Budget, Packing and Places Update

Can you believe it, just the other day we were four months into our round-the-world adventure. Now all of a sudden we’re into month number eight. The biggest questions we still get asked are: how’s the money tracking? what’s been your favourite place so far? and when are you coming home? You can find out all about our budget, packing and places and more below.

Packing Update

As you know, we’re travelling with carry-on luggage only. Our packs weigh in at about nine kilograms each at the moment (thankfully, the limit is ten, not seven, like we originally thought.) I know you are all dying to know whether we’ve bought anything new since we’ve been travelling and the answer is YES.

If you’ll remember from the last update, we did purchase down jackets in South Africa to keep warm. But, we didn’t end up bringing them with us to Brazil, instead we donated them to a family in need.

Sadly for me, my Indosole slides finally fell apart – which I’m seriously PO’d about it. Especially after I’d spent so much time researching the most sustainable option, plus, they weren’t cheap! Which meant a shoe shopping expedition in Brazil.

Other than that, we each purchased a collapsible keepcup – something I was debating we’d need from the beginning. We found these awesome ethically made one’s from Menos 1 Lixo (1 Less Trash), so far, we’ve used them loads.

I’ve updated my packing list if you’re keen to check it out.

As you can imagine, the budget, packing, places are link together… thankfully we have pet sitting to help with longevity overall.

Budget Update

Emotional. That’s how I’d describe our budget for the last quarter. Serious highs, where we saved a load from doing our month-long house sit in South Africa. To serious lows, where we had to fork out an unexpected $4,000 for return flights to Barbados. Thankfully Brazil was a LOT cheaper than we had first thought. So while we’re a little over budget, we’re confident it’s not going to be a mood killer.

Our cheapest and most expensive accommodation so far were both in South Africa. The cheapest was a bargain at $33 AUD a night in Mossel Bay. We’d booked this through Airbnb, which turned out to be a private room in a very nice house on a golf course estate. The most expensive was $522 AUD a night (OUCH!!) at the Gondwana Game Reserve in South Africa. In saying that, it did include four safari drives and all inclusive food for two days, so we were pretty happy with this splurge.

We’ve been “over budget” 17 weeks out of 33 weeks. A big contributor to this was moving too quickly in the beginning, including a few ridiculous flight and ferry prices, and of course indulging with food and drinks. We always knew there would be ups and downs on the weekly budget depending on where we were and what we were doing, so it hasn’t been a big concern. However, our expensive flights to Barbados have set our weekly budget back from $1,400 down to $1,300. We’re hoping to close that gap a little with a month of pet sitting in Barbados.

Accomodation and Food & Drink remain our biggest expense, making up 28% and 31% respectively of our total spend so far, which hasn’t changed much since our last update. Our transport costs have jumped a little to 26.5% (up by 3.5%), largely due to flights.

With pet sitting comes the opportunity to eat in a lot more, and so we were pretty stoked to see the self catering increase by 4% to 20% of our overall Food & Drink expenditure. Plus eating out for lunch and dinner both came down a little.

Anything else we’d change? In hindsight we probably should have checked flight prices before accepting the house sit in Barbados. Also, we probably won’t ever make the mistake of accidently flying business class again. We’re slowly coming round to the idea that maybe our three night minimum should actually be four nights. It allows us to unwind once we arrive in a new place and not feel like we’re always packing/unpacking or rushing from place to place.

It’s pretty amazing to realise that travelling the world is actually costing us less than it would had we been living in Sydney. For example, our accomodation so far has worked out at $418AUD per week. Which is almost 45% less than our apartment in Sydney, and we don’t have to worry about bills for electricity, gas or the internet!

While our food bills and transport costs are perhaps a little higher than they would have been in Sydney (due to flying and eating out more), it’s not by much. Overall it’s definitely been cheaper to travel the world than live in Sydney, and we’ve been lucky enough to see and experience so many amazing things.

Whilst we’re not working while we’re away, I do sometimes write articles for online publications for money. It’s not a lot, infact, it barely covers the cost of me purchasing my reads on kindle… which in a circular fashion I really love… that I’m writing to be able to afford to read.

Here’s what I’ve been reading.

PS: If you have any advice for our budget, packing, places – feel free to get in touch!

Places Update

In the past eight months we’ve travelled to Greece and I walked from Hungary to Italy. Here we then ended up spending six weeks travelling the mainland, including Sicily and the Aeolian islands. From there we went to the Western Cape of South Africa and the North and East coast’s of Brazil. Our favourite places so far have been: Sifnos in Greece, Umbria in Italy, Plettenberg Bay in South Africa and Jericoacoara in Brazil.

That’s not to say we’re not enjoying Barbados, we’ve been here for two weeks already and we are loving it. We’re based on the west coast, where we’ll spend the a month exploring the island. From here, we haven’t decided where we’ll go next. We know we fly back into Panama City in January, other than that, it’s anyone’s guess where we’ll be!

Fingers crossed we can get the budget back on track for our upcoming travels and keep this good thing going! Stay tuned for more updates on our budget, packing, places over the next few months.

Until next time xo