Full Time Travel Budget | May 2023 -$1085

!Hola from the seaside town of Palomino in Colombia!

Palomino Beach

Breakdown of what's below:

• Expenses

• YouTube Analytics

• Summary

Expense Report

Categorys

Catagory	Expense
Accomodation	$981
Food and Drink	$782
Transport	$669
Misc	$690
Entertainment	$18
Insurance	$138
TOTAL	$2929

This is a quick reference category breakdown of our expenses.

Welcome to our May Travel Budget Update!

This is finally looking like something we can manage! This month's expenses have fallen below our $100 a day goal. Although, let’s be honest, it's probable that i’ve missed something! Regardless, we managed to get through a very expensive country and onto a new continent for a relatively affordable price. Thank you QANTAS points (Used from Nashville to Bogota) aaaaand spending a night in Nashville airport. Of course we managed to utilize trusted house sitters to keep costs down too!

Accommodations Expenses

Location	Accomodation	Nights	Notes	Cost
Washington DC	Trusted house sitters	6	Best thing to do or anyone who loves pets and is happy to travel at a slower pace. Pet name: Odis	$0
Nashville	Dodgy motel near the Nashville airport	2	Rodeway inn we didn't get the first night because our Washington - Nashville flight was delayed and we slept in the Dulles airport!	202
Nashville	Trusted house sitters	4	Best thing to do or anyone who loves pets and is happy to travel at a slower pace. Pet name: Tucker	$0
Nashville airport (BNA)	Airport sleep	1	We found couches at the coffee bean cafe and slept the night. Saved us about $250!	$0
Bogota, Colombia	Air BnB full apartment (Torre Acqua)	10	Great apartment for the price, very centrally located near La candelaria and Bogota main squares	$350
Macheta, Colombia (Kind of)	Air Bnb Tiny home unique accommodation	2	We did a video about this place so check that out! it was amazing but a little challenging to get too.	140
Villa de Leyva	Private room with ensuite	2	Booked on booking.com and served it's purpose well. AMAZING bed, and bathroom (Emily said it's the best bed shes had since we've been travelling)	$64
Barichara	Private apartment	2	A nice 10 minute walk from the main square this place was good.We had a VERY hot shower but no Aircon. got a little toasty.	$86
Palomino	Hotel room	1	Casa Colibri: No airconditioning in this place, wouldn't recommend. Great staff though.	$33
TOTAL				$981

It's a nice feeling to get out of the money draining North America without too much damage. We luckily found a trusted house sitters in Nashville for our perfect dates. Allowing us to do 2 trusted house sitters in the same month! That helped a lot because ONE night in Nashville was around $200 for the cheapest place. Hence why we spent our last night in Nashville curled up at the airport! Moving to Colombia has been great for the budget and allowed us to have a 10 day wor-cation in Bogota before tackling the rest of the country. We definitely didn’t get as much done as we would have liked though. We’ve been bouncing around pretty quickly since Bogota and even had a night on an overnight bus!

Trusted house sitters is amazing and you can get a 20% discount through this link: trustedhousesitters.pxf.io/jordanemily20 Use code: JORDANEMILY20 at checkout!

Transport Expenses

Route	Mode	Notes	Cost
Washington - Nashville	Flight	Flew with Allegiant. Easy to change flights but have beentrying to unsubscribe from their mailing lits for a few days now!	$300
Nashville - Bogota	Flight	American Airlines through Miami first.	$88 we used around 40,000 Qantas points for this leg too.
Bogota - Macheta	Local Bus	We used Macarena bus line from the North satelite terminal in Bogota	$14
Macheta - Tunja - Villa de Leyva	Bus	We didn't pre book any buses instead just turning up at the station or side of the road and asking. Tunja is a transport hub in the region so once we got there we could get anywhere!	$28
Villa de Leyva - Tunja - San Gil - Barichara	Buses	We had to use Tunja as a hub again and this time we had to use another hub in San gil too. so it was 3 buses in total!	$44
Barichara - Santa Marta	Long Overnight Bus	This one we booked online through Busbud. The 15 hour 'Expreso Brasilia' bus left from the hub of SanGil and was easy to do. we just met our bus at the station and only made one stop along the way!	$70
Santa Marta - Palomino	Bus	Also Expreso Brasilia we caught from the Santa Marta Terminal straight to Palomino (You can get a cheaper bus from inside Santa Marta City but it was going to cost a bit to get a taxi there anyway and taken MUCH longer.	$21
TOTAL			$287

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) We didn’t include some big expenses in this section which were mainly just smaller Ubers in North America which added up to a lot. We also rented bikes in Washington! I’m happy with how things are progressing in South America for transport. THe overnight bus was actually pretty comfortable and the seats reclined a lot more than expected. so we’ll be doing it again. Also, there IS technically Uber and DiDi in Colombia but rideshare as a concept is still illegal.. I know, weird. So technically you will be renting a car and a driver than getting a rideshare. All that means really is that if you are typically someone who rides in the back seat, they’ll typically call you up front where it’s much less suspicious.

A word on Misc. Normally this section has a significantly smaller number, reserved for things like haircuts or extra bug spray but since we arrived in Colombia it's become apparent that they are mostly operated by Cash so the category today is Mainly consisting of cash withdrawals which we then used for things like taxis, street tacos and other things. I'm sorry i did such a bad job of tracking it this month and aim to do better in June (I've started a note in my phone to track as we go!)

Fixed Costs

Details	Notes	Cost
Insurance	SafetyWing	$138
Adobe Premier Pro		$29.00
Epidemic Sound	All our music!	​$22
TOTAL		$189

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! - Unforauntely coming to America meant we had to increase our coverage which immediately doubled the price. But it's just something you Need to have. 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 + Trusted house sitters	$0
Licensing		$0
Brand Deal	Karma Campervan	$898
Youtube	Ad revenue	$946.40
TOTAL		$1844

Affiliate Income Amazon - Nothing happening here anymore, I think we need a viral video with some good cinematography before this kicks off maybe. Get your Guide - we had 21 people click on our link in May but still no purchases other than our initial success Viator - We had 0 new sessions on Viator in May and no new bookings. Trusted house sitters - We recently set up an affiliate link with trusted house sitters to see if we can share in some of their success. It's something we obviously believe in thoroughly and would be great if we could monetise. From initial set up we've had one person click the link but they are on the free trial. If they move to the full service we then getpaid

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

Brand Deals

Karma Campervans - I'm putting this here because it makes me feel like a real creator. In reality this was a partial refund for utilising the Karma campervan in our Youtube videos. We recieved a 50% refund of the van rental portion which amounted to $898. Even though it's a refund of last months expense. I'm leaving it here as in income for this month. Hopefully we have many more opportunities like this in the future!

YouTube Analytics

Youtube analytics from May

Another weird month for us. This is actually the HIGHEST income we've ever earnt from YouTube in a month... but it didn't feel like it..

Heres the thing. A lot of our views which were a lotmore than usual were coming from our Labuan Bajo video.

Labuan Bajo video results

Which, while we appreciate it and love any views, we had already completely shifted our focus to the Americas. Every vidoe we had filmed here so far hasn’t performed the way we wanted and that had us a little bit down in the dumps. So even though we were making our best money from a combination of our Indonesian vlogs doing well and our America’s videos having a much higher RPM (Revenue Per Mille or How much we get paid per thousand views) It didn’t really feel like it.

Youtube Analytics from the Rocky Mountaineer

In this month we also released our Rocky Mountaineer video which we worked reaaallly hard on. It’s currently doing better than most of our other America’s videos but it hasn’t gone crazy like we had hoped. We are both really trying to ground ourselves and realise that we started this channel to be creative and to keep us on the road for as long as possible. Keeping us on the road requires money and this month was a great one for earning money so let’s just celebrate that! *I just ordered a beer for that exact reason.

Summary

It's great to be in South America where we can book things the day before we arrive and not end up spending an arm and a leg. It's going to be a significant respite to our budget and hopefully if we take advantage of the more affordable prices we can extend our overall trip by a few months! Expenses: -$2929 Income: +$1844 Change -$1085

Thank you so much if you have read this far! and of course, for watching along! 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 even earn an income - 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!

Editorial Note - Opinions expressed here are author's alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.

User Generated Content Disclosure - Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

*affiliate links - we may earn commission