rico and my flight from Spain back to Maryland, among other expenses. Clearly, I was making up for my lack of spending in this category in April.
- My housing this month was mostly staying with my mother and a friend in Gaithersburg. The spending was all for a hotel the week I spent in San Juan, Puerto Rico at a the Women in Travel Summit (WITS). I was a volunteer for the conference so I was provided a free ticket, but still had to pay for transportation and accommodation. I ended up sharing a hotel room with another volunteer to save on cost but also be at the conference location.
- The other categories worth a mention this month are my Clothing/Shoes, Personal Care, and General Merchandise categories. Basically…I went shopping. First, I hadn’t bought any new clothes for over a year. Second, after trekking 80 miles in Patagonia and then walking almost 800km across Northern Spain, I lost a little weight and needed to buy some clothes that fit. I also had to restock on things like allergy pills, sunscreen, etc. for my next venture abroad.
- 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 in the U.S. I also had an eye doctor bill waiting for me in Maryland from when I needed to refill a prescription in March. That went into the Healthcare/Medical category.
June – Galena, Maryland to Boston, Massachusetts to Chicago, Illinois to Washington, DC to Bucharest, Romania to Brasov, Romania
Total Spending: $4,211.05
| Category | Spending | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | $2,061.24 | 48.95% |
| Travel/Transportation | $445.36 | 10.58% |
| ATM/Cash | $133.12 | 3.16% |
| Insurance | $345.62 | 8.21% |
| Restaurants | $678.52 | 16.11% |
| Education | $109.00 | 2.59% |
| Groceries | $210.64 | 5.00% |
| Streaming Services | $24.31 | 0.58% |
| Entertainment | $131.28 | 3.12% |
| Telephone | $0 | 0% |
| General Merchandise | $40.02 | 0.95% |
| Healthcare/Medical | $31.94 | 0.76% |
| Personal Care | $0 | 0% |
| Clothing/Shoes | $0 | 0% |
Notes:
- I spent the first two weeks of June with a friend of mine, attending our college reunion in Boston, then visiting her family and staying at her home in Chicago, then traveling with her and her kids on their family vacation to Washington, DC (by overnight train from Chicago!). Because we spent the entire two weeks together we shared expenses, including a rental car in DC, hotel in Boston, transportation in and between cities, and a lot of meals out. But because we both paid for shared expenses and we divided everything up later, my categories for this month are pretty skewed. For example, my Housing is over $2,000 because I paid for our hotel for three nights in Boston, but she paid me back for her half by paying for my train ticket to DC. When we sat down to reconcile our spending we discovered that we were even overall, so I’m just leaving the amounts in their categories as they show up in my tracker.
- I spent the rest of the month in Romania. I extended the time I originally planned to stay in Bucharest to meet up with a former colleague who had a work trip to Romania. Which meant booking an additional Airbnb at somewhat last minute. So it was a bit expensive and not worth what I had to pay for it. I much prefer to book enough in advance to take advantage of good deals.
- We also did a lot of the touristy things in and near Bucharest so between that and my week in DC with my friend and her kids I had more expenses in my Entertainment category than usual, though nothing really broke the bank.
- The category that did was my Restaurant spending. Which is much higher than usual, and I can only blame on the fact that eating out in big U.S. cities like Boston, Chicago and Washington, DC is expensive, unless you’re sticking to fast food (which we tried to avoid as much as possible) and I did a lot of it for the first two weeks of the month.
- Overall in June I don’t feel like the categories above really represent my spending accurately. The total amount is accurate, but between traveling with one friend for two weeks, and sightseeing with my former colleague in Romania, a lot of this month’s expenses were shared and divided up later. So I guess my conclusion is don’t take too much away from my expenses breakdown this month.
Tracking Spending 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 Empower (formerly called 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 Empower 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.
So What Does This Mean?
“Thanks for showing us all your spending Rachel, so, what does it all mean?” Fair question. And while some people may subscribe to the belief that FIRE means living on rice and beans and never spending money (I met someone a few months ago 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 2022, I also sold my possessions including my condo and my car, received 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.
In Y2Q2 my spending was higher than I’d like, but I knew it would be since I was spending six weeks in the U.S. This also influenced my choice of where to go when I left the U.S. mid-June. I chose Romania because a) I wanted to visit; I’d heard it was beautiful and had lots of charming medieval towns/villages, b) I thought the lower temperature in the mountains of Transylvania would be a good place to ride out the height of summer, c) Dracula, and d) cost of living was reasonable and would help me balance out some more expensive months earlier in the year. Stay tuned to find out if I was right about that!
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 Y2Q2 I walked across Spain, attended a conference in Puerto Rico, traveled around the East Coast of the U.S. (and Chicago) visiting and catching up with friends and family, and traveled to Romania. 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.