First year as nomads – cost sum up
It has been a year since we left Finland and started our life as digital nomads and location independent entrepreneurs. During the first nomad year we traveled in Europe first 157 days by our own car from Estonia to Greece, then 111 days with flights and using public transportation and again 98 days by car from Athens to France. The countries visited during the year were;
- Estonia (6 days)
- Latvia (2+7)
- Lithuania (3)
- Poland (10)
- Slovakia (11)
- Hungary (9)
- Romania (23)
- Moldova+Transnistria (8)
- Ukraine (12)
- Bulgaria (6)
- Macedonia (15)
- Kosovo (2)
- Albania (33)
- Greece (50 + 2)
- Cyprus (24)
- Finland (40)
- Portugal (35)
- Russia (5)
- Italy (11)
- San Marino (1)
- Austria (1)
- Czech Republic (20)
- Germany (3)
- France (27)
Quite a tour around Europe, in 24 different countries, out of which 8 we visited for the first time! We summed up all the costs from the past year, to build a picture of how much this kind of traveling and nomadic life costs in Europe. Before starting this journey and our new life, we set a long term budget target of 50 € per day for two of us together.
All expenses of the life on the road during the year sum up to 14 720 €. In the cost graph you can see how this splits into accommodation (337 € / month), traveling (208 € / month) groceries (303 € / month), restaurants (323 € / month), fitness (17 € / month) and other costs (39 € / month). There are also all fixed costs like insurances, taxes (car tax) and phone and bank costs included, totally 1 289 € during the year. All this together means that the price tag of the whole year was 15 959 €, which is 1 330 € in a month and 44 € in a day for two of us (22 € per person per day).
This goes nicely under the long term budget target, but there are some factors that have lowered our costs this year. First of all, we have been ambassadors of airBaltic airline since February 2018, which means that traveling costs don’t include flight tickets, except for one flight from Athens to Larnaca in Cyprus. Regarding accommodation costs, we stayed for free around 7 weeks when visiting friends and family, and together one month when house-sitting in Portugal and France. On top of that we did some short press trips, like the one to Siberia, without accommodation costs. Counting these cost-free nights out, the average price of accommodation for a night, from camping to hotels, was 14,7 €.
This is of course just a one example of how much traveling and living nomadic life in Europe can cost. It would be possible to spend less for sure, or a lot more if you decide to stay in more expensive cities and require some luxury. In our cost summaries, there are remarkable differences between monthly costs depending on the countries we have stayed in, and the pace of traveling. Staying longer in one place is naturally more cost-efficient than traveling around, and eastern Europe is a lot cheaper than central Europe, not to even talk about Scandinavia and Finland. During the first year, the cheapest countries where we traveled in were Albania, Moldova, Bulgaria and Macedonia.
You can find all our post related to costs and budget in Finances -page.
In early January we will again publish a wider post about year 2018 travels, nomad life and costs. Here you can find summary posts from year 2017;
2 Responses
Hey, very interesting, but how did you pay only 337€ per MONTH for hotels, hostels, airbnbs? Three days alone are already around 300€ in litereally every area in Europe. 337€ means you paid 11€ per night, which is unexplainable to me. Can I ask you to please go into detail here, you’d help other nomads a lot 😉
Thank you so much
Hi Chris, thanks for leaving a comment, and it’s great to hear that the cost summary posts are useful! This one is from our first nomadic year in 2017 / 2018, so a bit old, which means that it’s difficult to find accommodations with the same price level anymore in most of the European countries. But back then we did, and this price tag is a real one! Of course we didn’t stay much in hotels, but more in affordable Airbnb apartments / rooms, and we traveled several months in East Europe, which is way cheaper than in Central Europe for example. As it’s written in the post, we had cost-free accommodation for roughly three months of the year (when staying with friends or house-sitting), so the average price for paid accommodations was 14,7 €. The cheapest nights were in Ukraine and Albania (way under 10 € per night) and the most expensive in Paris (41 €). Check out also the other yearly summary posts and our monthly cost summaries for more information, you’ll find them all in the finances page https://www.finnsaway.com/finances/