So…how much did we spend?
This is the NUMBER ONE question we get asked about our trip! I’m actually really excited to share because I meant to do a six month check-in on our spending vs what we planned, but definitely didn’t prioritise it over the amazing beaches in Western Australia, and the six month point quickly slipped by!
The last blog post ended with us in Sydney after finishing up our Tasmania tour. We arrived back in Sydney on the 13th of March, completing our circumnavigation of Australia (click here for a zoomable, scrollable map of our travels). We still had three months left of travels, but given that we spent them on two weeks in Sydney, two weeks in New Zealand, a month in Vietnam, and a week in Brisbane – I think this is an appropriate place to stop and calculate our normalised “Big Lap” spending to share with everyone and document for our future selves.
When we left Sydney on 23 June 2018, I had already been meticulously tracking our finances for two years prior. I had some good data on our spending habits, organised into categories like Groceries, Petrol, Household, Fun Stuff, etc; and Nick and I were both accustomed to the timely entering of transactions into the app we use (called YNAB – “You Need A Budget”). We also had the routine of sitting down together once a month and reviewing our finances and spending. Continuing these habits on the road was something we both wanted to prioritise.
Before we left, we re-organised YNAB into the categories we thought would be most appropriate for the trip. For example, we no longer needed to pay rent, but we would have to pay camping fees. We also went through YNAB and used our historical data to try to estimate what we’d spend – we knew we’d be spending a lot more on petrol than when we lived in the city and only did weekend trips, but planned to spend less on eating at restaurants. Here’s what we came up with, and how we did! (Spoiler alert: we spent more than we thought we would, but it was soooo worth it)
Monthly Estimates from June 2018
What follows is what we thought we’d spend – the estimates we set just before leaving on the trip.
Road Necessities Estimate: $3,855 per month
CAMPING ?️ $500 – trying to stay low-cost or free camp as much as possible
HOTELS ?? $250 – figuring two nights per month
GROCERIES ? $650 – same as our Sydney spending
BEER & WINE ? $225 – same as our Sydney spending
HOUSEHOLD ? $400 – upgrades to the tent, shipments home, firewood, etc
PETROL ⛽ $1,300 – based on the usage from our previous two month trip
JEEP PARTS ⚙️ $250 – replacing parts on the road, like wheel bearings etc
JEEP MAINTENANCE ? $150 – oil changes, tyre rotations etc
PARKING & TOLLS ?️ $50 – sort of a “buffer” for overspending in other categories as we knew we wouldn’t be paying for parking in the outback!
MEDICAL ? $80 – medication and any doctor’s visits we’d need on the road
Other Life Stuff Estimate: $778 per month
STORAGE UNIT ? $325 – to store all our stuff while we were away
SUBSCRIPTIONS ? $105 – Netflix, NYTimes, Dropbox etc
MOBILE PHONES ? $130 – definitely will need that sweet sweet data
INSURANCE & REGO ? $54 – this amount set aside each month for CTP, Comprehensive, Registration, and Roadside assistance
Fun Stuff Estimate: $1,110 per month
RESTAURANTS & TAKEAWAYS ? $500 – surely we won’t eat out very much
TOURISM & FUN ? $300 – things like organised tours, national park fees etc
COFFEES ☕ $60 – stopping at a local cafe or bakery is an Aussie joy
GIFTS ? $50 – our moms still have birthdays
CLOTHES & OTHER ?️ $200 – all other discretionary items
TOTAL ESTIMATE/”BUDGET”: $5,743 per month
Get Ready…Our Actual Spending Per Month
Note…this spending is an average of our spending between July 1 2018 and April 30 2019, even though our trip took place from June 23 2018 through to June 17 2019. I didn’t include May in the averages because we spent most of it in Vietnam, and I didn’t include June 2018 or June 2019 in the averages because they were partial months.
Necessities Spending: $4,335 per month; 12% over plan
CAMPING ?️ $353
HOTELS ?? $352
GROCERIES ? $752
BEER & WINE ? $290
HOUSEHOLD ? $431
PETROL ⛽ $1,004
JEEP PARTS ⚙️ $568 (includes new mud tyres and some other upgrades we didn’t plan for)
JEEP MAINTENANCE ? $520 (we should have planned better – we knew we’d need our 150k servicing on the road, and a post-trip extensive workup)
PARKING & TOLLS ?️ $37
MEDICAL ? $27
Other Life Stuff Spending: $830 per month; 7% over plan
STORAGE UNIT ? $325
SUBSCRIPTIONS ? $108
MOBILE PHONES ? $154
INSURANCE & REGO ? $60
Fun Stuff Spending: $2,375 per month; DOUBLE what we planned!!?
RESTAURANTS & TAKEAWAYS ? $934
TOURISM & FUN ? $949
COFFEES ☕ $126
GIFTS ? $159
CLOTHES & OTHER ?️ $207
TOTAL SPENDING: $7,540 per month; 31% over our estimate
Unexpected Stuff
As much as I love (looooove) planning, we knew there wasn’t even a slim chance that everything on the road would go to plan, so we set aside $10k as a slush fund to cover us if (when) anything unexpected cropped up. We ended up using $4,112 for major Jeep repairs, $1,200 for replacing Nick’s iPhone when it drowned in a creek, and $442 for replacing my iPhone screen when I dropped it out of the tent. The rest went to (partially) cover our hedonistic overspending on Fun Stuff ?♀️
Not Included In Monthly Averages…
We took out life insurance policies before heading out ($1,500), not to be morbid but if one of us got eaten by a croc or fell off a cliff it’d be nice if the other one didn’t have to go back to work for a while, or if something happened to both of us(!) our families would be able to throw the world’s most amazing funeral party (great news though, we survived!).
We spent money on plane tickets and hotels to go overseas three times (Bali, New Zealand, and Vietnam), and didn’t include those expenditures because they weren’t really part of “The Lap”. However the money we spent while overseas on dining out, fun stuff, and petrol is included in the totals, figuring we would have spent that money in Australia had we been here.
Other Considerations
Something rather significant to consider if you’re planning one of these trips is not only what you’ll spend, but also what you’ll miss out on saving. Nick and I had many long, deliberate discussions about what this trip would do to our financial plan. Not only would we be drawing down on our savings, but we also wouldn’t be earning any income to add to them, if that makes sense. In other words, you shouldn’t only think about what you’ll be spending – but also about what you’ll be sacrificing (in our case, a year of double income – and probably extending our estimated date of retirement by 2 years).
Wow, You Spent A Lot
OMG, we know. We thought about not sharing this much information, because we felt a little shameful. The trip could certainly have been done cheaper, by cutting down on restaurants and alcohol, doing more free fun stuff instead of paying entry fees, and buying cheaper groceries. The Jeep was also an expensive vehicle choice – mechanics outside of the state capital cities were unfamiliar with Jeeps, parts are expensive, and she’s a hog on petrol. Still – even if you assume we could have cut vehicle-related costs in half, it wouldn’t have been enough to justify the costs associated with changing our vehicle and gear to something different. We also discussed cutting back our “fun” spending many times – and always agreed that we were on the trip of a lifetime, so we’d rather not ?
We figure, some people buy a house and have kids when they’re around our age – we went on a Big Lap instead!
Was It Worth It?
A thousand, million, billion times yes. The friends we made, the experiences we had, the closeness between us that only increased the more obstacles we tackled together – it’s impossible to put a price on these things. As Nick is so fond of saying – “I’d do it all over again, in a heartbeat”.
Wait, Is It Over??
Not yet!! We’ll still be blogging about the rest of our year off wandering including New Zealand, Jeep Jamboree, Vietnam, adventures on the Aussie sand islands (Moreton, Bribie, and Stradbroke), and of course once we’re back in Sydney, what it’s like to re-join the real world ?
