Year 2 Expense Report

Another year of international slow travel has come and gone.

Over the last 12 months, we’ve moved a little slower than last year, exploring only four different countries not counting our stop in the USA.

And we are neither homeless nor destitute. Yet.

To show you how everything worked out financially, let’s look at the final month in our fiscal year (July 2024), and then survey the total damage in our year 2 expense report.

For July 2024, the final month of our fiscal year ended with a bang!

ACCOMMODATION: $1,099.20 USD

One of our more expensive months to be sure. The bulk of this was from 26 nights in Madrid ($1,010.10 USD for our share) and 5 nights in Belgrade, Serbia ($89.10 USD).

This could have been much worse for sure, but we were glad to have kept things reasonable.

ACTIVITIES: $278.67 USD

We went a little crazy visiting places in Madrid for sure, but we have no regrets. There was so much cool stuff to see, and we still haven’t seen everything we’d like!

Admission tickets for most pay-to-enter historic attractions were quite reasonable (between €3 – €10). And even the ones that were more expensive (between €15 – €22) were totally worth it.

ALCOHOL: $102.76 USD

This may not seem like too much to spend on a month’s worth of booze, but when you find excellent beer for ~$0.50 USD per can and fantastic bottles of Syrah for ~$3 USD, we drank a bit more than we should have in Madrid.

Thankfully, Serbian alcohol prices are a little more expensive than what we typically steer towards. And the local varieties aren’t hugely compelling. Rakija is good, but not mind-blowing enough to warrant regular purchases at ~$14 USD per bottle.

Our livers will appreciate the coming detoxification.

EATING OUT: $443.90 USD

Those Spain menu del dias add up, and by far make up the bulk of our eating-out expenses for the month. Even though you get great value and quality, a couple will still burn through between $25 – $30 USD per lunch!

Still, we were able to largely absorb this expense, although our pants fit a bit tighter than before we arrived in Spain.

GROCERIES: $496.66 USD

July was a little more expensive than normal for groceries, likely due to the awesome variety of reasonably priced foods you could find in the supermarkets.

Bottom line, it was how much we bought, not how expensive things were.

MEDICAL: $14.57 USD

Not much to see here, aside from replenishing some OTC medications and purchasing a wrist brace when I sprained my wrist after a fall.

MISCELLANEOUS: $26.26 USD

I purchased a cheap pair of replacement sandals and a pitcher for our Belgrade Airbnb.

That’s it.

SUPPLIES: $119.78 USD

A little more expensive with supplies than normal, due to us buying a coffee maker to replace the one we broke in Madrid (~$25 USD). We also made an Amazon supplies order (~$50 USD) while in Madrid, since that was a viable option there.

The rest are the usual day-to-day supply purchases one needs to live in an apartment.

TRANSPORTATION: $173.27 USD

The bulk of this expense category is from upgrades to our free flights to Belgrade, Serbia ($108 USD), and a pair of round-trip high-speed train tickets to Segovia, Spain ($48.12 USD).

The remainder was just local bus transportation in Spain and Serbia.

UTILITIES/UPKEEP: $161.16 USD

A much higher number than usual for us, but with good reason.

$104 USD of this amount was to renew our Skype USA phone numbers we use as backups to Google Voice. $20.75 USD was to cover our MyRVmail mail forwarding fees for the month. And $10.94 USD covered my haircut.

The remainder was a mix of vitamin purchases, public bathroom fees, and eSIM data top-offs.

Total Expenses for July 2024 = $2,916.23 USD

Here is a pretty graph summarizing our July 2024 spending patterns:

In the end, we were over our $2,500 USD monthly budget by ~$400 USD in July.

But we weren’t upset about it since our average spend for the last 12 months ended up at $2,380.90 USD.

We knew we were well in the black going into the final month of our fiscal year, but we also knew Madrid would be expensive. So in the end we are satisfied with our July numbers since we didn’t feel like we deprived ourselves at all while living in a proper Western European city.

Overall we think we did pretty well! We won’t sneeze at being $119 USD under budget for our monthly average spend goal.

But what did the total spending look like for our second year of slow international travel?

Let’s take a look.

TOTAL EXPENSES FOR YEAR 2 = $28,570.78 USD

(August 2023 – July 2024)

So we ended up UNDER budget for year 2 by ~$1,400 USD.

Pretty good, especially considering we spent 3 months in “expensive” Western Europe and did significant technology upgrades near the beginning of this travel year.

So what does our annual expense category breakdown look like for year 2?

Here is a tabular breakdown (all expenses in USD):

Here is a more visually appealing version of the data:

And much like last year, we didn’t need to put a ton of effort into staying under budget.

We just kept our Airbnb choices reasonable, explored alternative accommodation opportunities, and followed our normal frugality and value-added instincts.

Now that we have a couple of years of international slow travel under our belt, we still are surprised at how easy it is to stay on budget.

Yes, global inflation is a thing.

And yes, Airbnb costs are rising…in addition to the additional taxes that some countries/cities started levying on them.

It really all comes down to being flexible, being opportunistic with cheap flight deals, eating like a local, and avoiding certain locations when they are in peak demand.

So How Is Our Financial Health After 2 Years of International Slow Travel?

Without getting into personal details, just fine.

Based on how we set ourselves up financially before retirement, our net worth continues to grow even after accounting for inflation and our annual spending.

This could obviously change if we ever need to buy a big-ticket item like a house, car, or RV in the future.

But we’ve factored all of these potential purchases into our 40-year retirement plan and we should be fine, assuming the global economic system as we know it doesn’t come crashing down in some sort of permanent, catastrophic way.

And if that were to be the case, everyone would be in trouble.

How Are We Handling Inflation?

To be honest, we aren’t doing anything special.

Sure, we have had to reimagine our ideal monthly Airbnb rent.

But to be honest, the choices we make in the supermarket and at restaurants mitigate most of our inflation-related concerns, as does occasionally pursuing alternative accommodation options.

And technology prices have been in a deflationary state for years.

Electronics have actually gotten cheaper over time (in terms of bang-for-buck), so the most important equipment we need to make our travel lives possible not only has gotten more affordable, but more powerful!

$300 each for new-to-us Pixel 6 Pro smartphones, a former flagship model, is a great example of this.

We do toy with the idea of giving ourselves a cost of living raise sometimes.

But to be honest, we have been able to stay under budget without really sacrificing anything or doing anything special.

So the current plan is to keep our annual budget at, or near, $30,000 USD until I reach 60 years old, when my modest state pension kicks in.

Of course, we can increase our annual budget NOW if required. And in fact, we’ve projected our retirement net worth with a higher degree of spending so we have a more conservative vision of our financial future decades from now.

But since we seem to be managing just fine at our current budget, there is no need to rock the boat.

So this is where things currently stand in the economic world of Two Travel Turtles and we hope that you’ve found this information enlightening.

Until next time…

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