The Cost of Being a Digital Nomad Couple
Today, an Instagram friend (and amazing customer support person, I might add!) asked how we manage traveling the world in terms of finances.
That relates to the blog posts I’ve been meaning to write lately: our monthly financial reports for Sofia, Bulgaria and Bangkok, Thailand.
Here’s the reason I haven’t written those monthly financial reports: they’re boring.
We set ourselves a budget of $2,000 a month total for both of us (so $1,000 each), and it seems like every single month, we’re within $100 of that number.
It doesn’t matter whether we’re in Europe, North Africa, or Southeast Asia; so far, we always spend $2,000 a month. In other words, it seems like our lifestyle semi-unconsciously expands or contracts to exactly meet our budget.
It’s not like we go “Hey, it’s day 28 and we’ve only spent $1,500, time to blow a few hundred bucks!” Instead, keeping a fairly close eye on what we’re spending allows us to make choices every day that end up right at our budget.
For example, when we have the choice of whether to walk for 40 minutes in the heat or take a taxi for $3, knowing that we have $30 per day after accommodation, phones, and travel expenses guides that decision.
Comparison to Other Digital Nomad Couples
When I Googled recently for how much people are spending as digital nomads, a lot of travel couples seemed to be right around that $2,000 number, or at least within the $1,500 to $2,500 range. That made sense to me; after all, that’s our number too!
But then, I noticed that they were listing that price per person, not total, so their actual budget was $3,000 to $5,000 per month.
All of them said that their numbers felt right, that they were living comfortably but not extravagantly, and so on. All of the same things that we say.
Here’s what I’m learning from all this: within reason, whatever budget you set for yourself is the amount you’ll spend. If we had decided to spend $1,500 per month total, we could probably have done that without too much struggle.
Similarly, I’m sure we could double our budget and live comfortably, too!
To bring the total price even lower, there are definitely bigger cuts we could make. Staying in a hostel rather than an Airbnb apartment, for example, would bring the price way down (but we’d be absolutely miserable).
Cooking every day would also save a lot, but a huge part of the reason we travel is to experience world foods, so that’s not a cut we really want to make.
Other important points I don’t want to omit, but don’t have space to address in full:
We’re incredibly lucky that we’re operating in USD and all of my main clients are US-based, so our currency goes pretty far.
Traveling as a couple is inherently more affordable than two people traveling individually would be, because accommodations are basically the same price for one or two people.
We’ve been flexible with a lot of our travel plans to get better prices on flights. For example, we had no plans to fly specifically from Rome to Rio de Janeiro until we saw flights for under $200 for that route. If you have a strict itinerary, it’ll cost a lot more.
I feel fortunate in that I also have the perspective of coming at this from an incredibly overpriced part of the world. The $2,000 a month we’re paying for all our living and travel expenses is less than half the cost of just rent for the average two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco. Even a one-bedroom apartment in Berkeley is $2,900 on average. Compared to those numbers, a total monthly living cost of $1,000 per person seems very reasonable.
If you have any specific questions about anything in this post, please feel free to leave a comment! We’ve only been doing this whole digital nomading thing for half a year, but we’re absolutely happy to help if we can.
Also, if you’d like to keep seeing monthly budget reports (even though I promise they’re boring and always end up being $1,900 to $2,100) let me know and I’ll keep posting those.