After the spending madness of May, we had a MUCH better month in June, and took our daily spending average down by little over 50% from $74.46 to just $35.77!
The main reason for this huge drop in the daily average was that we had lots and lots and lots of no-spend days in June. With our pantry, fridge and freezer filled to overflowing at the end of last month we didn’t spend as much on groceries, and we kept our other discretionary spending low as well.
Our June spending (or lack of it) has helped to give us an idea of what things might look like once (if) we eventually settle down. We’re doing fine without owning a car, and our few car-sharing or rental costs have been quite low when averaged out over the month. Housing expenses are not included in our daily spending average, but they’re a little lower than average right now as well. All we currently pay is monthly “rent” for a great apartment in a great location, but without the additional expenses of taxes, utilities, WiFi, cable, etc. There are also no maintenance costs.
We will have the expense of our getaway out to the coast coming up in July, although our Zipcar (along with gasoline) and our lodging were paid for in June. We have some other activities for the month on our list as well that will require admission fees and such, and we will be making another trip to Costco in a couple of weeks which always brings up the monthly average for a while. However, we’re mainly going to keep doing what we have been which should still keep things below our self-imposed spending ceiling for another month.
The Occasional Nomads 
I enjoy your blog and travels very much. Iām always fascinated how people budget. By that I mean how they set it on paper/computer and how they track it. Can you share your methods and possibly show an example or two? š
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Hi Eric – We have a pretty easy system for budgeting. We have a amount for housing costs (i.e. Airbnb), another amount for major transportation costs (i.e. airfare or train from place to place), another amount for clothing, and then we have our miscellaneous amount, which is for our daily spending on things like food, local transportation, admissions, and all sorts other small items. We try to keep the average for that at $50/day, or around $1500/$1550 per month. As we have no permanent home right now we don’t have any typical expenses associated with that, things like utilities, taxes, cable, Internet charges, etc. The only regular monthly bills we have right how are my student loan payment and our phone plan (both are paid by automatic withdrawal), which provides free data and texting no matter where we go in the world. Our healthcare expenses are covered through Medicare and our military health/dental/vision insurance
Brett keeps a journal of our daily spending – we get receipts every time we spend. The receipts are taped into the journal, and then he totals the amount we’ve spent each day and divides it by the number of days to get a daily average. This helps us know if we’re on track or over and need to cut back. We had very large food expenditures and miscellaneous transportation costs at the end of May as we settled in for our three and a half month stay in Portland, but not so much last month as well as lots of no-spend days so our daily average at the end of June was much lower.
On top of the monthly daily average, Brett also tracks our spending for each location to see how they differ, and he tracks our walking distance each day as well.
Hope this information helps!
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Thank You. Most helpfull.
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I sent a request for some additional budgeting information yesterday. I received something to do with confirm and word press. This link has taken me nowhere. Is there any other way to obtain this information if you are willing to release it? Thank you
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Sorry for the delay in getting back to you – I was away from the computer for much of yesterday. I answered your original comment.
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