There seem to be a bazillion travel bloggers out there talking about how cheap it is to travel, but very few are open about their finances. We’ve gotten quite a few questions about how we can afford to travel full-time, so we’ve decided to open up the books and do a monthly post with the details of our travel budget. The hope is that these posts will help prepare others who are thinking about jumping into the nomad life, and help us re-assess our spending habits. Enjoy this Malaysia travel budget!
♥ Check out our full-time travel budgets for another month. ♥
Malaysia has proven to be a bit more expensive than China, both for food and lodging costs. However, we were able to keep our spending on track (mostly), and really save a lot at our housesit in KL. Our goal budget for this journey is $200 per week, putting us at $800 to spend for the month of March and our Malaysia travel budget.
- Average Daily Food Cost: $11 per day
- Hotel – Breakfast was included, so we only needed a light snack, and dinner each day
- House Sit – Groceries for three meals and snack per day. One night dining out per week.
- Average Daily Lodging: $10 per night
- Hotel – $20 per night for basic room in questionable neighborhood
- House Sit – $0 per night for luxury home, pool, and car use
Money Spent: -($818)
Income: $157
Monthly Net: -($661)
Three Month Spending Total: -($3,585)
Three Month Earning Total: $852
Total Journey Net: -($2,733)
(Goal was -$2,600 for month three)
Week One Malaysia Travel Budget: -($200)
We were very happy to stay exactly on budget this week. It took a little extra effort to balance the cost of food, but we made it! We loaded up on hotel breakfast every morning and tried to hold off for as long as we could until dinner. It wasn’t a strict rule. If we were hungry, we ate. But if we weren’t hungry, we did our best not to spend money on food we didn’t need. At the end of the week, we were feeling healthy and were excited about our spending. We spent $200.
♥ Read about the amazing food in Kuala Lumpur. ♥
This month, we are cutting down on the amount of “unfocused” work we are doing. Josh has one last project on UpWork to complete, then one hour a day going forward. It won’t make us a lot of money, but will hopefully provide us more time to focus on the projects we truly want to do. We made $0.
Week Two Malaysia Travel Budget: – ($123)
We started our house sit this week! Once again, we found this arrangement to not only be comfortable and fun, but a great way to save money. We purchased groceries and cooked most meals at home. We spent $160.
♥ Meet Molly, our new furry friend! ♥
Josh made some money from his one hour per day UpWork time. We made $37.
Week Three Malaysia Travel Budget: – ($172)
Even without trying, we totally nailed this week. We only went over budget on two of the days; once for a nice dinner out and another for our trip to KL Tower. We found some fish at the grocery store we really liked, making the home-cooking even more enjoyable. We spent $192.
♥ Read about our KL Tower adventure. ♥
We made $20.
Week Four Malaysia Travel Budget: – ($166)
As per usual, our transition week was a little more difficult than the others. We moved from our house sit in Kuala Lumpur to Penang. We’re here for a short excursion before heading to our next house sit in Thailand. The train tickets, food, and hotel costs weren’t too bad, but always a bit more than I would like. We spent $265.
Josh has been working really hard this month to publish two short stories in addition to his CannaHealth article each week. He has been doing an amazing job and even made his first dollar as an author!!! He made $1.80 from people viewing his story, “Open Letter to my Hostel Roommates“. I’m so super proud of him! We made $100.
Each month seems to get better and better. For our third month over-seas, we are feeling very good. We only barely spent over our travel budget and were able to offset quite a bit with some income. We still aren’t breaking even, but each month gets closer and closer.
I can not wait to see what next month has in store!!
The Places We Live 
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