Around The World Travel Budget

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 around the world 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 Australia travel budget!

♥ Check out our full-time travel budgets from a different month. ♥

In our preparations for this ’round the world (RTW) trip, we assumed that we would not actually make much money for at least a full year. So, the plan for this first year was to evenly spread out our savings. This left us with $200 USD per week on one year of RTW adventure for two.

May 2018 Travel Budget

For the most part, this has been a very suitable around the world travel budget. As our travel “careers” develop, we hope to keep the budget as is until we are able to break even in terms of money spent versus money made. We are slowly building up our income and our social reach. Week Three of this month marked the first official time we relied entirely on my blog income and Josh’s creative writing income.

♥ Jen’s Travel Career: I’m a Travel Blogger! ♥

May Travel

The majority of the month of May was spent in Victoria, Australia. As we were a little late in purchasing tickets, I opted to save money by purchasing two separate flights. We got two flights from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur for $137. Then we stayed in a hotel near the airport in the town of Sepang, Malaysia for $13 per night. Finally, we purchased two tickets to Melbourne, Australia for $368.

Cost of Living for Two

Malaysia

• Average Daily Food Cost = 36 MYR = $9 USD
  • Brunch- two entrees and two milk teas at a restaurant
  • Snack – two ice cream cones from the convenience store
  • Dinner – two entrees and two sodas at a restaurant
• Average Daily Accommodation Cost = 54 MYR = $13 USD
  • Basic hotel in a rural neighborhood
  • Included: wifi and air conditioning

Australia

• Average Daily Food Cost = 10 AUD = $8 USD
  • Breakfast – cereal, milk, banana, and coffee from the grocery store
  • Lunch – PB&J sandwich, chips, and soda from the grocery store
  • Dinner – two entrees and two beers from grocery store
• Average Daily Accommodation Cost = 0 AUD = $0 USD
  • Two House Sits – free

♥ Get a better look at the cost of Malaysia travel from our month in Malaysia. ♥

Month-Ending Balances

As we wrap up our fifth month of our RTW travel, we have pulled $4,614 from our savings account. This puts us $214 over budget for the year so far. Not too bad really, but we hope to knock that down by the end of next month.

Weekly Break Down

Our average withdraw was $200 per week, which is right on goal for our around the world travel budget. We hope to reduce this next month by continuing to focus on house sitting (a huge money saver) and building better routines around transition days (consistently our most expensive days).

Week One

Our week in Sepang, Malaysia was very quiet, but also very cheap. However, Week One overall was our most expensive week due to our plane tickets. We saved quite a bit of money ($302) by flying out of Malaysia instead of Thailand, and saved even more by taking a red-eye flight (saving us $13 on a hotel).

Once in Australia, we moved into our new house sit in Melbourne, bought groceries and toiletries, and filled up our MYKI card for the bus. The rest of the week, we made and ate meals at home, went for hikes, and laid low. We made $20 and spent $583, putting our savings withdraw at $563 for Week One.

♥ Read more about our week in Sepang, Malaysia. ♥

Week Two

Week Two was a much better week for our around the world budget. We were able to do a lot of things while still not over spending. There was an amazing pastry shop down the road that we frequented and we were able to take a tour of downtown Melbourne. It was really nice to live a tourist life this week while we were living near the city center. We made $72 and spent $173, putting our savings withdraw at $101 for Week Two.

Week Three

Week Three put us back to our routines. We were house sitting in a small suburb on the Mornington Peninsula and had a lot more opportunity to live the local lifestyle. We cooked at home, went on a lot of amazing hikes, and chatted with the neighbors at the parks. This was also our first week to stop freelance work and focus entirely on our new travel careers (scary!). We made $0 and spent $88, putting our savings withdraw at $88 for Week Three.

♥ Check out our amazing house sit on the Mornington Peninsula. ♥

Week Four

Our fourth week of our around the world budget for May was pretty good. We had a couple of more expensive days, enjoying a trip to a local brewery and celebrating the completion of Josh’s first draft of the novel with a date night. Even with all of that, we still came in $17 under budget. We made $0 and spent $183, putting our savings withdraw at $183 for Week Four.

♥ Read more about our hike to Cape Schanck. ♥

Week Five

Week Five proved to be another excellent savings week. The weather was great, so we went on a lot of hikes, made some delicious home-cooked meals, and visited a local bakery and breweries. We paid very close attention of our budget this week as we were determined to stay in budget this month… and we did! Josh made $29 from his short story publications on Medium and we spent $93, putting our savings withdraw at $55 for Week Five.

Wrap Up

I am so proud of us for this month. Even after purchasing tickets to Australia, we were still able to stick to our $200 per week around the world budget! We still had to pull our maximum goal amount from savings, but our travel career income is slowly increasing. Josh made $50 from his Medium publications. Although I didn’t make any money this month with my affiliate ads, the month went really well and I am expecting a decent check for next month. Thank you all so much for clicking on my affiliate ads!!

We have been officially on the road for 22 weeks. At our budget goal of $200 per week, that would put our overall goal at $4,400. We have pulled $4,614 out of our savings account over the last five months of traveling, putting us at $214 over budget for the year.

We are now officially at the six month mark. This is the last month that we agreed to be comfortable with not making a lot of money. By July, our goal is to make enough money that we can start coming in under our max budget. In preparation for that, our goal for June is to put our spending at no more than the $800, regardless of income. I think this could be challenging considering our next destination, but we’re determined to reach our long-term goals. Wish us luck!

♥ Read more about our Around the World Travel Budget here! ♥

---

---