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Destination Report: Porto – Part Two: Cost of Nomad Living
In this week’s blog post, we are taking a deep dive into our budget and how the two of us spent less than $2,400 USD during the month we spent there.
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Destination Report: Porto – Part One: What to do, eat, see (& avoid)
One of our favorite things about our nomadic lifestyle is that we can design it however we’d like based on our priorities. We can slow it down or speed it up, go to a food destination or a cultural city, spend time sightseeing or working on projects, meet up with friends or set out on our own, save money in Central America or splurge (within reason of course!) in the Caribbean. One of the biggest advantages to us is the ability to spend long periods of time with family and friends that live in different parts of the world. Since my family lives in France, I didn’t get a chance to see them very much during my 10 years in the US. Now we plan on spending 1-2 months every year with them and focus on great quality time versus the quick holiday catch up I was used to do. This is what brought us to Europe this summer!
Today we are fast forwarding a bit to our first slow travel destination of our 2nd year of long term travel: Portugal. (June was spent in France with family and was all over the place. Early July was spent with friends in beautiful Costa Brava Spain and we well talk about both at a later time). Given how popular Portugal is among expats, digital nomads and retirees, we were looking forward to see what the hype was all about! We decided to spend about 2 months in Portugal, spending our time between Porto and Lisbon. Porto was our first stop and we ended up with pretty mixed feeling about this city. Let’s see why by exploring Porto!
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2 Day Itinerary and Cost – Douro Valley, Portugal
You have to visit the Douro Valley if you are in Porto, I can’t believe we even hesitated because it is an amazing place. Not only does this valley have the perfect weather conditions to produce Port wine, the beautiful and dramatic landscape make it seem unreal. No surprises that this site has UNESCO World Heritage status in 2001 as you will be able to attest through the pictures and video we are sharing in this post.
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Year 1 Nomad Travel Spend Report – Traveling the world for half of the cost of staying home
When we decided to get married and sell everything to travel the world, we knew that this new lifestyle was going to be fun, exciting but also cheaper than staying at home. What we did not know was how much cheaper it was going to be to live a very high quality of life where we would enjoy the local food scene, cook amazing meals, take regular getaway trips, spend time in nature, attend local shows/festivals and everything else you get the freedom to do when you decide to travel the world slowly.
As we are closing our first year of nomadic travel, I am digging into our finances to answer this question and the results are pretty exciting. In a nutshell in the last 12 months, we slow traveled to 10 locations in 5 countries for about half the cost of living in San Francisco. But more than reducing our spending, geo-arbitrage let us rebalance our expenses towards activities that we enjoy the most, spending more time with our respective families, living a less stressful life and exploring new places in the world.
So let’s dig into our spending report for our first year of nomadic living!
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Quit Like a Millionaire, by Kristy Shen & Bryce Leung – A Book Review
If you understand money, life is incredibly easy. If you don’t understand money, like the vast majority of people, life is incredibly hard. Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung So inspiring! Some links to the products mentioned below are affiliate links, meaning that if you click and make a purchase, Nomad Read more…
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What our $3,700 California wedding looks like: a budget breakdown
It is the early morning exactly one year ago. I’m standing up front, surrounded by magnificent and giant redwood trees that have been living here for thousands of years. On my left side, I see close friends and family members. On my right side, our wedding officiant is reminding everyone to be present and absorb the energy of such a unique nature setting in this very special moment. Holding my hands and standing in front of me is the love of my life (Mrs. Nomad Numbers). She is wearing a stunning dress that is competing with the early sunlight that is illuminating the entire grove we are gathered in. As I look into her eyes, I can feel the love radiating around her. This was one of the highlights on the best day of my life that took place exactly one year ago.
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International phone plan options for travel – Google FI Review
As we embarked on long-term nomadic travel, we had to figure out a lot of logistics and choosing an international phone plan is a big one because we rely on it everyday. We ultimately decided on Google FI and will share with you our comprehensive review of the Google FI phone plan.
We will be going over the reason why we believe it is critical to have connectivity while traveling long term, why we chose Google FI has the phone plan we’ve been using since we started our journey, what are the alternatives and which option we recommend whether you want to travel the world long-term or simply stay in the US.
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Weekend Guide – Superbloom, California
As we came back to California to spend some quality time with family and friends, we decided to chase the rare superbloom which typically occurs once every 10 years or so. Due to a persistent drought in California, this year’s was particularly abundant which made for a unique and wonderful show we did not want to miss. In this post, we are sharing our itinerary as well as how much we spent! If you are in California and haven’t seen the superbloom, you still have a couple of weeks to catch up before it starts fading away!
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Detailed Guide + Cost of living in Aruba: Nomads in Paradise
Staying for a month in paradise on a Caribbean island costs tens of thousands of dollars right? We assumed it can only be affordable for 5 days or 10 days max unless you are a gazillionaire and it’s probably only worth it for a special occasion like a honeymoon. We never heard of any digital nomads or slow travelers going there, so it must not be practical. Well we have some good news for you, it is very doable and can be cheaper than staying at home! Are you ready to go explore Aruba?
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Cost of our travel to Mexico for 3.5 months
We recently wrapped up a 3.5 months (106 days to be exact) trip to Mexico where we slow traveled to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico City, Oaxaca City & San Miguel de Allende. We choose these places based on few factor which the main were 1) wifi quality (especially for Mrs. Nomad Numbers who was working remotely on that trip), 2) things to enjoy over a relatively long stay (4 weeks in average for us) and of course 3) safety.
In this spending report post we look at how much we spent in Mexico, project what our yearly cost of living in this country would have been and give a few tips to reduce this budget even further. Let’s dig into our Mexico spending report!
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