November 2022 | - $2902.90
- Jordan & Emily
- Dec 4, 2022
- 5 min read
Updated: Feb 14, 2023
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 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:
Expense Report
Expense by category
Catagory | Expense | Per day |
Accomodation | $1,457 | $48.56 |
Food and Drink | $707.50 | $23.58 |
Transport | $1188.09 | $39.06 |
Tours booked & Entry fees | $92.50 | $3.08 |
Miscellaneous | $106 | $3.50 |
TOTAL | $2965.60 | $117.78 |
This is a quick reference category breakdown of our expenses.
We spent almost all of November in Turkey and we're loving the more affordable accommodation options. So much so that we thought it wouldn't be a big deal to splurge for a very nice air bnb while we were spending our Workaction week in Kas. We don't regret it. The balcony was incredible and we enjoyed many days and nights looking over the water. What we didn't anticipate was our transport costs. $39.06 per day is absurd. But this does entail 4 flights (One of which we booked and didn't even take! - more on that later) All-in-all, in a country where we could have survived comfortable under the $100 a day target, im pretty dissapointed we overshot it. AGAIN. But I do realise that most of the transport expenses were somewhat out of our control and a big contributer to the cost!
Accommodations Expenses
Location | Accomodation | Nights | Notes | Cost |
Canakkale, Turkey | Air BnB Full apartment | 5 | Affordable but noisy! | $190 |
Alicati, Turkey | Hotel room with private bathroom in local winery | 3 | Best value hotel we had AND Turkish breakfast included! | $96 |
Selcuk, Turkey | Air BnB Full apartment | 2 | $104 | |
Pamukkale, Turkey | Air BnB Full apartment | 2 | $76 | |
Kusadasi, Turkey | Air BnB Full apartment | 2 | Didn't film here! | $78 |
Kas, Turkey | Air BnB Full apartment | 7 | Best View from a room!! | $462 |
Antalya, Turkey | Air BnB Full apartment | 1 | One night before long bus | $47 |
Cappadocia, Turkey | Air BnB Full apartment | 3 | | $153 |
Istanbul, Turkey | Air BnB Full apartment | 1 | | $64 |
Vilnius, Lithuania | Air BnB Full apartment | 3 | | $177 |
TOTAL | | | | $1,457 |
November being spent in Turkey helped us a lot on the accommodation front. We were finding some great places for under $40 a night which sometimes included breakfast too (Shoutout to our Alicati hotel) but other times we knowingly spent more than we should have. Our Kas B
Transport Expenses
Route | Mode | Notes | Cost |
Bulgaria to Germany | Flight | Ryan air | $163.79 |
Istanbul to Alicati | Bus + Mini Bus | Kamil Cok to Izmir then small shuttle bus to Alicati | $56 |
Izmir region | Car rental | 6 days rental and a full tank of petrol | $179.80 |
Izmir to Kas | Bus | | $50 |
Kas to Antalya | Mini Bus | | $20 |
Antalya to Cappadocia | Bus | 10 Hour bus with Kamil Koc | $50 |
Cappadocia to Istanbul | Flight | Pegasus Airlines | $158 |
Istanbul to London | Flight | Pegasus Airlines | $163 |
London to Vilnius | Flight | Ryan Air | $203 |
TOTAL | | | $1188.09 |
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) Transport really messed us up in November. We thought we were doing great booking a flight to Germany for early November so we can get the best price in order to see the Christmas markets in Europe. Then we did our Schengen calculations and realised we didn't have enough days left and instead needed to stay in Turkey for longer. Althought our time in Turkey was incredible, the country is bigger than we expected so the busses were long and semi-expensive. We elected to rent a car when we werent travelling far and even decided to book an internal flight. (It was about $80 more than a bus would have been, but it meant we got an entire day back rather than spending it on a bus!) two more flights to then get us to Lithuania and the costs really do add up!
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 | $648.19 |
TOTAL | | $648.19 |
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! (52 new clicks for november, no 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 November)
Licensing Agreements
No licensing this month, I'm hoping it wasn't a one time thing!
YouTube Analytics
Not a bad month with Youtube! We had a plan in October to do a big Bulgarian travel series which, if we are honest, worked really hard on and had pretty high expectations for. We thought through November would be the time those videos started to find some purchase but alas, it wasn't meant to be. Through all of November we were still bouyed by our Serbia food video and during this month it became our most watched video! We had minimal expectations so to see it take off like that was inspiring and confusing, but we arent complaining. The REAL puzzle is how to replicate it's success, so far we havent been able to hit the mark anywhere near as well as we did in Serbia but hopefully next month I'm writing about how against all odds our videos in Turkey had a big spike! Although i'm told that historically Decmber isn't a great month for it! We will see.
Summary
Final balance at the end of November Expenses: -$3,551.09 Income: +$648.19 Change - $2902.90
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
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