We did it! My partner and I have been travelling for a year (even longer now!) as digital nomads. We visited four continents and sailed across many seas, jetted over oceans, and found time to squeeze in work without a home base.
More and more people are choosing remote work to live a full-time travel lifestyle. But one concern often holds people back more than most: money. Surely travelling full-time is more expensive than living and paying for rent in one place, right?
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I can see why you might think that, but after carefully tracking our spending for the last year, you might be surprised to learn about the results. For transparency, we’re not budget travellers who exclusively book hostels and homestays. Nor are we bougie, staying in five-star hotels.
You might spend more or less depending on your travel style. This is just a full breakdown of our full-time travel costs without purposefully trying to live cheaply. We definitely didn’t skip any adventures that we really wanted to do! We were 100% responsible for our expenses too, and didn’t rely on staying with friends or family.
Let’s see exactly how much it really costs to travel full-time around the world as digital nomads!
Note: I’m British and my most recent base was in England, so all costs are listed in GBP (£).
Where Did We Travel This Year?
We visited countries in Europe, North America, South America, and Antarctica. We even visited more expensive countries in South America, so we didn’t travel to destinations known for being cheap!
Here’s a breakdown of everywhere we visited and for how long:
- Paros – 1 month
- Athens – 2 weeks
- Meteora – 1 week
- Antarctica – 2 weeks
- Patagonia – 1 month
- Buenos Aires – 10 days
- Cusco – 1 month
- Parts of Bolivia – 2 weeks
- Yucatàn Peninsula – 5 weeks
- Amsterdam – 5 days
- Rome – 10 days
- Puglia – 3 weeks
- Kotor – 5 weeks
- Parts of Georgia – over 2 months
- England – 3 weeks
- Northern Italy/France – 1 week
- Brandenburg – 1 week
- European cruise – 2 weeks
You’ll notice we stayed in some places for around a month. Because we’re digital nomads, we embraced slow travel for a better work/life balance and make sure we experience every place.
If you’re taking a year-long sabbatical or career break, you may want to travel faster and see more places on your trip. You do you! It may be a more expensive trip, or you may even spend less if you have a more budget travel style.
Our Full-Time Travel Costs Breakdown
Accommodation – £16k
Let’s start with the most expensive cost of our first year of full-time travel!
We spent £16k on all our accommodation costs. Since we travel as a couple, we can split the cost of hotels and apartments between the two of us, so that’s £8k each.
It works out to just under £25 per day travelling for a year. Not bad when you think hostel rooms in European capitals can cost much more!
Flights – £4.7k
Unsurprisingly, flights were our next biggest spend from our year travelling full time. We spent less than £2.5k per person for the whole year.
This figure could have been much higher had we hopped between continents or travelled fast. Staying in one region is much more economical (not to mention environmental). One-way flights in Europe can be fairly cheap depending on the season
Eating out – £4.1k
Tasting local cuisines is one of our favourite things about travel. It’s not something we’d ever cut out just to save money! We spent £4.1k on eating at restaurants, cafés, and street food which includes tips.
We seek out family-run places that serve big, hearty portions rather than fine-dining restaurants so we could have spent much more. Again, travel style is a huge factor.
Groceries – £3k
Of course, eating out is fun but it’s impossible (or at least not healthy) to do 24/7. We spent around £3k on groceries over the year. This equates to around £250 per month for both of us.
I was curious to see how this compared to the average grocery budget of a couple living in the UK in 2024. According to NimbleFins, the average is £291, so we’ve spent slightly less.
Now, the average couple apparently only spends £99 every month on takeaways and restaurants. It’s safe to say we’ve spent way more than that on eating out, but it was worth every penny!
Days out etc – £3k
It’s pointless travelling to these incredible places without spending time and money exploring them. When we weren’t relaxing or working, we were enjoying days out visiting museums and other attractions.
All of these small costs totalled around £3k for both of us. We highly value experiences over things, especially as we’re living out of suitcases. And can you really put a price on fun?
Insurance – £1.6k
Insurance is such an essential cost and you really can’t afford not to have it. Many people get travel insurance because they’re worried about airlines losing their luggage or a petty thief stealing their phone. While these situations are stressful and costly, they’re nowhere near as important as covering medical costs.
We spent £1.6k on health and travel insurance over our first year of full-time travel. That includes our gadgets, travel, and medical. We use SafetyWing for this as it’s the best insurance provider I’ve found that caters to digital nomads.
When travelling for a year, it’s important to make sure your insurance covers all the regions you’ll be visiting as well as activities. Winter sports like skiing, adventurous activities like skydiving, and high-altitude hikes often aren’t included as standard.
It’s difficult to know what you might be getting up to if you’re fairly spontaneous, but insurance is not something you should skimp on.
Transport – £1.5k
Naturally, to enjoy day trips, we had to spend money on transport aside from our flight costs. We spent £1.5k for the whole year on taxis, trains, boats, and buses. Many of the places we visited are easy to get around on public transport which we generally opted for over renting cars.
Depending on where you stay, this could be a much bigger cost. People who have a base and live in one place will spend way more on transport in a year than we did! Some cities and rural areas, especially in North America, are just impossible to get around without a car.
But the places we stayed the longest, like Kotor, are super small and compact. We could walk everywhere. If we had to rent a car every day on our full-time travels, that would have seriously bumped up our spending.
Phone bills – £1k
As digital nomads, having good-quality phones and a consistent data connection is essential. We use our phones for everything from capturing content, social media, talking to friends and family, booking activities, maps, and much more.
Moving from country to country automatically increases our phone bills higher than they might be if we were staying in one place. Our base phone plans often don’t cover countries like Georgia. So, We spent around £1k in total on our phones over the year.
Misc – £2.3k
There were lots of small costs in different categories that I didn’t know where to put. These are things like ATM cash withdrawals and travel gear/supplies that might have needed replacing over the year.
In total, these costs were around £2.3k for both of us. It doesn’t matter how good you are at budgeting your money and allocating every penny, there will always be unexpected costs.
One of the most common travel tips from people who have travelled for an extended time is to budget more than you plan on spending. This is why! Those small surprise costs soon add up. But it’s also too easy to spend money on things you don’t need when you have a home base and free delivery. This often isn’t an option when travelling full-time so you spend more on experiences.
So, How Much Did We Spend Travelling Full Time for a Year?
Drum roll, please… In total, we spent around £18k each, or £1.5k each per month. Everything we earned that we didn’t spend on travelling full-time has gone into our savings for future years.
Travelling Full Time vs Living at Home Annual Costs
If you’re currently living in one place, one of your biggest concerns might be that your expenses will increase. Depending on where you live and your travel style, they might, but that wasn’t our experience.
We used to live in the city of Bath in the UK. It’s not the cheapest city, but not the most expensive either. I calculated that our annual expenses in Bath were 8% higher than travelling full-time.
What Will Our Second Year Travelling as Digital Nomads Cost?
Travelling for a year has only increased our appetite to keep exploring the world as digital nomads. Clearly, it’s paying off (pun intended)! We’re continuing our full-time travel lifestyle and hoping to travel towards Asia over the next year. I’m predicting that our second year’s expenses will be even lower due to the cheaper cost of living.
