Digital Nomad Budget Report: $2,000 a Month in Marrakech, Morocco
The Goal and Outcome
Our goal is to stay at or under $2,000 (USD) every month. That’s total for both of us, not each. All prices in this post are converted from Moroccan dirhams to USD when relevant!
We expected to come in under budget for Morocco, but instead, ended up going a little bit over for reasons I’ll explain! Our grand total for the month was $2,068 USD.
What Wasn’t Included
There are a couple of things we didn’t include in this breakdown:
Flights to Morocco - these depend so much on where you’re coming from and when you’re visiting that our numbers aren’t representative of what you might realistically spend.
Health insurance - this varies so much from person to person that our specific numbers are probably not relevant to your situation, so we didn’t include that.
Direct bed bug expenses - while our bed bug drama ended up resulting in a lot of secondary costs (read on for an explanation), we haven’t included costs directly related to the bed bugs, such as the costs of replacing our luggage.
The Breakdown of Living on Around $2,000 a Month as Digital Nomads in Marrakech, Morocco
Rent and utilities: $638
Cell phones: $80
Miscellaneous: $188
Medicine: $30
Tourism/entry fees: $286
Eating/drinking out: $846
Grand total: $2,068 USD
Explanations of the Categories:
Rent. Our rent ended up being $638 for the month. It was originally supposed to be slightly higher, but we ended up moving twice due to bed bugs, and Airbnb generously refunded a significant chunk of our first stay, so the total shifted.
Cell phones. We have (and LOVE) Google’s Project Fi. This lets us keep our American numbers, send unlimited texts from tons of countries, and use data at $10/gigabyte in those same countries. We’ve found it to be the ideal carrier for digital nomads so far. To learn more, check out this blog post about it!
Miscellaneous. This category is mostly gifts for family and friends back home. (I won't go into too much detail on that because the presents haven't arrived yet!)
Medicine. Before we discovered that my “rash” was the result of a bed bug infestation, I bought antihistamines and several creams to try to get it under control.
Tourism. This included tips to various tour guides, as well as two bigger items: our three-day desert excursion (complete with dromedary rides into the Sahara desert!) and a six-hour cooking class.
Eating/drinking out. We ate out a lot. A LOT. As usual. In Morocco, it was for just about every meal; notice that we don’t even have a groceries category this month. Read on to learn why.
Could We Have Spent Less?
In short, yes. Accommodation prices for tourists don’t go a whole lot lower unless you’re willing to stay in a hostel (we weren’t), but I imagine you could find less expensive private lodging if you had local connections. But if we had cooked at home instead of eating out for every meal, we could have saved quite a bit.
The reason we spent more than we intended comes down largely to bed bugs. We ended up staying in five different rooms across three different riads during our month in Marrakech, which meant we never really felt at home anywhere; we felt more like we were on vacation the whole time. This is completely the opposite of our intended travel style, which was to rent a little apartment in each city and live as if we were at home (including cooking at home for most meals).
To our dismay, while our hosts at the riads were friendly, the constant offers to “make yourself at home!” felt more like lip service than reality. If we so much as approached the kitchens, we were greeted by friendly faces offering, “What do you need? Tea? Food? I’ll make it for you!” Our pleas that we simply wanted to cook (or do laundry, etc.) ourselves fell on deaf ears, leading us to give up fairly quickly.
We also could have saved quite a bit by only participating in free activities (no tours, excursions, or cooking class), and by choosing not to buy gifts for friends and family back home.
If we had been willing to cut these corners and had been able to cook for ourselves, we could probably have done it on $1,500 for the month.
Final Thoughts
Again, if it hadn’t been for the bed bugs forcing us to move, and if we had been able to have true kitchen access, we would have been able to live more locally and less touristically.
While it’s certainly unpleasant and somewhat stressful to come in over (rather than under) budget, it’s always good to keep these things in context. A quick check on Craigslist shows that a studio apartment in my hometown of Berkeley would currently cost $2,000 to $3,000 a month (ouch!), and that’s just for housing.