Our Spending Budget Category Breakdown
People always ask about spending because we have a unique situation as nomad therapists. Since we are minimalist travelers we like to think all our money goes to travel.
This, however, is not the case as life has other plans. With bills, student loan debt, and typical life, our money is spread around quite a bit.
We feel it's important for us to understand where our money goes so we can see where we can improve our spending and save money. There are a few main categories that we focus on and then we try to break it down even more.
This is a bit of a lengthy post but if you are curious about where our money goes, it will hopefully answer all of your questions. Here is an in-depth breakdown of where we spend our money based on our budget categories.
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Contents
Rent
In 2016 we lived in apartments for most of the year while we waited for our tiny home to be built. 2017 was the first year we lived in our tiny home and it saved us a considerable amount of money.
We saved $11,000 in 2017 with our tiny home by avoiding Uhaul costs, cheaper rent in our RV parks vs. apartments that included two cities in Ohio and San Francisco and not being stuck with a lease when we left a job early.
We lived in our tiny home for all of 2018 and 2019 which saved us a lot of money again. Our average rent payment came to $895 from 2016-2019, spending a lot of our time in high-cost areas like San Francisco and Palm Springs.
Mortgage
This includes what we paid for our tiny trailer home. We ended up paying for it in cash so it's not a mortgage in the traditional sense of the word but we still consider it a mortgage for the budget.
The tiny trailer home was $40,000 but we hit even pretty quickly as rent is much cheaper at RV parks.
Student Loans
This is where we spend the majority of our money right now but hopefully, that won't last for much longer. This is our most expensive category but it's also the category we hope to get rid of very soon.
At the end of school, we had about $166,000 in student loans and were motivated to pay it down very quickly. Deciding to refinance through SoFi helped a lot.
As of May 2019, we have paid off all our student loans! In total, we paid over $180,000 since we graduated in 2015 and we paid off the loans in 4 years.
Travel
Admittedly, we travel a lot. Like twice a month. We know we spend a lot on travel but it's what we like to do. We would go crazy if we took that 20k we put towards travel and put it towards the loans.
Airfare
We have flown over 40 times since we left school so we are frequent flyers. We don't have loyalty to one particular airline but we do tend to fly the bigger airlines and avoid budget airlines.
Because we believe in treating yo' self and being comfortable, we almost always fly first class which means our flights are more costly than average. Our average spending on flights per year is around $9,000 for 6-10 flights.
When we do book a flight we always book our flights through Phil's American Express Platinum Card. It offers 5x points when booking airfare and you can even get a sweet bonus if you sign up through our referral link here!
Lodging
We go on vacations every other week so we stay in a lot of hotels and Airbnb's. 2018 was the year of Airbnb's for us but 2019 turned into the year of hotels as we stayed nearly 50 nights in hotels spread across all the major brands.
Our favorite hotel brands are Staypineapple and Hyatt but we have stayed at others well. This also counts campsites as we love having outdoor adventures.
Rental Car, Taxi, Transportation
Typically we drive places in our car but there have been times we need to rent a car. We will often compare prices using Kayak or Costco Travel to find the best deal ahead of time.
We also don't often take taxis, Uber, Lyft, etc but if we are in a big city and need to get somewhere, we might take one.
If we are in a big city and not within walking distance of where we need to go we might even take some public transportation which saves us some money and gives us the chance to live like the locals.
Automotive
This includes our car loan for our 2013 Audi Q5. We love it and we have been able to tow our tiny home with it and have driven over 100,000 miles in three years with it! It was a little more expensive from the get-go and it costs more for upkeep but we love the choice we made there.
Since we travel a lot and a lot of our travel is by car. AAA estimates for car costs are $0.57/mile driven and our costs are very close to that, even in a premium car.
We have driven a little over 100,000 miles and have spent a total of $70,204, giving us $0.70/mile. That includes our gas, auto loan, service, car insurance, parking, and miscellaneous auto costs like tolls. Our cost per mile went up in 2019 as we had to make a major fix to the car that cost over $11,000!
Health and Fitness
This is a rather large category that covers everything from our general fitness to health insurance and doctor visits. We try to avoid spending too much money on this category but at times it's necessary.
Health Insurance
Since we are traveling PT's, we can take off as much time as we want in between contracts but if we are off work for more than three weeks, our insurance is terminated. For a while, we ended up carrying our own health insurance which gave us more freedom from taking job assignments but was rather costly!
Going forward, we are going to either try to stay on work insurance, get a short term plan in between assignments, or find alternatives to the high cost of our health insurance.
Doctor Visits
We typically will only visit the doctor one to two times a year for a physical and maybe if we are very sick. To cover planned doctor visits and expensive outpatient procedures we set aside money in savings and in our HSA to cover it.
HSA Contributions
We are big believers in an HSA as it seems to be a great way to save money while also planning for hidden and/or sudden medical expenses. We make sure there is money being put towards our HSA yearly.
Eye Care
We belong to Costco and we always will for one simple reason: Costco Optical Services. Phil needs new contacts every year as well as an eye exam. We are also able to get new glasses for Phil (like we had to when our car was broken into).
We also recently learned about ordering contacts from overseas. This allows you to order contacts without needing a prescription and get the contacts sent straight to you. We still suggest you go to the eye doctor every year to check your eye health but if you are traveling and can't find the time, this is a good solution to get new contacts ASAP.
Dentist
Depending on our job assignment we may or may not have dental insurance. We try to go to the dentist at least once a year for our annual checkup and cleaning. Plus you never know what else could come up.
We went back to the dentist finally in 2019 after 2.5 years away and that cost us dearly! We spent nearly $1,200 on the dentist last year and that was even having dental insurance. To save the most money on the dentist, make sure you go every year.
Health and Fitness
We don't have a shower in our tiny home so a gym membership is a must. We stay healthy by using the gym and then we have access to showers. Initially, we tried finding cheaper gyms but we are starting to see the benefit of slightly more expensive gyms that offer classes like yoga.
Food
Everyone has to eat and we are no exception. We try to cook out meals at home in our tiny home using our induction stovetop or Instant Pot but a lot of time we end up eating fast food or going out to a restaurant instead.
Groceries
We only have a small fridge and limited cupboard space so we can't go crazy with groceries. We buy groceries maybe once every week and we tend to try to shop at places like The Santa Fe Co-op, Orchard Nutrition, or Sprouts Farmers Market. We are always trying to buy organic if we can so our groceries are a little more expensive but the quality is worth it for us.
Eating Out
We would probably save money by not eating out as much but sometimes it helps make a harder job assignment more enjoyable. Plus when traveling going out can be part of the experience. There are also times we like going out to use high-speed free internet while getting a bite to eat.
For us eating out includes:
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- Restaurants
- Fast Food
- Coffee Shops
- Bars
Financial Savings
We try to be responsible adults so we do have savings for retirement and other adult responsible items.
Retirement
We wish we could put a little more towards retirement but right now we have a focus on paying our student loans. We are focused on putting at least a little money towards retirement so we can eventually retire early!
Life Insurance
We purchased whole and term life insurance when we got out of school and have consistent payments on it every month. We are both healthy so we essentially treat this as a low-risk investment in case something goes wrong.
Disability Insurance
This is something important for us now but we probably won't have this forever. Right now we have some pretty hefty bills to pay with our student loans so we want to make sure that if we can't work, we can still make some money and pay our debts.
Shopping
We never go too crazy with shopping since we try to put more money towards experiences instead of possessions. Since we are minimalists, we try to only buy quality items that will last well with repeated use so we don't have to buy the same item multiple times.
When it comes to shopping we typically buy clothes, electronics, and other occasional items. We also budget during the holiday for gifts.
Business
We have two places where the money is spent on business:
- Our website
- Physical therapy licensing
Website Costs
Since we aren't full-time bloggers just yet we try to keep our costs down for the site. Currently, we pay for the domain name and hosting costs.
Physical Therapy
We often get reimbursed for the physical therapy aspect and we are starting to monetize our site. So even though this category may have money being returned we still need to budget for the upfront cost.
Continuing education also comes out of the section. This is typically a membership to online courses/classes.
Pets
Our boys mean everything to us so they get the best of the best which means more money. However, they are still way cheaper than kids.
They have a state of the art fountain and feeder, cat bed, and a lot of toys. Plus during our long vacations, they get boarded, often in cat suites. We also give them the best quality, so of course more expensive food.
Other
There are probably about three "other" areas we spend our money.
- Credit Card Fees
- ATM Fees
- Entertainment
We don't spend enough in these areas for them to be their own area but it's enough that we like to keep track. Just as a note, our credit card fees are often low but we take advantage of 0% balance transfer offers to save money right now and let us pay more money towards higher interest loans like student loans or our car loan.
This post has A LOT of information. We feel having the perfect categories in our budget lets us live the life we want.
This way we know we're putting money towards the things that mean the most to us. Our breakdown of where our money goes is specific to our needs and wants.
Seeing what we spend our money on might help you decide where your money would be best spent.
