The Cost of Driving Around the World
It seems like whenever it comes up in conversation that we’ve just driven our van around the world, and that to do so took nearly three years, the first thing people say is something along the lines of “That sounds expensive!” I can see why people might think that. I mean, we used to take ten day vacations to Europe, and when we would return our bank account would sometimes be $5,000 less than when we left. There were the plane tickets, the buses and trains, hotels, restaurants, and entertainment. That’s not to mention the fact that the cost ticker on rent and bills never stopped ticking while we were away. So yeah, Jesus H. Christ, if it costs $5,000 for a ten day international vacation, it must cost, like, a cool half million to do it for three straight years!
But it doesn’t. So how much does it cost to drive around the world in a car? The short answer is: far less than it costs to stay home. If that doesn’t make you feel like you’re missing out on something, it should. I’m sitting in my house right now, thinking about the fact that our yearly rent on this studio apartment in Seattle is nearly as much as our yearly cost to drive around the world.
Before we jump into the numbers, a quick note on cost accounting methodology while on the road. We were gone for 927 days, and we tracked every single penny that we spent. And we didn’t do it with fancy online bank tracking tools, as that would have been impossible since we paid cash for 99.9% of our expenses. Even for big bills like shipping our van on container ships across the oceans. And no, we didn’t use a fancy smart phone app either. That would have been impossible on account of the fact that we didn’t have any phone at all most of the time. No need to adulterate a perfectly good adventure with a telephone.
That’s another thing that seems to surprise people: we didn’t have a phone for three years, and it was absolutely fan-freakin’-tastic. But I digress.
No, we tracked our expenses by writing them down with a pen in a small notebook that I kept in my pocket throughout the entire trip. I don’t even know how many of these notebooks I went through. Every week or so we would transcribe the information from the notebook into a spreadsheet I created that tracked our categorized expenses. It told us whether we were on track with our budget, and extrapolated our expenditures to estimate how much we’d have left at the end of the trip. Tracking our expenses to this level proved invaluable in staying on track on such a long trip.
With that out of the way, we can get down to the rice and beans of this affair. There are a lot of ways to slice this data, so I’ve prepared it in a few different ways. This is how I’ve broken it down in sections:
- Summary of expenses
- Cost breakdown by country
- Detailed costs by month
Without further ado…
Summary of Expenses
In this section I’ve summarized all of our relevant trip stats and categorized expense data. It should be noted that these costs include everything; food, gas, lodging, vehicle shipping, insurance, flights, repairs. If we were to remove costs for shipping the van, flying from continent to continent, and replacing our engine, for example, the average daily cost would be greatly reduced. It would be much cheaper to stay on a single continent, but that wasn’t the point of this trip. This was our total cost to survive.
Total days in trip: 927
Total countries: 34
Cost per day: $102
Mean cost per month: $3,102
Mean cost per year: $37,224
Total cost of trip: $94,524
Highest month: $7,462 (Argentina)*
Lowest month: $1,245 (India)
*Includes shipping van from Argentina to Malaysia, flights from Argentina to USA to Malaysia, and the fee to get our Carnet de Passages for Nacho.
Here’s how the cost played out, month by month. Notice that there are a few high outliers (due to incidentals like shipping the van/flying ourselves, replacing our engine, and the whole transmission smuggling debacle). Our costs were generally around $2,000 per month when we were just living and driving.
And here are the total costs broken down by category over the course of the entire trip, ordered from high to low.
Food: $23,064 ($756/mo)
Shipping/Flights: $19,885 ($652/mo)
Gas: $13,874 ($455/mo)
Other: $13,293 ($436/mo)
VW Expenses: $11,293* ($370/mo)
Hotels/Apartments: $5,383** ($176/mo)
Transport/Parking/Tolls: $2,391 ($78/mo)
Entertainment/Entry fees: $2,092 ($69/mo)
Borders/Visas/Permits: $2,043 ($67/mo)
Camping: $1,454*** ($48/mo)
*This was for anything we spent on the van; from small things like oil/filters, to big items like the engine transplant in Thailand and transmission replacement in Colombia.
**We rarely stayed in hotels, but occasionally we would rent an apartment for a month. The reason for doing so usually had to do with waiting on the shipping process, but it was always a welcome recharge.
***We almost exclusively “wild camped,” or “boondocked,” which is free, as we usually found it preferable to the confinement of campgrounds. Once we hit Asia there were virtually no campgrounds anyway, and when we got to Europe they were too expensive to consider.
Cost Breakdown by Country
Even when I tell people how cheap it is to live on the road, they tend not to believe me. I’ve just shown you that we lived rather comfortably on a little more than $37k per year. From an American perspective, that’s a fairly low-cost existence; that’s about the starting pay for a teacher, or half what a typical junior engineer makes in a year.
Now consider it from a different perspective. We were living primarily in third world countries where the cost of living is directly proportional to the income of the population. In Mexico, the average monthly income is only $375. Therefore, it is possible to survive in Mexico on $375 per month. Obviously we have some extra expenses like gasoline and road tolls, and we tend to spend more on food and entertainment, but it makes the $1,900 that we spent per month in Mexico seem preposterously excessive. Now consider that the average monthly wage in Nepal is just $37, and the $1,400 per month that we spent there is downright lavish.
Before looking at the cost, here’s a list of which countries we visited, ordered by the amount of time we spent in each country. Keep in mind that our average daily costs for countries with a greater number of days will paint a more accurate picture of the real cost to travel there, as it will draw from a greater sample size.
To get an idea of how much it cost for us to live in each country, for the next graph I’ve removed the major outliers for things that don’t relate to living expenses; namely, shipping, flights, and major van repairs. Think of this as the cost for us to overland within each of these countries once we were already there.
For this chart, I removed all countries for which we didn’t have data for at least one week. Countries with higher sample sizes will naturally have higher accuracy. For example, Panama is a pretty cheap country, but since we spent most of our time there preparing for shipping, we had some higher costs than if we were only exploring. If we’d been there longer, it wouldn’t have come up as the 6th costliest country. Conversely, Sweden should have been at the top, but we were there for a short enough time that we were able to hobble by on bread and water while sleeping on Sven’s couch.
Detailed Costs by Month
I mentioned that we transcribed the cost notebook to the spreadsheet every week or so. I’ve taken screen shots of the meaty bits of that spreadsheet for each month—all 31 of them—and have compiled them into great big sheets.
Click the image below to be taken to a page containing one such image for each month. It depicts total cost per category by month.
And if you’d like to see the actual spreadsheets containing all of the raw data for each month, showing how much we spent each day within each category, click this image and it will take you there.
So we must be rich, right?
All right, so we’ve established that we drove around the world for nearly three years on $94,000. And while that’s much less than most of us Americans will spend in three years of sitting around at home, the problem still persists that we can’t drive around the world on $94,000 unless we have $94,000 in our bank account first, right? Right! So how the hell do you get $94,000?
It’s daunting, I know. And you don’t want to come home broke, so it would be prudent to come back with some savings to live on while you plug back into society. So now what? You need an ungodly amount of money to buy your freedom, and only rich people can do that, right? Wrong! We started with very little in savings, just like everyone, and ultimately got the money we needed by saving up. Sounds too hard, I know, but hear me out.
We were making decent money at our jobs (I as a mechanical engineer, Sheena in corporate accounting), but not crazy money. Just regular money. Your standard dual income college-educated professionals on salary. But just like pretty much everyone in America, we had no money left at the end of each month. Maybe we could save a few thousand dollars per year, but it seemed like there was always something popping up to take away our money. But one day I was talking with one of our lab technicians who complained to me that he had only taken home $24,000 the year before, and he was pissed off about income disparity. Of course I felt for him, having grown up in a household like that. But it also occurred to me that he was surviving on $24,000 per year, and he also had no money left at the end of each month, just like me and everyone else. So what were we spending all of our extra money on? In theory, couldn’t we live on $24,000 if we really tried? Don’t millions of Americans already do it?
Quite simply, yes. No matter how much we earn, most of us will spend it all. If only we made a little bit more it would make life so much easier, but the truth is we’d still spend it all. So Sheena and I decided to live like the lab technician and put the rest in a special bank account we set aside, which we called the “Nacho Fund.” Back at the beginning of our trip I wrote about some techniques that we used to save our money. But to summarize, by simplifying our life and living as if we earned a lot less, we were able to survive entirely on Sheena’s salary, while mine went into the Nacho Fund.
In the end, it took us only two and a half years to save not only enough money to buy our freedom, but also enough for a post-trip savings buffer. Honestly, once we made the adjustment to living inexpensively, we sat back and watched the money pour into our account each month while our daily life concurrently became far more enjoyable in its simplicity. It was unreal. And we had never even considered that it could be possible, because before that we were like everyone else, always ending up with nothing.
I do realize that there are people out there for whom this kind of thing isn’t possible, but it’s not as many of you as you think. I hear it all the time, people telling me that it’s nice that we could do it, but there’s no way they could because of X, Y, and Z. But most of them are selling themselves short. If you can think of someone in America who is surviving on less than you are, and you’re willing to make the necessary sacrifices, then you can do it too. And if it will enable you to live the life you want, then I hope you do.
Great info! Thank you.
Comment by TG on January 18, 2015 at 11:12 pm
Great data! Thanks for taking the time to put this together and share it with everyone.
Comment by jason on January 18, 2015 at 11:25 pm
Spot on! For a two income household like you described this is very plausible to do. We purchased our house based on one of our’s salary – not two – so that everything related to the home, including utilities, gas, everything comes out of one income while the other income just piles up in the bank. Now, I do like to spend so sometimes it’s not piling up like you said – we’re spending it – but it can be done no doubt.
So now that you’re back state side – what’s the plan? Heading back into corporate America??!
Comment by ab on January 18, 2015 at 11:26 pm
You’re right (of course). Most folks spend whatever they make, no matter how much or little. Your very practical approach to scaling back is doable by many. Tim McGraw sang about it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUEtIyPxrH8), others talk about it. How bad do you want it?
Comment by Keith on January 19, 2015 at 12:13 am
Hi guys, thanks for the number. Very interesting to see that indeed! My average spend was $3,247 CAD, so roughly the same, for the two years I was gone. But that was me on a motorcycle, and for ONE person, not two … also some more flying back and forth, Galapagos sidebar and back and forth to Europe for 14 days somewhere in between it all. My average spend now (with a nice apartment, car insurance etc. is $4,433 for 2014). I should have stayed on the road too!!
Comment by Kevin Beretta on January 19, 2015 at 12:20 am
Thanks for sharing the fact that is IS possible to live below your means and make the money to experience something that changes your life forever.
Comment by Rhonda on January 19, 2015 at 12:37 am
Thank you very much for the detailed expense report.
If it is not written down then there is no way to know where the money went.
We have written records since got married 52 years ago.
Comment by Ragnar Doerwald on January 19, 2015 at 2:13 am
There is nothing like ‘seeing’ the numbers, actual numbers of what it took!
Thanks for the post.
Comment by Rob on January 19, 2015 at 2:17 am
You have very high class tastes, Kevin. That’s why it was best that you picked out our apartment in Buenos Aires ;)
And sheesh, Ragnar, 52 years married!? That’s amazing!
Comment by Brad on January 19, 2015 at 2:19 am
Ha ha! Did we pick it? I forgot. But it was a beautiful thing though. I don’t have expensive taste! I live in Vancouver, BC … :-) EVERYHTHING is expensive here. Basic insurance with full deduction for a 1999 Honda Accord is $978 CAD, as an example… :-(
Comment by Kevin Beretta on January 19, 2015 at 2:25 am
never borrow against your over time… put it in the bank…or under a rock :)
Comment by Donald and Deborah PH on January 19, 2015 at 4:54 am
First of all well done, what a fantastic trip! We talked a couple of years ago about the logistics of us taking our 4×4 around the world but we decided to do it with backpacks instead in the end. Although I’d still love to drive around Africa. Any plans? And secondly, we saved like that too, once you get into it it’s fun, living with less is liberating. We only had one salary and 2 kids, so we managed $30K in one year. Still, not bad! And you are so good at keeping records, we suck. When the money runs out ( and we get silly with it sometimes) we stop and my husband works. But life has changed for us and I love this new way of being.
Comment by Alyson on January 19, 2015 at 8:33 am
Brad,
My admiration,for you both, just went up a notch. Even though I knew you were well grounded whilst on the move, I had no idea how well grounded. Your meticulous records and your logical thinking is a stuff fit to be taught in schools in order to train young minds the basics of existence.
Just imagine if Nacho were the President ( remember we talked in jest last election ? ) and you were the Secretary of the Treasury, I bet the budgets would be balanced and there would be harmony around Pachamamma…wishful thinking, you say…hell not.!!!!!
To let you in on a secret, does any one ever wonder why certain immigrant classes in the U.S. and Canada acquire wealth ? Quite simply, they seldom keep up with the Jones’s until they can surpass the Jones’s in real terms.
It would be interesting to follow the progress of Bhaini in Portland as she makes strides in the land of the free,where dreams can come true…alas! in my mind only if you have a hunger for it and you are prepared to pay the price.
Ciao !
Comment by mashoud on January 19, 2015 at 9:42 am
I read this entry because like many others I was curious about how you pulled this trip off financially. But in the end what inspired me most if a recap of how you set yourselves up to take the trip with prudent saving and planning. My wife and I, and two rapidly-growing daughters, don’t have any plans to travel the world just yet (would LOVE to, FWIW) but the part about living on less to save for the more important things really stuck with me. Thanks for being so open about what you guys have done, it’s inspiring on so many levels!
Comment by Chris H on January 19, 2015 at 4:23 pm
This is why I didn’t worry (well, I did SOME) while you were gone on this fantastic adventure. I knew you were a meticulous planner, and never took uncalculated risks. You always did your “homework” before setting out on a path to a new country. I have learned so much from you, my son. I am so proud of you both.
Comment by Mom on January 19, 2015 at 6:06 pm
Hi, i was under the impression that you also crowd-sourced some funding, no? Haven’t read about it in your listing… Also: how much did the book help, if at all? :)
Thx,
.martin
Comment by tix on January 20, 2015 at 7:49 am
Martin, we had the idea to cross China and drive the Silk Road, and tried to crowdfund it to write a book, but failed to reach the funding goal. And if you don’t reach the goal, you don’t get any of the money. So no, we weren’t crowdfunded. We put the Panamerican book out when we were in Thailand and made a couple hundred dollars per month from it, which helped our re-entry savings buffer. We also got some much-appreciated help from our readers who bought us beer from time to time.
Comment by Brad on January 20, 2015 at 3:18 pm
Thanks for the breakdown Brad and Sheena. I’ve done the year-long RTW backpacking thing before and ppl often look at me wondering how I could afford it but your article pretty much summarizes it: lifestyle adjustment.
Comment by Kenneth on January 20, 2015 at 9:56 pm
curious how you managed your Nacho’s fuel.
did you pretty much keep it topped off all the time, not knowing where or when the next station would be, or did you have good enough maps to make longer stretches before starting to look for fuel?
any places with really long runs between stations where you were in serious danger of running out and had thoughts of going all Road Warrior to get the precious juice? :)
Comment by Dave on January 21, 2015 at 8:45 am
Dave, the only places where fuel was a concern were some of the more remote parts of Patagonia, where the distance between towns could be 200 miles. We would be sure to fill up whenever possible, as sometimes the stations would be out of gas. In one case we arrived at the first town in 200 miles and they were out of gas, so we had to go pretty far out of our way to El Calafate to fill up. We would carry 10 extra gallons with us in jerry cans, but even then we were down to fumes in that case. Seems like for the rest of the world it wasn’t a big issue.
Comment by Brad on January 21, 2015 at 6:07 pm
Very cool data. I’ve always gotten the impression that you guys kept to a budget, but the meticulous records are awesome. I’ve been tracking our finances like that for a few years now, and it’s really helped us see where really dumb spending was occurring.
Are you at all familiar with the early retirement movement? My favorite strain of it are the forums for the blog Mr. Money Mustache. A lot of folks (myself included) that have made a similar realization to the one you and Sheena did.
FWIW, I have 3 kids, we earn a bit over $60K combined, and we save over half our income. We’d like to do some extended travel, but our ultimate goal is totally different – homesteading/farming.
Comment by thegoblinchief on January 26, 2015 at 2:16 am
la libertad de vivir no tiene precio…..
Comment by ernesto on January 27, 2015 at 4:21 am
I’ve been reading this blog on and off since the day you set off and it’s great to check back in and see that the whole trip was a big success. In fact, the reason I’m commenting is to let you know that you partly inspired a big change in my life. Ive always wanted to travel but never made the commitment, until now. Here I am 5000 miles from home, 3 month into a 5 month trip around the US, Canada, the Carribean and Europe. Thanks!
Comment by James on January 27, 2015 at 7:39 am
That’s awesome, James! I’m glad to know that we had something to do with your decision to make it happen. If you ever pass through Seattle we’ll buy you a beer in exchange for some stories.
Comment by Brad on January 27, 2015 at 5:45 pm
Hello
we currently on a worldtrip for over one year now. I totaly agree, we spent roughly about 20 dollars a day for two persons (more in China), excluding diesel. So – it`s ceaper than to stay at home for us too.
good travells
Astrid
http://www.rightbeyondthehorizon.com
Comment by Astrid, Sven und Loki on January 29, 2015 at 9:10 am
Excellent summary and great advice on learning to live less expensively.
Comment by Joan on January 29, 2015 at 5:57 pm
@thegoblinchief – Since you mention early retirement blogs, you may want to check-out Monty Campbell’s blog about achieving financial freedom: http://www.montycampbell.com.
Comment by Bob on January 30, 2015 at 6:48 am
Guys: I simply can’t believe my eyes when you list Colombia as a country more expensive than Sweeden and Costa Rica unless you threw in the expensive gear box repair in the average figure. Chile is right on top of the list and for a good reason: it’s an expensive country but I also found Costa Rica horribly expensive. The Costa Rica $58 daily expense surely didn’t include entry to some expensive parks they have.
Comment by Gustavo on February 15, 2015 at 8:59 am
You guys are rad, thank you for sharing this wealth of info. My wife have been on a similar program saving money for the past two years, purchased a ford truck and lance camper to live out of, and FINALLY, are leaving for a couple years (Maybe more who knows!) at the beginning of April, driving from San Diego, CA through all of central and South America and beyond maybe. Thanks for the inspiration!
Comment by Garrett on February 20, 2015 at 7:17 pm
As others have said … You and your trip inspired me to start planning seriously for travel. We own a 99 vw eurovan. Trying to convince my partner to go further than just Mexico. Any advice for those of us with reluctant partners?
Comment by Kim on February 21, 2015 at 7:08 am
I guess that depends, Kim. Why is your partner reluctant to go beyond Mexico? Is it because of a perceived safety risk, or because he/she doesn’t want to commit to the lifestyle, or something else?
Comment by Brad on February 22, 2015 at 12:01 am
Thanks for replying Brad! Wow! I can’t believe I’m corresponding with THE actual Brad! I followed your blog for quite a while now. Anyway, I think she’s concerned about quitting her job (we’re a bit older – 51 and 47) and I think it’s hard for her to believe we can afford it, which we totally can. I also think she’s concerned about health care and insurance for the van. She’s a nurse and relies on staying health (good, strong back) for work. And, she loves her job mostly. I’m hoping in the next 2-5 years though, she’ll be ready :)
Comment by Kim on February 22, 2015 at 6:17 am
Kim – if I may interject, can your partner negotiate a sabbatical or unpaid leave of absence? I know quite a few folks who were uneasy about permanently leaving a job, especially at peak earnings, so they took a leave of absence instead of outright quitting and tried on their new lifestyle (whatever it happened to be, some were travelers like you’re looking, some retired in place).
At the end of the few months to a year, some want to go back, but many want to stay gone. So if the job is the sticking point, that could be a win/win because the job will be there if she still wants it.
Comment by Thegoblinchief on February 22, 2015 at 7:42 pm
No news letter received after this one send new updates thanks
Comment by Mr Rashid Mukadam on February 24, 2015 at 12:26 pm
Kim,
If the concern is with health insurance, worry not–the cost of healthcare (no need for insurance) outside of the USA is very low if not negligible, generally speaking. In fact, this is a big reason for some to retire abroad. We spent a grand total of $85 on health care over the course of two and a half years. I had a dermatological biopsy with lab testing, and Sheena had some lab work done, including 10 or so blood tests (long story, in the end there was nothing wrong with either of us, but good to stay on top of things). Remember, the cost of health care is realtive to the wealth of the population (to fix a broken arm in Nepal costs $8.)
Car insurance is another easy one. Many countries don’t require it, so you just don’t get it there. You find out if it’s required when you cross the border, and if it is then there’s always an office there to sell it to you. We rarely spent more than $10-$20/month for car insurance. Don’t try to get it through your USA company, or you’ll be out thousands and it probably won’t even be recognized.
The job thing is something you just have to take on faith. Your partner is lucky to be a nurse, as that’s probably one of the most marketable jobs in the world–she can get a job anywhere. We met several nurses taking time off to travel. We left with the blind confidence that we’d be fine when we got back, and in the end it was true. It took Sheena about two months to get the top job on her list, and it took me 3 weeks. In the end we came back to higher paying jobs than the ones we left. In fact, in Sheena’s interview, nobody ever mentioned the 3 year gap in her resume, and I’d say that having done long term travel will make you look braver and more confident than your peers. As a prospective employer, I would value someone with perseverance and the confidence to make a big change.
I hope that helps. Not sure on this next recommendation, but when we passed through Portland I ran into the author of a book called “Get Her On Board,” which is about convincing your wife to leave the safety of home to move onto a sailboat. I’ve never read it myself, but it might be worth a read (http://amzn.to/1GoM5aD).
Good luck!
Brad
Comment by Brad on February 24, 2015 at 5:22 pm
hi you two … good to read your home safe and sound. Cute letter from your appreciating admiring momma ! Impressive work lining up your number’s !
Crossed paths with ‘the most amazing’ 91 Westy this week in Carmel. A traveler. I’ll pass on his contact info your way before long so you two party’s can be in touch. They’ve done beautiful work getting this one together.. I’ll get back to you .. Good life to you two up Seattle way ! Thanks for all the exciting informative journaling these years ! Be well !
Comment by canyon haverfield on February 27, 2015 at 5:54 am
[…] The Cost of Driving Around the World […]
Pingback by Drive Nacho Drive » Keeping Nacho Alive on March 2, 2015 at 6:04 pm
I love seeing the numbers, thanks a lot for posting. After having a 3 year hiatus, and joining us lemmings back in the work force, do you think you’ll be going after similar jobs you once had?
Comment by Anthony on March 31, 2015 at 4:29 am
Hi Brad & Sheena!
Your blog is just fantastic, a godsend for any wannabe overlander in the planning stages.
I was wondering if you could post a copy of your exact route on a Map? I have loved following you and would appreciate some inspiration for our overland trip next year.
Thanks!
M
Comment by Michelle on April 6, 2015 at 4:09 pm
Brad & Sheena-
I am really glad to see that you made it back. We met up in the top of Annapurna, Nepal.
You both are an inspiration to get out and experience the world.
The events on Annapurna last year and recent earthquake in Nepal, jogged my memory of stories of Nacho.
Excited for you both, congrats on amazing journey, and grateful for you spreading great information for fellow travelers.
Lance
Comment by Lance on April 28, 2015 at 7:49 am
Congrats Brad & Sheena. It is a blessing to travel around the world & experience this amazing planet Earth. Hope that I would be able to do the same.
Comment by Bhaskar Reddy on May 16, 2015 at 10:32 am
[…] Drive Nacho Drive’s Cost of Driving Around the World […]
Pingback by cashing in & checking out (not the definitive how-to) | Here Today Vanagon Tomorrow on June 13, 2015 at 7:23 pm
i’m a bit late to the party… enjoyed reading your blog, fun info!
My wife and I do pretty much what you’ve described. In our case, a two income family, following the Tiny House movement for some time, we chose to move into an RV once the nest was empty (left the farm and land behind). This is a simple and sustainable lifestyle for us. And we are able to put ~30% of our gross into a retirement fun, then about 30% of our net into various real time savings. For us it is actually a fun game. We luv the simple life.
Cheers,
Thom
Comment by Thom on October 13, 2015 at 1:32 am
If you don’t mind me asking, I am very curious as it is the most extensively modified Westfalia I have ever seen; How much was total cost of Nacho including original build before you set off?
Comment by Jon on February 15, 2016 at 2:55 am
Thank you for everything! I enjoyed following your journey immensely. You likewise inspired me. Not sure how, where and for how long, but my mind has been in gear even before I stumbled upon your blog. I’m 62 and married and am working on a variation to your theme to include kids, grandkids, and even my wife who won’t do it all of the way except at different times and places. It was an honor to buy you a beer when you were in Asia… Hope it tasted good…
Comment by Tom on September 29, 2016 at 7:55 pm
You having a website about your travel is so helpful you cant even imagine. I’ve decided to take a similar trip and will be visiting your site quite a bit I’m sure, Thank you again.
Comment by Dan Coffey on October 4, 2016 at 2:20 am
Hello! Thank you for all the detailed information. I just picked up both your books on amazon! I had one question if you have the time to answer, could you possibly list just the shipping costs for Nacho? (even just from Argentina to Malaysia) That would really help with our future plans and see if my brain is on the right track.
Thank you!
Comment by Flounder on November 17, 2017 at 11:53 am
[…] Brian is a fantastic writer, and he also kept a close eye on their spending. The average monthly spend was (wait for it….) about $39k per year. […]
Pingback by Is travel more expensive than staying at home? - Planting Our Pennies on September 4, 2018 at 11:02 am
Hi,
found your blog today. What a great adventure! My question is, what kind of health insurance did you get? More details please about that? Thanks
Comment by Alex on January 11, 2019 at 8:27 pm
Hi Guys! Do you recall how many miles you covered in those 900+ days? I am factoring in depreciating our van into our yearly budget because if we were to do van life for quite some time, at some point I’d have to replace it. My depreciation cost depends on how many miles we drive it per year. Many thanks for this great resource and detail!
Comment by Bryce on February 26, 2021 at 3:25 am