October 2022 | -$2,748.86
- Jordan & Emily
- Nov 5, 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 | $1,786.00 | $57.61 |
Food and Drink | $947.59 | $30.56 |
Transport | $716.40 | $23.10 |
Tours booked | $0 | $0 |
Miscellaneous | $96 | $3.09 |
TOTAL | $2965.60 | $114.36 |
This is a quick reference category breakdown of our expenses.
At the beggining of October we had left the affordability of our house sitting job in Cortona but still had a few days left in the expensive land of Italy. This was a big contributor to our accommodation costs through this month. Luckily we knew it was going to be that way so we scooted off to a more affordable destination of Bulgaria. Unluckily, i messed up our accomodation dates for our first few nights so we overspent for 4 days in Sofia. BUT the apartment we stayed in was great and let us catch up on a lot of work. Also, BULGARIA IS INCREDIBLE! we rented a car for a few days and explored accross the country before grabbing an overnight train to Istanbul in Turkey. To be honest I had the ambition to get this months daily average under that beautiful $100 mark and am pretty dissapointed we missed the mark.
Accommodations Expenses
Location | Accomodation | Nights | Notes | Cost |
Matera, Italy | Air BnB Full apartment | 1 | $160 | |
Taranto, Italy | Air BnB Full apartment | 2 | $142 | |
Bari, Italy | Air BnB Full apartment | 3 | $255 | |
Sofia, Bulgaria | Air BnB Full apartment | 4 | $300 | |
Bansko, Bulgaria | Air BnB Full apartment | 2 | | $64 |
Plovdiv, Bulgaria | Air BnB Full apartment | 3 | $123 | |
Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria | Air BnB Full apartment | 4 | | $156 |
Varna, Bulgaria | Air BnB Full apartment | 3 | | $153 |
Bulgaria | Neolithic Hut | 1 | | $64 |
Sofia, Bulgaria | Air BnB Full apartment | 2 | | $92 |
Bulgaria to Turkey | Overnight Train | 1 | | $112 |
Istanbul, Turkey | Air BnB Full apartment | 3 | | $201 |
Canakkale, Turkey | Air BnB Full apartment | 2 (of 7) | | $76 |
TOTAL | | | | $1,786 |
October was a standard month for accommodation for us. There were a few mistakes that costs us a bit more there was also a couple of expensive nights in unique accommodations which always run us a little more. Other than that, we came into a bit better pricing once we found our rhythm in Bulgaria and have booked ahead mostly the same through November while we are in Turkey (Except one week, whoops)
Transport Expenses
Route | Mode | Notes | Cost |
Italy to Bulgaria | Flight | Ryan air | $136 |
Bulgaria car rental | Car | 13 days rental | $182 |
Petrol for car | Fuel | | $172 |
Bulgaria to Turkey | Overnight Train | | Listen in Accom |
| | | |
TOTAL | | | $738 |
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) Renting a car in Bulgaria was one of the best decisions we made! we had expected an expensive car like we had in Romania but were very suprised when it came out to only about $13 a day. Apparently Romania should have been cheaper too we just rented from a smaller city that didn't have as many cars available. Always learning lessons!
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 | $721.63 |
TOTAL | | $721.63 |
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!
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!
Licensing Agreements
No licensing this month, I'm hoping it wasn't a one time thing!
YouTube Analytics
Woooooo!! We had a great but of luck with the youtube Algorithm in October. As soon as it stopped pushing our Transfagarasan video it wen't straight onto our Serbian food tour has now become our second most watched video and is still getting a good amount of views per day as I write this! (Who knew that the topic of Burek would be so controversial) It did mean that our Italy videos never really got off the mark which we kind of expected after the last couple of Italy videos so we weren't too dissapointed in that. Now our Bulgaria videos have just started releasing and we REALLY like them, they are a slightly different style and we hope they can catch on a bit too. We wanted to take this space and both say a sincere THANK YOU for watching our videos. Your watch time has contributed to our BEST MONTH EVER for Youtibe income! we are so excited looking at these numbers and can't wait to keep delivering good videos for you all!
Summary
Final balance at the end of September Expenses: -$3,470.49 Income: +$721.63 Change - $2748.86
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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