How We Spent Our Money: Six Months Later

by Tasha in Red Tape, Budget

photo by: 401(K) 2013

Six months ago I wrote our final Budget post before we left on our trip. The closest approximation to how much we had actually saved. Why 'approximation' you ask? Because unfortunately unlike our old piggy banks we had as children, bank accounts, and therefore balances, are in a constant state of flux.

You can tally all the incoming payments and all the outgoing payments and it will still not seem to equal the amount actually in the account. "But that's not not how banking works!" (You know I can hear you guys snickering in the back row!) I know, I know, and if you leave your account alone long enough you are right.

With time - the balance will generally reflect the correct credit/debit. However we very rarely give our accounts enough time. Which is generally why at the end of the week it always seems that we spent more than we realised. It also sucks big time for trying to keep organised records, and make broad overview statements like this one - as well as being very confronting for my tidily organised mind. (Okay, now I KNOW I can hear you guys laughing at me!)

The long and convoluted point I am trying to get to is that Accounting is complicated - and geez you could not pay me enough to do it as a profession. However I am going to put all of that aside to try and give you a broad-ish overview of how we have spent our hard earned cash - and how much (in our experience) it costs to travel.

*Disclaimer* For any would-be travellers or budget crazies - I collect my data by carrying around a small A6 notebook and writing down every purchase as we go. It's not a perfect system but it works for us. Then we collate the data into a spreadsheet that looks like so:

 

 

So...how much does travel actually cost?

That is a very good, and very hard to answer question. You see what most people don't get about travel is that while travelling, you are still you, the person you are, living your life. If that sounds confusing let me elaborate. If you are the kind of person who goes out to eat a fancy meal every night at home, you are most likely going to do the same thing while travelling. Or if you are someone who goes out every weekend and parties like it's 1999, that's unlikely to change just because the bartenders speak German. So the answer to the golden question is subjective. You need to take in to account what you like to do, eat, etc. However - as to not completely not answer your question - I can tell you how much we spent - and what we spent it on:

As you can see from the chart - Food is our biggest expenditure, as we constantly juggle between eating out and cooking ourselves - generally dependent on when the facilities are available. There is a decent gap between the two as eatng out can be $10-20 to even $60 per meal - compared to $20 for 3-4 self cook meals.
Tied for second we have Entertainment and Accommodation. Generally accomodation will be one of your biggest costs, if not the biggest. We keep ours down by staying primarily in hostels, with the occasional Bnb and Couch-surfing thrown in. Entertainment for us covers all entry fees to attractions, tours, adventure items, or even trips to the movies. We try and vary each city between doing the awesome expensive items, and the free or low cost items such as city walks, museums, parks etc.
You will notice Alcohol coming in at 0%, no - that doesn't mean we have miraculously sworn off alcohol while we travel in some sort of holy pilgrimage. Instead it means that the amount we spend is so comparatively low - that it doesn't register on the chart.

So....How much did (insert country here) cost?

You are certainly full of a lot of so's today, has anyone told you that? So before we left I painstakingly gathered as much info together as I could to try and collate an approximate daily spend in each country. Ultimately some were more accurate than others - but below I have compared the pre-trip approximate spend vs the actual spend in each country so far.



Some good and bad surprises there - although I would have much preferred to be pleasantly surprised by the most expensive countries, rather than the cheaper ones to be honest. Some were unforeseen such as having to backtrack in New Zealand due to landslides. And some were just mindboggling - like sticking to a virtual eat, sleep, move cycle with very little fun in the UK - and even less that wasn't free - and still walking away with spending almost as much as New Zealand where we lived decadently by comparison.

So....How much did you really spend?

Short answer: alot. Long answer: still alot but we had alot of fun on the way :)
So far this is how we stand (rounded to the nearest 1k):

Total travel costs:  22k - sounds like alot - but 11k each is pretty spot on budget wise
Total bank fees/loss from exchange rates: 3.5k - a very frustrating but unavoidable part of the system
Total travel/health insurance costs: 2.5k - not taking any risks here!

Added to that we had about $160 in bills when we left. And before you nosy people ask - yes we still have enough for the moment :P But we are running low - thus the finding jobs and working like good little honest people.

And for those who have skipped right down to the end past all that accounting mumbo jumbo - don't worry! I'll be back tomorrow with something more entertaining :)

Like when we went to the fictional town from Hot Fuzz - because we TOTALLY got to do that!

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