January 2023 | -999.37

WOOOOO UNDER 1K LOSS FOR THE MONTH (It's not as good as it seems haha)

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	$601
Food and Drink	$395
Transport	$547
​Tours booked & Entry fees	$251.01
Miscellaneous	$26
TOTAL	$1821

This is a quick reference category breakdown of our expenses. Welcome to 2023! We plan on making this a great one and hope you do to! We started the year how most of last year went. Over Budget. *Sigh One day we will get a handle on this, but not this day. We have spent a considerable amount of time at home over the holidays so the overall number's look pretty great, but when you consider we were only on the road from Jan 17th, the numbers start to look a bit more frightening.

Accommodations Expenses

Location	Accomodation	Nights	Notes	Cost
Labuan Bajo (Bajo Sunset Hostel)	Private Room	3	Dodgy looking rooms but comfy beds	$45
Labuan Bajo (Blue Ocean Hotel)	Private Room	1	Much bigger and nicer rooms but MUCH noisier	$36
Ruteng (Hobbit Hill)	Private Room	2	Fantastic views from room	$48
End (LCR Hotel)	Private Room	2	Proper Hotel with room service	80
Moni (Gecko Homestay)	Private Room	2	No Aircon But close to Kelimutu volcano	$35
Maumere (Coconut Beach resort)	Provate Bungalow	5	Fancy place on the seaside (Treated ourselves already for some reason. Maybe this Is why the budget goes over every month)	$325
TOTAL

We spent the first half of January at home being arguably MORE busy than our days are on the road. We we're moving my dad into a new home and Emilys siter into a new place, it was a very busy couple of weeks! Luckily we were living at Emilys parents house for the duration so our accommodation expenses where nil for the first 2 weeks of the year (Thank you Julianne and Tony) From the 17th of Jan we were on a plane flying to Indonesia. Typically Australians would usually stop in Bali and holiday there but because we wanted to try something a little different we boarded a second flight to Labuan Bajo on the Island of Flores. Where, unfortunately, it seems like accommodation isn't as affordable as Bali!

Transport Expenses

Route	Mode	Notes	Cost
Adelaide - Labuan Bajo	Flight	Change flight in Bali	$304
Labuan Bajo - Ruteng	Bus	GurangMasBus	$25
Ruteng - Ende	Bus	GurangMasBus	$34
Ende - Moni	Shared Car	Hotel Organised	$15
Moni - Maumere	Shared Car	Hotel Organised	$50
Maumere - Labuan Bajo	Flight	Internal flight with Lion	$230
Labuan Bajo to Adelaide	Flight	Change flight in Bali	$307
TOTAL

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) This transport section is a real killer. I knew the flights internally in indonesia where supposed to be cheap, but I was thinking $50 cheap. once we added on a bag we were checking in the prices got a little out of control. We spent almost a thousand dollars on our Indonesian flights alone. Which for us is painful considering we flew home from Europe in the holiday season with full service airlines for only $237!

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	$821.63
TOTAL		$821.63

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! We havent pushed anything get your guide related lately and it shows!(only 11 visits and 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! (2 clicks, no new bookings in January)

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

YouTube Analytics

What a surprise! we had been told that January is among the worst months for income on Youtube and not to expect much. Plot twist. It was our highest earning month ever! We think this has a big amount to do with some videos that started to see some traction combined with travelling through areas that have a higher average CPM. (Thanks Helsinki) Even though our Finland video didn't take off like we'd hope, our one in Tallinn did pretty well as well as the Ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki and there is a lot of cross over between those two cities!

As well as this, we had our Lithuania video continue to do well which lifted the rest of our baltic videos. Unfortunately it was a little bit of a flash in the pan as all of our views across all videos have subsided dramatically now and I'm not looking forward to our February results!

Summary

Final balance at the end of January. A half month of travel + our best income month means our balance change for the month of January was under $1000! a great achievement I don't expect will happen again for quite some time! Expenses: -$1821 Income: +$821.63 Change - $999.37

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