When we decided to sell everything to travel the world in 2018, we knew that this new lifestyle was going to be fun, exciting, and also full of unpredictable surprises.
We could not predict though that 2020 was going to be hit by a global pandemic where most people were stuck home and went through multiple rounds of lockdowns. For us though, we managed to get very lucky by picking Taiwan as our place to shelter from the pandemic and have not suffered the effect of the pandemic here (so far!).
Actually, we had a wonderful year in Taiwan where we still managed to cook some amazing meals at home + eat out at restaurants to enjoy the local food scene, rent scooters or hop on buses to take regular getaway trips, go on long hikes to spend more time in nature, attend local shows/festivals to immerse ourselves in the culture and everything else you could imagine in a world where we can roam freely.
As we closed out 2020 and 30 months of nomadic travel, I’m digging into our finances (Nomad Numbers’ style) to see how we did in 2020. Breaking news: we are pretty happy about the results so let’s dig into our 2020 Year-End Spending Report!
If you are new to these spending reports, you should know that in our first year of travel, we reported a spend of $28K USD and in our second year of travel, we reported a spend of 30K USD. Both numbers were about half of the cost we spent while living in San Francisco, California thanks to the power of geo-arbitrage coupled with slow travel.
Where have we been in 2020?
In 2020 we have been staying exclusively in Asia (Malaysia, Vietnam, Bali, and Taiwan). Prior to the global pandemic, our plan was to go to Europe in the summer but we canceled that obviously.
The map below shows all the countries and cities we traveled to:
The table below provides details about how long we spent in each location along with our spending for the two of us.
| Location | Total cost (for 2) | Living cost only (for 2) |
|---|---|---|
| George Town | Malaysia (January) – 14 days | $790 | $700 |
| Cameron Highlands | Malaysia (January) – 8 days | $362 | $362 |
| Kuala Lumpur | Malaysia (January) – 9 days | $576 | $576 |
| Da Nang | Vietnam (February) – 29 days | $1,772 | $1,513 |
| Ubud | Bali/Indonesia (March) – 21 days | $1,628 | $1,067 |
| Taipei | Taiwan (March, April, May) – 78 days | $5,057 | $4,947 |
| Hualien | Taiwan (June) – 10 days | $493 | $493 |
| Kaohsiung | Taiwan (June) – 15 days | $910 | $910 |
| Taichung | Taiwan (June) – 8 days | $380 | $380 |
| Taipei | Taiwan (July, August, September) – 91 days | $6,814 | $6,465 |
| Tainan | Taiwan (October) – 12 days | $693 | $654 |
| Kenting | Taiwan (October) – 5 days | $266 | $263 |
| Green Island | Taiwan (October) – 5 days | $698 | $695 |
| Hualien | Taiwan (October) – 11 days | $556+$267 $823 | $556+$267 $823 |
| Taipei | Taiwan (Nov, Dec) – 61 days | $4,267 | $4,112 |
| 2020 One Time Expenses | $1,828 | $0 |
| Total – 365 days | $27,337 | $23,980 |
Our total spending was $27,337 (or $74.89 / day) and our living cost was $23,980 (or $65.69 / day). This is about half of our spending when we were back in our static life in San Francisco. (Note: for reference about our spending in California, pre-nomadic life, check out our 2018 Year-End spending report).
If you are interested to get more details on the budget related to each place we’ve visited, please take a look at both our destination reports & weekend guides.
Our total spending was $27,337 (or $74.89 / day) and our living cost was $23,980 (or $65.69 / day)
Mr. & Mrs. Nomad Numbers
2020 Spending
What did we do?
Check out our detailed 2020 Year-End Review for a monthly review of all the places we visited, the Airbnb we stayed at, and everything else you probably want to know about the fun part of 2020!
Where did our money go?
Let’s look at our spending per category to look into where our money went in the table below:
| Category | Total | % of total | Monthly equivalent |
| Accommodation | $12,062 | 44.11 | $1,002 |
| Food | $6,182 | 22.62 | $514 |
| – Groceries | $2,826 | 10.34 | $235 |
| – Dining out | $2,466 | 9.02 | $205 |
| – Cafe, Coffee shops, Sweets & Snacks | $500 | 1.83 | $42 |
| – Food Delivery, Take out, Street food | $390 | 1.43 | $32 |
| – Alcohol, Bar, Nightlight | $9 | 0.03 | $1 |
| Transportation | $2,325 | 8.44 | $191 |
| – Local Transportation | $1,231 | 4.50 | $102 |
| – International Transportation | $563 | 2.00 | $46 |
| – Intercity Transportation | $531 | 1.94 | $43 |
| Entertainment, Games, Hobbies | $1,059 | 3.87 | $88 |
| Self Improvement, Education | $1,047 | 3.83 | $87 |
| Non-Living Expenses | $700 | 2.56 | $58 |
| Visas | $676 | 2.47 | $56 |
| Taxes | $625 | 2.29 | $52 |
| Travel Gear | $548 | 2.00 | $46 |
| Gifts, Donation, Charitable giving | $523 | 1.91 | $43 |
| Cancelation | $382 | 1.40 | $32 |
| Health | $362 | 1.32 | $30 |
| – Health Care | $340 | 1.24 | $28 |
| – International Health Insurance | $22 | 0.08 | $2 |
| Data | $316 | 1.16 | $26 |
| Living Expenses | $295 | 1.08 | $24 |
| Scam | $181 | 0.66 | $15 |
| Personal Care | $35.62 | 0.13 | $3 |
| Business | $15.34 | 0.06 | $1 |
Major highlights:
Our top 3 spending categories represent 76% of our total spending!
Mr. & Mrs. Nomad Numbers
2020 Spending
- Our top 3 spending categories were housing (44.90%), food (22.62%), and then transportation (8.44%) representing 76% of our total spending. Do you find this surprising?
- Our International transportation spending (mostly international flights) was only $563 due to the pandemic but also because we love using travel rewards to get free flights.
- Our International Health Insurance spending was $22 as we prepaid a year of expat insurance in 2019 that we did not renew in 2020 as we became Taiwanese residents and can tap into Taiwan’s very affordable healthcare.
Other comments:
- We spent $1K USD on Chinese classes as we are making Taiwan our temporary base for the time being. It’s great to learn a new language and while Mrs. NN is progressing nicely, I’m still making baby steps!
- We got scammed for $181 USD in Vietnam when landing at the Da Nang international airport because Mrs. NN did not put her middle name in the visa form we filled out prior to boarding. The immigration officer told him that we had to either turn back (go home) or pay that fee to get the visa renewed on site. This was definitely a scam as it cost about 25 USD to get a visa in Vietnam but he was asking us to deal with his “friend” and asked us for $181 to get a new visa. We did not have much of a choice once at the airport and did not want to get into trouble with the immigration so we went with it.
- We spent $382 USD in cancelations thanks to Airbnb and airline companies’ very generous cancellation policies because we had prepaid thousands ($7,425 to be exact) of dollars in bookings before the pandemic.
What did we exclude from our budget and why?
The only expenses we aren’t tracking are the one related to our income and investments as we do not report our income as part of these reports. Are we missing an important category though? Please let us know by leaving your feedback in the comments section below.
Our bottom line
Since we started our nomadic lifestyle, we felt less stressed and are having a lot of fun roaming the planet, one city at a time.
This lifestyle gives us so much freedom that we are extremely grateful for. Freedom to spend our time on the things we care about like reading some life-changing books, learning new skills, starting projects we are excited about like our free travel tool, our cost of living expenses series, or sharing drone footage on our Youtube channel. Freedom to focus on our health, so we will live happily as long as we possibly can. Unfortunately, the pandemic did not give us the option to see our family in 2020 but we are hopeful that we can see them in 2021!
And not too surprisingly, by embracing values that sound right to us like minimalism and slow travel, it turns out that we can become full-time travelers for about $27K a year.
Mr. & Mrs. Nomad Numbers
2020 Spending
2020 was an unprecedented year for most people. We were lucky that we got to have a wonderful year as we did not have to limit ourselves due to the pandemic. We are looking forward to a great 2021 and we will keep sharing on our blog.
What about you? How much did you end up spending through this pandemic? Were you able to spend less or did you end up spending more? Please feel free to share your numbers or your biggest surprises!
And since we are beginning a new year, we encourage you to take a few hours in your life to think about the life you want to design for yourself (check out our tips to get started on the life design process). This is at the core of what led us to our lifestyle and something that can be very powerful. By focusing on what you truly want in your life and delivering on your plan, it can take you less than 10 years to fulfill what might sound like a dream today. We hope that you will be able to live your ideal lifestyle, whatever that may be!
Happy New Year, Stay safe & Have your best life in 2021!
Mr. & Mrs. Nomad Numbers
){kind=link}
8 Comments
Dragon Guy · January 19, 2021 at 8:42 pm
Ok, you have me curious, what is the $181 for scam? .
If you exclude health insurance premiums, we spent just over $30K in 2020, with home, travel, and transportation our three largest expenses. This is roughly the same as what we paid in 2019. We own our home outright but still pay over $10K per year on costs including taxes, insurance, maintenance, and utilities.
Mandarin is a tough language to learn. Last year I used the Duolingo app to study it and this year I am using Mango, which I can get free from our public library. I am getting better at it and can pick up more things that are said between Dragon Gal and her parents. Good luck with your classes!
Mr. Nomad Numbers · January 20, 2021 at 3:05 am
We got scammed for $181 USD in Vietnam when landing at the Da Nang international airport because Mrs. NN did not put her middle name in the visa form we filled out prior to boarding. The immigration officer told him that we had to either turn back (go home) or pay that fee to get the visa renewed on site. This was definitely a scam as it cost about 25 USD to get a visa in Vietnam but he was asking us to deal with his “friend” and asked us for $181 to get a new visa. We did not have much of a choice once at the airport and did not want to get into trouble with the immigration so we went with it.
As for your expenses, you guys are doing quite well. We won’t be surprised if in the year to come 30K will become our sweet spot (though we could spend much more if we wanted). Does the 30K exclude your $10K in home expenditures? We are including our tax bill (which is actually mostly our CPA as we did not pay tax last year) but aren’t included our real estate expenses for the reason we explained in this post.
I’ve tried Duolingo which is probably great if you want to read and write. But since I want to practice my conversational skills, learning Mandarin using Pinyin and in a classroom setting has been much better for me. Still, a long way to go through to reach Mrs. MN’s level.
Dragon Guy · January 20, 2021 at 8:22 pm
Wow, thanks for the heads-up on how to be diligent when arriving in Vietnam. We’ve never experienced having to pay for bribes, but I suspect if it was relatively small like your number, then we would just pay it too.
The $30K includes the home cost. It does not include our tax bill. I think taxes are going to vary too much every year (ie, in 2020 I worked contract work so have self-employment taxes and we did Roth conversions to fill up a tax bracket) for me to include it on a year to year basis.
Amazing Lady · January 26, 2021 at 4:30 am
Um, WOW – I can’t believe you are traveling so cheaply!! We got scammed in Vietnam as well. Really great analysis – keep it up – I love the data details!!
Mr. Nomad Numbers · January 27, 2021 at 4:26 am
Thank you Amazing Lady! Comments like yours definitely keep us excited to share more spending reports like this one on our blog!
We booked $7,300+ in canceled travel in 2020, what was refunded surprised us — Nomad Numbers · January 31, 2021 at 11:33 am
[…] we would be able to recover this money.As we’ve been recently going through our finances to close our detailed spending for 2020, we were pleased to see that we were eventually refunded all of our canceled bookings and then some […]
2021 Year End Spend Report - big life, small spend — Nomad Numbers · February 7, 2022 at 6:15 am
[…] 2020 Spending Report […]
2023 Year End Spend Report — Nomad Numbers · January 9, 2024 at 4:08 am
[…] our spending reports:– 2019: Total spending: $30,709.19 (including living cost of: $23,318.00)– 2020: Total spending: $27,337 (including living cost of: $23,980)– 2021: Total spending: $36,303 […]