While this month was significantly less expensive than last, it was more expensive than I would have preferred. Mostly because of traveling in the UK which is just stupidly expensive.

This summary covers nomad living expenses for 1-30 April 2018.

Location(s) Visited This Month

  • Thame, UK (h)
  • Milton Keynes, UK
  • Cambridge, UK
  • Hamburg, Germany
  • Hannover, Germany (h)

I moved a few times this month while getting between house sits, but I only had 6 days where I wasn’t sitting, so that was good.

Transportation – $139.13

  • Considering how much I moved this month, this is actually pretty reasonable. Mostly because most of the moving I did in the UK was via public bus vs train.  If I’d done the train for my UK trips it would easily have been another $150.

Lodging – $363.95

  • Most of my month was spent house sitting. I had 6 nights where I stayed in hotels or hostels.  I did get a shared room in the hostel but only because I’ve been in private spaces for about a month so I can share for a few days and it’s one of those places with privacy curtains and relatively small rooms.  The 3 nights in a hotel in the UK account for about $250 worth of this expense.
  • Breakdown *
    • Hostel Dorm Room – 3 nights (Pyjama Park Schanzenviertel)
    • Hotel – 3 nights (Holiday Inn, Milton Keynes and The Orlando, Cambridge)
    • House Sitting – 24 nights

Food & Entertainment – $297.53

  • While I ate in most of the time during my house sit, the 6 days of travel in between meant a lot of eating out which was killer.

Miscellaneous – $211.07

  • This is much higher than normal but I did a good chunk of food shopping at markets in the UK which required cash, and the restaurants for my 3 days in Hamburg were cash only.  This also covered the buses around the UK.  Traveling in cash-centric areas always throws this off.

Monthly Total:  $1011.68
Daily Average: $33.72

Average monthly spend: $1190.27 ($190.27)**
Average daily spend: $39.68

* When I published my summary in 2015 I had more than one person accuse me of always Couch Surfing or always staying in 30+ person dorms in order to keep my costs low. So this year I’m tracking my lodging type as an extra data point.

** My average monthly spending target is $1k/mo. This number is the average for the months I’ve been working remotely since January 2018.  The amount in parentheses is the amount I’m over or under my goal.

At reader request, I’m adding a link to a google doc with all of the monthly data at a glance: