Traveling full-time is romantic, isn't it? But I think people assume we must be R-I-C-H rich to be able to do it.
Well, I’m here to tell you in no uncertain terms—we can only aspire to be R-I-C-H. In fact, it’s more accurate to describe us as P-O.1 But does that stop us? Heck no. It’s just another part of our regular logistics to plan around.
Do we wish we'd known more about how much it would cost before we left? Yep. So, with that in mind, I'm here to give you the down low.
But first, some parameters to keep in mind if you read further. One, we do not maintain a permanent home. Anywhere. So we don’t have rent or a mortgage to keep up in the U.S. No property taxes or insurance, either. Same goes for our noticeable lack of a car. We do have a storage unit for our treasures, but that's about it for physical cost items back home. We’ve converted those regular fixed costs into the cash we use to travel.
Two, our travels so far have pretty much been to “first-world” European countries and Australia2 that have been, for the most part, “upper-middle class” expensive. There are other first-world places that are even more expensive (e.g., UAE, Switzerland, Singapore, etc.), but we’re saving those until after we’ve won the lottery, any lottery. We plan on relatively posh living in locations we can afford. People can and absolutely do go the same places we do and spend less.
Three, it’s important to grok that we are not vacationing around the world, we are living in different places around the world. That’s a key distinction. Vacation spending is an order of magnitude greater than just living somewhere. When you’re on vacation, you find a hotel or Airbnb or whatever at the very outside of affordability; you eat out nearly every meal at likely some of the best restaurants you’ve found; and you pack in as many museums, galleries, and tours into a week as you can. And, if you’re like us, an endless river of espressos because, why not, you’re on vacation?
But when you live somewhere, you buy groceries and eat at home most of the time. There may be one spendy dinner at a fabulous restaurant, but the rest of the time, it's about eating at the local pub or having a casual dinner around the corner.
Okay, and with that (rubbing hands together), let’s get into it, shall we?
TL;DR—Our experience thus far suggests that a $8K–11k monthly budget is enough to live comfortably in most of the places we’ve been.
Still with me? Alrighty then. Here’s what that amount covers (for us):
“HOME” COSTS $338 | month
Believe it or not, we still “live” in Seattle, even without a house to maintain. But there are some things we need to pay for just to keep our U.S. presence. Our storage unit costs $290 a month,3 and the insurance that covers everything inside it runs another $30 a month. We also have a virtual mailbox service, which is pretty trick. With it, we still have a functional address in Seattle. The provider scans our incoming mail, and we can choose to have it destroyed, have the contents scanned and sent through email, or have the letter or package physically forwarded to us. That’s another $18 a month. Bonus, with the address, we can still vote in all local and national elections.4
ACCOMMODATION $3,500 | month
For us, that usually means Airbnb, though we are not above Vrbo or Booking.com.5 We target roughly $3K for a month, or about $100 a day. We might go over for places like Sydney or Seattle, but we find we can recoup in places like Guadalajara or Szeged. Usually, we can only hit this target if we commit to longer stays. Most Airbnbs offer significant discounts for renting a place for stays of a month or more. For shorter stays, you can expect rates to be twice that—primarily due to the “per stay” add-on costs—random and ill-defined Airbnb “fees,”6 local taxes, currency exchange surcharges (because we use our American credit cards), and cleaning fees.7
If we commit to a month or more, we can count on a place in a good location with air conditioning, TV, washer/dryer, fast internet, a separate bedroom, and a fully functional kitchen that includes a dishwasher.8 Of course, it'll be an “efficiency” apartment downtown in bigger cities. But in smaller towns, it'll be huge with character and extra bedrooms. By way of comparison, our places in Australia averaged $3,750 a month, and in Hungary they averaged $1,800 a month.
RELOCATION $1,000 | month
I call the cost of moving to a new city or country “relocation expenses.” We budget about $1,000 a month for it, understanding that it is completely insufficient for intercontinental airfare, which we try hard to subsidize with points or miles of some sort. But it does cover trains and intra-continental (domestic) airfare. This is the one expense that can force us to stay in a location a bit longer than we might otherwise have chosen simply because we can’t afford to leave yet.
MOBILE & DATA $310 | month
We may be on the road all the time, but our family and friends aren't. Keeping in touch with folks back home is important in maintaining our sanity. You've probably read about travelers finding phone and data connectivity from providers like FlexiRoam or Airalo that offer eSIMs for international travel. We just stuck with our AT&T plan and pay roaming fees. That way, our U.S. phone numbers still work—which is important for Geoff's clients, our aging parents, and, unexpectedly, banks. We are also massive data hogs, texting one another when we're out exploring, checking maps, and answering important questions of the day like, "No, it was ‘Flatt and somebody’…who was that?”9 So we splurge. Unlimited calling and data are $12 a day for one line and another $6 for the second line—but it's capped at 10 days for the month. So we pay $180 a month over our standard service, which is $120 a month for the two of us.
TRANSPORTATION $215 | month
This is obviously a moving target. Costs for Ubers, buses, taxis, subways, trains, and horse-drawn carriages fluctuate wildly from place to place. But generally speaking, we average about $215 a month getting around whatever town or city we find ourselves in. We also walk. A lot.
Car rentals, you ask? We really try to avoid them. Sure, the ads say you can get a car for $60 a day, but after you add in maximum insurance coverage (we have no car insurance of our own anymore) and locally assessed fees and taxes, the actual cost is about double the advertised rate. Sometimes the car would cost more than the Airbnb we’re in. Yikes!
HOUSEHOLD $3,650 | month
Guys’ gotta eat, right? And in our case, drink. We can’t afford to eat out for every meal, so we count on grocery shopping and cooking at “home.” Don’t get me wrong, we eat out, too. And we need to replenish our Dopp kits every time we land somewhere. We roughly spend the following on all our food and household items:
• Groceries, $1,200 monthly
• Eating out, $1,600 monthly10
• Alcohol and bars, $800 monthly (no judgment!)
• Coffee shops and treats, $50 monthly
Again, this is variable depending on where you are. For us, we averaged $3,650 a month for all this, while in Hungary it was closer to $2,500.
ENTERTAINMENT $690 | month
We drag our Apple TV around with us so we can watch our shows. We also take occasional tours and visit plenty of museums and galleries, not all of which are free. Subscriptions to various streaming services, American newspapers, apps, software, digital storage, and computer backups run $190. Local tours and attractions vary, but we aim to keep it under $500 a month, though I'm fairly sure Geoff would like to set this a little higher.11
INCIDENTALS $500 | month
Some things just gotta get done. Hair keeps growing, and we pay about $80 a month to keep it in check. Clothes wear out faster when you wear them every day (surprise!). Website hosting and software support runs about $40 monthly. And we spend money on small gifts and souvenirs.
HEALTHCARE & INSURANCE $860 | month
Health insurance is one of the first things you need to figure out before leaving home. We’re lucky—part of my retirement includes subsidized standard coverage through Blue Cross, and our premiums are about $500 a month and it covers hospitalization and getting us home in extraordinary cases. Life insurance costs $70 a month. Medical copays, deductibles, and dental care round out the rest of our healthcare costs. And guess what? Finding dentists and doctors in foreign lands isn't nearly as complicated as you might think. And most of them had to learn English in medical school, so communicating with them is pretty easy, too.
AND… $??? | month
Our tidy little budget was so clean and beautiful when we first left home. But it wasn't long before we discovered a LOT of expenses that we forgot to account for. Electronic equipment needs upgrading every couple years, we might need to suddenly travel home in an emergency, and travel documents and programs must be renewed every now and again. It’s virtually impossible to anticipate exactly how often or when those things will have to be purchased, so we set aside some slush money every month. Fingers crossed it’s enough!
This is all about how much it costs us to travel full-time from month to month, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a couple of big things to consider.
First, if you choose to live in Airbnbs like we do, you need to account for some initial front-loading of your budget. Many Airbnbs (but not all) need to be booked and paid for well in advance of your stay there. As an example, as I write this, we have about $12,000 on our Sapphire card that’s holding places to stay over the next five months. Heck, we had to advance more than $22,000 to hold various future Airbnbs at one point in the past year.12 That means that we can hit our monthly budget, but we’re always paying ahead for accommodations.
The last thing? Someday, you'll be done with it—all the travel, all the glamor, all the fun. And when you are, you'll reclaim the few treasures you stored back home and move into your own place again. And you'll have to re-purchase everything you got rid of when you left. It’s mathematically the right move to divest before you leave,13 but it’s not going to be an insignificant outlay when you settle back down. Plan for it.
So there you have it—the Rick and Geoff Travel Budget for Living Elsewhere. If you're thinking about traveling full-time, you can at least start with these numbers to build your own budget. Maybe you don’t need Disney+, maybe you want a bigger alcohol budget (I know I do), or maybe you want to live small in some Eastern European country and move around less frequently than we do—who can say?14
Let us know if you have questions or need any advice. We might ask you to buy us a drink, though. Gotta keep that liquor budget down.