When Gordon and I were preparing our savings to take this trip on I was very emphatic that it’s cheaper to travel then stay at home. And now we have our first month of tracking under our belt and the results are in. Ready to talk money?
As a two income no kid family that met later in life - Gordon and I each had our own bank accounts in addition to a shared one. We kind of each spent what we wanted when we wanted without tracking much because another paycheck was always around the corner. We both had older paid off used cars, bought used items / clothes when we could, and tried to spend within reason, but pretty much had instant gratification. Some days we’d treat ourselves to something bigger than normal and try and make up for it with ramen for dinner ( $.25 per meal ) to balance it out.
Our average daily spend at home just to live a standard American life in Seattle was $123 / day. This does not include any extras, activities, dining out, but it does include generic groceries, mortgage, cell phones, health care, internet, keeping the lights on and insurance. Our monthly spend was probably closer to $5-$6k per month. To just stay at home and sit on our couch for the most part. That’s one expensive couch potato! Here’s a chart showing an average month.
Since we no longer have income and have to rely off our savings it was time to implement a budget that we actually follow and track. It’s been a fun thing to do together and I’m proud to announce that we stayed within our budget while living our dreams. In fact, it’s cheaper to travel than stay at home. Unless you find money in the couch cushions!
You can see here our total budget per day and I’d like to note that this does not include gasoline - nor did I include gasoline in our USA budget. Is this cheating? Up for debate. We are tracking this separately because a) we are worried we won’t make the $100 a day including it ( but we did! ) and b) I’m curious to see how much gas it costs to drive the pan am. Gas cost is $12 per day so far!
Here are our expenses broken out by category. The accommodations includes 9 nights this month in hotels or airbnbs. Our cell phones using local sims cost $46 for both of us, in the USA our phones were about $160 a month!
We did honestly use ‘the ramen plan’ to fix some days we went over. But we’re adults now not college kids so we add peas to it.
Elizabeth... @Vroom 9 months ago This is interesting to read about. We have not broken out our budget in the same way, but also have found that being on the road had cost us less annually than living in our home in Bellingham, WA. So much less that we were able to upgrade our camper van to a younger model. Your self-build is an inspiration and really the nicest one I have ever seen.
