so we've been traveling southeast asia for about seven months now and one of the
questions that we always get asked is how much it actually costs for us to travel full-time
so in this video we're going to expose our entire monthly budget for full-time travel so in the
past seven months we've traveled to so many great places uh in indonesia and thailand we're actually
heading to vietnam in two days uh for a month long trip and when we left australia we never
really would have guessed that we would have been able to go to so many great places in such a short
amount of time when we left australia we didn't have a whole lot of money but we knew if we stuck
to a budget we'd be able to travel for a lot longer so we are digital nomads and we do make
an online income but we don't really rely on that because it's not exactly steady so because of that
when we started traveling we decided to travel to more cheaper countries to start off with so
bali was more of an affordable destination for us to get started on our travels yeah bali is a very
cheap destination to travel if you want it to be you can actually spend a lot of money in bali
if you don't really know where to stay or what places to go how to get cheap accommodation
and that sort of thing yeah we definitely made some mistakes when we first got there
it did take a bit of time for us to sort of work out how to stay on budget one of the biggest
things for us was figuring out cheap places to eat um how to get cheaper accommodation and
things like that so how much do we actually spend while traveling full time to give you a better
idea we're going to break it down into categories accommodation food travel insurance health and
phone or internet so probably the most important expense but actually believe it or not it's not
our most expensive one is accommodation because we are in a really cheap part of the world
in southeast asia and maybe covert has a little bit to do with it accommodation's actually really
cheap here it really depends on how fussy you are you definitely get what you pay for but we
found that some of the places we've stayed in have been nicer than anywhere we've ever really lived
yeah and much bigger too so as a general rule and i'm speaking in australian dollars here
we tend to go for anything around 30 or less per night for accommodation so that works out to be
about 900 australian dollars per month and that gets us more than enough if you're someone who
can't go without certain luxuries maybe that wouldn't be ideal for you and it's definitely
hit and miss we stayed in a couple of places that weren't really doable for us and we did check out
the next day but in general i'd say most of the time we can find something pretty good for that
budget yeah for sure like currently the place that we're in at the moment has a bath that has a gym
big bed lots of space in here enough like there's a couch here for us to film on um there's a pool
it's got everything you need like i'm super happy here so this sort of is like the higher end nice
ones that we've found but you can definitely find places that have everything that you need like
this yeah that's a real bonus having like a pool and a gym some of them don't but often they do so
we find that it has everything we need and there's always good wi-fi yeah for sure and really good
service the people that work here are really good our second expense and another important one is
food yeah the best one it probably doesn't always go to plan we generally try to budget for the same
amount which is about 30 australian dollars a day for food which doesn't sound like a lot
but in southeast asia you'd be surprised what you can get for that amount yeah as long as you stick
to eating local food pretty much wherever you go seems to be really easy to hit that budget
yeah it can vary a little bit but in general um one person should be able to eat for five dollars
a meal and eat pretty well too yeah yeah with a drink and food really nice meal yeah we might
spend a bit more on dinner um most days than we do for say breakfast and lunch and that's because
breakfast we can get like a mango sticky rice or a smoothie or something for like a couple of
dollars which gives us a bit more to spend for lunch and dinner yeah we also tend to sometimes
go for hotels that give us a free breakfast which you will pay a little bit extra for but it works
out to be really cheap and it just makes traveling so much easier when you have breakfast at your
hotel you don't have to go and find another meal some people probably do intermittent fasting and
actually skip breakfast so yeah it's going to be even cheaper yeah so yeah thirty dollars
a day for food uh more than enough like just last night we went out and we got a meal each
and a couple of drinks each and the total bill was like 12 australian that doesn't take into account
like if you're going to be drinking a lot of alcohol or going out you probably have to add that
to your budget if that's something you want to do yeah we have the odd beer here and there like as
if you're drinking like a local again local drinks spirits are quite expensive here but if you're
drinking yeah a local beer it's just as affordable as getting a soft drink so our next expense
is insurance and this is just something that we factor in every month pretty much because right at
the start of our trip we had to use our insurance when we both got dengue fever if you've watched
any of our videos or our content you would know that we use safety wing the reason we use safety
wing is they're pretty reasonably priced it works out to be about 120 per month for the two of us
that covers us for everything from delayed flights service interruptions getting sick going to
hospital accidents it even covers you for covert which a lot of the companies don't do anymore and
it's really straightforward to use actually you just renew it every month and then it starts again
it's almost like a netflix subscription because we've had to use them already and they did pay us
out straight away we find them to be really good yeah right so our next expense um obviously we're
digital nomads so we move around a lot and so that would be travel so that really includes things
like flights uh buses boats we just took a couple of boats um to koh samui and copenhagen they're
reasonably cheap like you can get buses pretty much anywhere for under 10 dollars in southeast
asia boat a little bit more expensive but there's always a cheaper option like if you want to get a
speed boat that's going to cost you more but if you get a ferry or a slower boat that's going to
be a cheaper option for you our budget for that is roughly 150 a week or 600 a month that gets us
enough i mean we don't move around that much we probably stay in the one place for
at least four or five days and also included in that would be visa costs which we haven't found
to be too expensive um there's a lot of places you can travel with an australian and canadian
passport we actually don't need a visa to go to like thailand but yeah 150 a week or 600 a month
that includes flights buses taxis everything like that that's more than enough for us uh so
another main expense for us is phones or i guess internet data when you're traveling although you
can use wi-fi in most places you definitely need data especially when you get into a new country
and that's because pretty much you just need to know how to get around you need to use google maps
whatever transport service you're using in the country like uber or grab google translate as
well is really handy to use and yeah we find that no matter where we are we always like to have
data at least a little bit if you watch one of our previous videos we recently just discovered e sims
and we use all of five for esims it costs about 74 a month for the two of us and that gets us eight
gig of data each which is more than enough because we do most of our work from either a hotel room
or we go to other places like restaurants or cafes co-working places to do work so
we're really not using our phone data for that much but it's just enough for us to always
make sure that our phones do have diet on them which brings us to today's sponsor
of this video which is surfshark manny do you know what a vpn is
a virtual private network yes
a vpn or a virtual private network basically keeps you safe by covering up everything that
you do online it's kind of like wearing a mask while you're using the internet so when your
phone or your laptop connects to the internet all of your information is encrypted so why
is that important to us like we said we use a lot of public wi-fi like at restaurants at cafes bars
that type of thing and it helps just keep all your personal information safe which is super important
especially when you're traveling don't want anyone seeing what you're up to on your computer
especially if you have like online banking or anything like that on it super important to keep
that private yeah that's probably honestly the biggest one yeah like we signed on to our online
banking from airports cafes like hotels like here we've actually had an issue with getting our bank
accounts hacked before so this is a huge one for us yeah just gives you that extra peace of
mind just knowing you're not gonna log on to your banking one day and find all your money gone aside
from just offering additional security surfshark's also great if you're overseas and you want
to access your netflix subscription um usually it'll register to whatever country that you're in
but a vpn allows you to access netflix from any country so you're allowed to set it to us you
can access us netflix or if you want to go back to your home country and use that netflix you're able
to do that as well yeah i think do you remember when we first came to bali and i think we were
halfway through season four ozark and we realized we couldn't watch it in indonesia yeah yeah yeah
so yeah luckily we were able to use a vpn and log on and pretend like we were still in australia
yes and keep binge watching it yeah so if you sign up to surf shark today using our code lloyd and
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risk-free because they do a 30-day money-back guarantee so the last expense of ours which we
tend to prioritize above almost everything else is our health it's a pretty broad expense a lot
of things go into this but to give you an idea what we mean by health is things like gym access
mandy does a lot of yoga actually we both do from time to time things like maybe vitamins um shampoo
massages just necessities like toothpaste and things like that as well we prefer to prioritize
these things over certain other things like maybe going out or the nicer hotel we'd rather be able
to take care of ourselves in that way i guess yeah we like to make sure that we have enough
money in our budget to take care of our health because we do a lot of work while
we're on the road like it may seem like we're just traveling around uh having fun all the time
but a lot of our time is actually working and if we're not sleeping well or not feeling good
we don't really get much done we're not very productive and yeah really really sacrifices
our work when we're not feeling healthy yeah so we tend to prioritize health above
just about everything else and our budget for that for the month is about 90 dollars a week so 360
per month we do try to stay in hotels as well that have gym access which just makes it a lot easier
like the place that we're currently at but um we found it quite difficult to find that in bali
but in thailand it's been very easy we'll see what vietnam and the other countries are like
but in our price range in bali we found it quite difficult to find somewhere with a gym
so we were also paying that expense on top of our living expenses but here has been a lot easier
yeah so if we do stay somewhere with a gym that's obviously a bonus and we don't have to spend
really as much money for health that week i do recommend it if you're wanting to do this nomad
life for me i found that being like sort of a grounding thing like knowing that there is a
gym wherever we're staying and really the only routine i've been able to get myself in because
every day sort of so different with us moving around so much having the gym just seems to be
like a good the only solid thing that we really have for every day yeah and if you've ever been
to thailand and have a traditional thai massage i'd definitely yeah if you haven't had one i'd
recommend getting one because it's almost like doing yoga and the gym and getting a massage
all in one yeah like we just got one today and it feels amazing yeah we're hooked so when you
add all those expenses up uh it comes to just under 3 000 australian per month that's sort of
the cheapest budget we can do while still being relatively comfortable yeah so we are minimalists
and in pursuing this digital nomad traveler's life we've learned to sort of go without a lot of
luxuries and little things that we used to have in our previous stagnant life and that
sort of just helped us stay on budget we've just really prioritized traveling and keeping
this lifestyle going so it's sort of been like a learning experience of how to go without certain
luxuries your money can actually go a lot further than what you'd expect if you have
a budget we just find that having a budget keeps us comfortable and happy and we only spend as much
as we need to spend each month if travel is your big goal or what you're aspiring to do in life
it might be a good idea to sort of take a step back and sort of pick apart your budget
currently and see maybe where you can trim off some things or be a little bit more minimalist
and maybe see if there's some places that you're spending more than necessary
because you might find that if you didn't spend money on those things you might actually be able
to afford to travel we really hope you guys have found this video helpful don't forget
to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel as we are constantly uploading helpful
and entertaining travel videos for you and we will see you guys in the next video bye
you