July 2022 | -$3,196.53

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 we're 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) - so all the money we have saved up has been solely from working at jobs that we held without any tertiary education.

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	Per day
Accomodation	$1529	$49.32
Food and Drink	$891.64	$28.76
Transport	$507.75	$16.37
​Tours booked	$187	$6.03
Miscellaneous	$297.14	$9.58
TOTAL	$3412.53	$110.06

This is a quick reference category breakdown of our expenses. Yes accommodation sucks in Europe in the summer but we expected to be spending a lot more than we did and are happy with how we kept it together there. What we're not proud of is that because we felt we were doing so well on accommodation our food expenses crept up really fast. Not much home cooking this month unfortauntely and it realy shows.

Accommodations Expenses

Location	Accomodation	Nights	Notes	Cost
Harleem	House sitters	4		$0
Poznan	Colour Hostel	3		$102
Gdansk	Air Bnb	3	Private room	$216
Warsaw	Air Bnb	2	Entire Apartment	$120
Krakow	Hostel Cinnomon	3	Private room	$156
Bratislava	Nobelova	3		150
Budapest	Air bnb	7	Entire Apartment	$518
Timisoara	Airbnb	2	Entire Apartment	$102
Timisoara	Airbnb	2	Entire Apartment	$124
Timisoara	Airbnb	1	Entire Apartment	$41
TOTAL				​$1529

Luckily we managed to score a trusted house sitters with some amazing dogs to start this month otherwise this would have been nasty. Some things to note: We wanted a long break to catch up on work and plan a bit of the rest of the year and that's why we opted for a week long stay in Budapest. We probably could have found something cheaper but this was a nice place that had a good work area and was near a train line so it ticked all our boxes. The reason for the 3 apartments in Timisoara is because it wasnt available to stay in for the entire time so we had tp split our stay. We also decided to rent a car in Romania and our last night was as close to the airport as we could get for car pick up! We had so many things to consider when picking the car up, thankfully we managed it! You can watch that car pick up here

Transport Expenses

Route	Mode	Notes	Cost
Rotterdam - Harleem	Train x2	Standard class	$38
Amsterdam - Poznan	Flix Bus	15 hours overnight!	$151
Poznan - Gdansk	Flix Bus		$25
Gdansk - Warsaw	Flix Bus		$37
Warsaw - Krakow	Flix Bus		$25
Krakow - Bratislava	Flix Bus		$64
Bratislava - Budapest	Flix Bus		$37
Budapest - Timisoara	Train		$60.75
TOTAL			$507.75

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 and Taxis which I thought wouldn't add value in this section! (I kept the total the same)

Busses in Europe are amazing - it's pretty much Flix bus who runs the show but you can get others here and there. We decided Germany in summer is just too expensive for us (Accommodation was minimum $100 a night especialy short notice) so we skipped over it by taking a (Very very) long overnight bus from Amsterdam all the way to Poznan in Poland. We recorded that for our pain and rou viewing pleasure, see it here. We also filmed our boarder crossing from Budapest to Timisoara

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
Youtube		$216
Amazon Affiliate		$0
Affiliate (other)		$0
TOTAL		$216

YouTube Analytics

This month was a tale of two halves. We saw and excessive drop continue on from our entry into Europe and really struggled with how we can turn it around. We decided it would be good to start doing intro's on our videos so that those who choose to subscribe do-so knowing that we will be creating videos all over the world and not just in their home country. We Like to think that this has made our channel more transparent and will result in the subscribers we get being more long term (Even if it is less overall) and create more stability in our channel. Right at the end of the month we moved into Poland mainly because anywhere west of Poland is just too expensive at the moment. We knew that Poland content typically performed well with locals so were excited to test our new opener. You can see the result best in our Gdansk video here.

Summary

Final balance at the end of June Expenses: -$3,412.53 Income: +$216 Change - $3,196.53

July was our second most expensive month and our least profitable to date. We have reconcilled ourselves with the fact that we may not be able to achieve sustainability at all and having spending months like this (and what we've planned in August) is just dragging us further away. It becomes difficult to not compare yourself to other content creators and their journey trying to do the same thing as us and it's certainly not healthy. From now on, we plan to put our heads down, try and make the best videos we possibly can while we do the things we want to do. If the numbers follow, great. If they don't at least we will have the memories and no regrets!

Thank you so much if you have read this far!

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