December 2022 | - $1611.02

So why record our expenses?

We wrestled with the idea of spending all our money on experiences versus knuckling down at work in an attempt to set ourselves up for the future. Ultimately, we decided that houses can burn down, investments can be lost and money can be wasted but memories can never be taken from you. We wanted to solidify those memories by creating videos. But also wanted to show people a realistic view of what a full-time travel lifestyle would cost. When I went looking for something similar they were few and far between, so I wanted to do something for the next person who comes looking. And so, a terrible and laborious google sheet was born. It's since been updated many times and is much easier to manage. All of the data here is from that sheet.

Where did the money come from? When we tell people that we are travelling full-time, they tend to have the same few comments. We must have wealthy parents who are paying for everything, or that we have come into inheritance or a lottery win or something else crazy. While we both acknowledge we are very privileged to be able to earn an income (and both have jobs unaffected by the pandemic) - all the money we have saved up has been solely from working full time.

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed putting it together!

What you came here for:

Breakdown of what's below:

• Expenses

• YouTube Analytics

• Summary

Expense Report

Expense by category

Catagory	Expense
Accomodation	$526.50
Food and Drink	$652.05
Transport	$407
​Tours booked & Entry fees	$
Miscellaneous	$547.45
TOTAL	$2,133

This is a quick reference category breakdown of our expenses. The END of 2022! how fast did that year go? Honestly. I am writing this from my home town of Adelaide Australia and can hapilly say the expenses have trailed off since we've been home but they havent been nil. Before we took a very long travel day home we were running around christmas markets in northern Europe and sometimes paying 5 Euro per cup of a mulled wine they called Glogi. and having a few cups each per day! that, combined with Finland being expensive in general means I'm very happy to stop bleeding money now we are home for a few weeks over the holidays. That being said, our Miscellaneous expenses grew a lot due to christmas presents!

Accommodations Expenses

Location	Accomodation	Nights	Notes	Cost
Riga, Latvia	Air BnB	3	full apartment	$147
Tallin, Estonia	Air BnB	3	full apartment	$205.50
Helsinki, Finland	Hostel	2	Private room with shared bathroom	$174
Home!		23		$0
TOTAL		​31		$526.50

As expected in December, the farther north we moved the more expensive accommodation was! We had an air BnB in Helsinki cancel on us about a week before we were due there so had to scramble to find something as affordable and were relegated to a hostel which turned out to be really nice and fit us perfectly! Now that we are home we are living at Emilys parents house!

Transport Expenses

Route	Mode	Notes	Cost
Lithuania to Latvia	Bus	Flix Bus	$50
Latvia to Estonia	Bus	Flix Bus	$45
Estonia to Finland	Ferry	Eckero line	$57
Finland to Singapore	Flight	Finnair	$88 + Points
Singapore to Australia	Flight	Qantas	$167 + Points
TOTAL			$407

Things to note: The numbers are different to the 'Expenses by Category' Section. that's because in that section I use the Master sheet which includes small transports like Ubers, Grabs, Taxis and short cheap trains which I thought wouldn't add any value in this section! (I kept the total the same) FLYING HOME! We struggled a little bit to get the deals we ended up with because the prices for the flights were getting crazy. Luckily we managed to find the specials we needed to get us all the way back home for a great price and some points. We are very happy with the ones we found because the prices we heard from others flying at the same time were crazy!

Fixed Costs

Details	Notes	Cost
Insurance	SafetyWing	$123.50
Adobe Premier Pro		$29.00
Epidemic Sound	All our music!	​$22
TOTAL		$174.50

Insurance is expensive but worth it. Safety wing is our insurer of choice, they seemed to offer the most comprehensive cover especially when lots of countries needed specific types of insurance during the pandemic, they were great! Adobe is the software we used to edit our YouTube videos Epidemic sound is where we get all our music from, you can get a free trial with this link*: https://share.epidemicsound.com/i1nhpc

Income Report

Source	Notes	Amount
Affiliate (other)	​Amazon + Getyourguide + Viator	$0
Licensing		$0
Youtube	Ad revenue	$521.98
TOTAL		$

Affiliate Income Amazon - No New clicks! Get your Guide - We have been fortunate enough to have a few people use our link to book experiences with Get Your Guides! this has resulted in income howvere as it is less than $50 we can't withdraw it yet. Happy for this one to keep going up slowly until we can claim it! (24 visits but no new bookings) Viator - A great addition to our affiliate income has been a link we made to Viator from our Ha Long Bay cruise video. We are kicking ourselves that we didn't create this link earlier as we are sure we've missed out on some income. We even had someone click on our link and purcahse the same cruise we did which resulted in some commission - we need to wait until they complete the tour before we can withdraw and add it to our income report. But it's a great start! (3 clicks, no new bookings in December)

Licensing Agreements No licensing this month, I'm hoping it wasn't a one time thing!

YouTube Analytics

December saw us to our lowest income in 4 months for Youtube as our Turkey series was making up the first half of this month. It never really took off and still hasn't really caught any attention unfortunately.

Luckily toward the end of the month when we expected a dip, our video in Lithuania (Which was released on the 12th) began a nice healthy run. (I'm writing this on January 3rd so 23k views in 23 days is GREAT for us)

We also held off on posting Youtube shorts to see if there was a positive or negative impact on our future releases (The theory is that Youtube will promote a video more if the previous video has done well, so a 'short' is a high risk, potential high reward) We haven't seen any notable difference no matter what we do, but we'll keep experimenting!

Summary

Final balance at the end of November Expenses: -$2133 Income: +$521.98 Change - $1,611.02

Thank you so much if you have read this far! and of course, for watching along!

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*affiliate links - we may earn commission