6 months down – how much has it cost??

We recently celebrated 6 months since starting our roving retiree lifestyle on 9th April 2017 and thought it would be great to see and share how much it has cost. We think you’ll be amazed at just how much this lifestyle costs.

In the first few months of our travels I wrote a couple of posts detailing our costs. If you’re interested to read them here are the links:

April (Malaysia, London & Spain)
May (Spain & France)
June (France & UK)

Our daily costs (in Australian dollars) for those first three months came in at a very respectable level:
April – $55.90
May – $54.23
June – $62.28

We anticipated figures similar to June for July and August as we were house sitting in the UK during this period (here’s a link to our house sitting website). August was expected to be more expensive as we were taking 11 days off from sitting and renting a house with friends to attend the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

July started with us concluding our weekend house sit in Kempston, Bedfordshire and driving the rental car the short distance to Widdington in Essex for a 3.5 week sit. Late in the month we caught the bus to Berkhamsted to start another 3.5 week sit before flying up to Edinburgh to meet our friends and attend the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. We stayed in Edinburgh for 11 days and then flew to Girona in Northern Spain, picked up a rental car and commenced a month long sit on the Costa Brava.

The last nine days of our 6 months were very exciting, but much more expensive, as we flew to Jordan and enjoyed an organised tour around the entire country.

NOTE: the general expenditure figures below are all our cash transactions and includes items like  groceries, eating out, tourist attractions, entertainment, public transport, parking fees,  fuel, etc.

JULY expenses:

• General expenditure                            – $1452
• Car hire ( 2 days)                                 – $80
• Bus (Stansted-Hemel Hempstead)    – $53
• Train (Tube and trip to London)          – $30

Total costs for July were $1615   (or $52.09 per day)

AUGUST expenses:

• General expenditure                                     – $1584
• Train trip to London                                     – $68
• Airfare (Luton- Edinburgh)                        – $155
• Accommodation (11 nights Edinburgh)  – $1179

Total costs for August were $2986   (or $96.32 per day)

 SEPTEMBER expenses:

• General expenditure                              – $970
• Car hire ( 28 days)                                   – $377
• Airfares (Edinburgh-Girona)                – $412

Total costs for September were $1759   (or $58.63 per day)

OCTOBER expenses (9 days only – Jordan tour):

• Tour                                                      – $2265
• General expenditure                        – $1008
• Airfares (Barcelona-Amman)         – $952

Total costs for October were $4225   (or $469.44 per day)

Summary of costs

We were shocked when we totaled everything up on the calculator. Including the cost of our one-way airfares from Melbourne to London ($2,465) and 6 months apportionment of our travel insurance policy ($542) then the total cost for our 6 months has been $18,386 or $99.92 per day. Less than $100 per day!!!

We’re amazed by this considering almost a quarter of this figure is taken up by our nine day Jordan tour!!

If we exclude the Jordan tour the total is only $14,161 or $80.92 per day.

Do you reckon you would enjoy traveling the world and it costing you less than it does to live at home? IT IS POSSIBLE. You just have to make the decision to do it.

Please comment and we’re happy to help with any questions you may have about how we do this. Glenn & Jacqueline

Footnote: all figures are in Australian Dollars and using an exchange rate calculation of  1 EURO = $1.55 AUD and 1 POUND = $1.70 AUD