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 did not know that we were going to go through a global pandemic.
While 2020 was the year of the pandemic, 2021 has been the year of hope with the vaccine that has been saving many lives. I predict that 2022 will be the year of adjustment where we adjust to live with the reality of the virus and resume more normalcy (including adding much more international travel for us).
We started 2021 in Taiwan, a place that we’ve been calling home since the pandemic started. We left in May to visit family in California and catch up with them, before doing the same in France while making a stop in the South of the country to explore the beautiful Calanques as well as visiting friends in Switzerland for a small week getaway. Finally for the last part of 2021, we decided to come back to Taiwan which has more or less sheltered us from the virus since they have managed to keep it away from its borders in 2021… Let’s see how 2022 goes
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If you are new to these spending reports, you should know that in our first year of travel, we reported a spending of $28K USD, in our second year of travel, we reported a spending of 30K USD and in our third year of travel, we reported a spending of $27K USD. All of these 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 2021?
In 2021 we went to Taiwan, California, France and Switzerland. 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) |
|---|---|---|
| Taipei | Taiwan (Jan-Deb) – 47 days | $3,984 | $3,770 |
| Kaohsiung | Taiwan (March) – 18 days | $1,074 | $1,071 |
| Xiaoliuqiu | Taiwan (March) – 18 days | $266 | $266 |
| Kenting | Taiwan (March) – 8 days | $690 | $686 |
| Taipei | Taiwan (Mar-May) – 66 days | $5,792 | $5,152 |
| Penghu Island | Taiwan (May) – 6 days | $797 | $797 |
| Mrs. NN’s Home – California | USA (May-Aug) – 101 days | $5742 | $4,171 |
| Mr. NN’s Home | France (Sept) – 13 days | $622 | $329 |
| Cabries | France (Sept-Oct) – 28 days | $2315 | $2231 |
| Mr. NN’s Home | France (Sept) – 35 days | $1783 | $394 |
| Lausanne | Switzerland (October) – 6 days | $361 | $334 |
| Kaohsiung | Taiwan (Nov-Dec) – 78 days | $4353 | $4,140 |
| 2021 One Time Expenses | $8,466 | $0 |
| Total – 365 days | $36,303 | $23,379 |
Our total spend was $36,303 (or $99.46 / day) and our living cost was $23,379 (or $64.05 / day).$36K is a 33% increase from last year but this is still about half of our spend 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 spend was $36,303 (or $99.46 / day) and our living cost was $23,379 (or $64.05 / day)
Mr. & Mrs. Nomad Numbers
2021 Spending
Where did our money go?
Let’s look at our spending per category to see where our money went in the table below:
| Category | Total | % of Grand Total | Monthly equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accommodation | $11,059 | 30.65% | $922 |
| Long term travel | $8,202 | 21.53% | $647 |
| – Travel Gear | $7,475 | 20.72% | $659 |
| – Visas | $173 | 0.48% | $14 |
| – Travel Insurance | $119 | 0.33% | $10 |
| Food | $6,129 | 16.99% | $511 |
| – Groceries | $3,783 | 10.49% | $315 |
| – Dining out | $1,716 | 4.76% | $143 |
| – Cafe, Coffee shops, Sweets & Snacks | $500 | 0.89% | $27 |
| – Food Delivery, Take out, Street food | $308 | 0.85% | $26 |
| Everyday expenses | 3,946 | 10.94% | $329 |
| – Gifts, Donations | $1,355 | 3.76% | $113 |
| – Self Improvement, Education | $769 | 2.13% | $64 |
| – Personal Care | $655 | 1.82% | $55 |
| – Fitness, Gym, Workout | $551 | 1.53% | $46 |
| – Data | $353 | 0.98% | $29 |
| – Living Expenses | $222 | 0.62% | $19 |
| – Home furnishing | $40 | 0.11% | $3 |
| Transportation | $2,781 | 7.71% | $232 |
| – Local Transportation | $1,641 | 4.55% | $137 |
| – Intercity Transportation | $686 | 1.90% | $57 |
| – International Transportation | $453 | 1.26% | $38 |
| Others | $1,902 | 5.27% | $159 |
| – Non-Living expenses | $,1102 | 3.05% | $92 |
| – Services | $800 | 2.22% | $67 |
| Health | $1,615 | 4.48% | $134 |
| – International Health Insurance | $867 | 2.38 | $72 |
| – Local Health Insurance | $508 | 1.39 | $42 |
| – Health Care | $238 | 0.65 | $20 |
| Fun | $518 | 1.44% | $45 |
| – Entertainment (Book, Games, Hobbies) | $379 | 1.04% | $32 |
| – Recreation, Museums, Sightseeing, Tours | $131 | 0.36% | $11 |
| – Alcohol, Bars, Nightlife | $7 | 0.02% | $1 |
| Business | $415 | 1.15% | $1 |
Major highlights:
- Our top 3 spending categories were housing (30.65%), Long term travel (21.53%) and then food (16.99%).
- Our International transportation spending (mostly international flights) was only $453 due to the pandemic but also because we love using travel rewards to get free flights and you should as well! 🙂
- Our International Health Insurance spending was $867 higher than last year as we had to purchase expat insurance for the 4 months we spent in California. For the rest of the year, since we became Taiwanese residents we are now utilizing Taiwan’s very affordable healthcare at about $30 USD / month and per person.
- We spent $7,475 in travel gear, which is way much more than we usually spend. A big chunk of that went to MrNN getting a new M1 Mac Book Pro laptop (after accidentally killing his still pretty well working Mac Book Pro 2017) and a few other gadgets that have helped us reduce clutter or get us more productive, like the reMarkable II that we love and use every single day.
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 feel 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 news 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.
We’ve been excited to be able to see our respective families in 2021 and resume our internal travel (partially) by exploring new places in Europe.
And not too surprisingly, by embracing values that sound right to us like minimalism and slow travel, it turns out that we keep can our cost of living around $25K / year. This gives us a nice buffer when we need to splurge a bit like we did in 2021.
What about you? How much did you end up spending in 2021? 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 Lunar New Year & Stay safe in whatever journey you decide to embark on!
Mr. & Mrs. Nomad Numbers
2 Comments
Steven · February 13, 2022 at 2:21 pm
When you went to CA, did you just get ACA insurance? The expat insurances with US coverage I’ve seen allow around 3 trips for 21 days to the US.
Mrs. Nomad Numbers · February 13, 2022 at 2:29 pm
We used IMG Global as Taiwanese resident and where able to coverage for many months. ACA would actually been much more expensive for us with way less coverage. We used this plan: https://www.imglobal.com/travel-medical-insurance/patriot-america-plus. Let me know if you have further questions. You might not be able to enroll to this place is you are a US resident though… Or the cost would be significantly higher than other resident of the world.