This was my year (in spreadsheets)
- Domi
- Feb 6, 2024
- 8 min read
Updated: Apr 19, 2024
The title makes this blog sound like one you would expect to appear on 1st of January. Maybe not the spreadsheet part, but the “this was my year part” for sure.
This day, 6th February, means much more to me than 1st January ever has, though. This is the day “my new life” started in 2023. Melodramatic as that may sound, it is the truth.
It’s the day I posted this blog: Home is where my slippers are. And that may not sound like anything relevant to you, but it was a very important moment for me.
And most importantly: it’s the day I was at the airport on my way to Australia to start my life as a “digital nomad”, which has now turned into nomad in general. I wrote about the reason why this shift happened in the Back to basic, which I posted on 2nd August 2023.
What I really want to talk about today is what my life looked like for the past 365 days. In a very practical sense, broken down to numbers and graphs (not in a boring way, I promise, there are pretty pictures involved too!).
There are 2 reasons why I wanted to dive into this topic:
Reason 1:
There’s this loop that keeps on spinning in my head and it goes a little like this: my life is pretty boring, nothing is really happening, I’m spending all this time by myself just walking around, I don’t have a fulltime job, or any job for that matter, I don’t really fit in, but I also love that I can do whatever the hell I want to do, go wherever I want to go so why won’t you just enjoy being in this position where you have the freedom to design your life exactly how you want it to. Nothing else will really satisfy you in the end, and you know that. (This was me talking to me).
Back to talking to you:
Sometimes it helps to put things in perspectives and in my case, in spreadsheets. I am a structure junky, and I know it. I like to look back on things I’ve done and realise: okay, your life is all but boring and you just live your life how it feels most natural to you, but it’s just not a life a lot of people dare to choose or realise they want or need.
Reason 2:
There’s this question people keep asking me when they hear about my lifestyle, which is: HOW DO YOU DO IT? Living this life and being able to afford it? I wish I could do that!
And I will show you it’s really not such a major achievement if you look at the numbers. As long as you are willing to be creative and flexible with your plans and keep in mind that things can go to shit when you’re living on the go, you’re good to go. You’ll also realise that things going to shit always happen for a reason and it will become so much easier to put things in perspective.
With these things in the back of my mind I’m finding myself on the couch with my laptop in my lap (only now realising that this activity might be the origin of the word “lap-top” 🤯) nerding out over spreadsheets while I’m putting in all the data I collected over the past year.
And just as an FYI: it’s summer over here. Today is a gorgeous sunny summer day and I am doing this.
Indoors.
Odd duck. I keep saying it. 🦆
I’ll go hang out at the beach after this, I promise.
Now let’s dive in(to the spreadsheets, not the ocean. Yet):
LET’S START WITH WHERE I’VE TRAVELLED TO THIS YEAR
# Different countries visited | 7 |
# Different places visited | 45 |
The plan was to spend most of my time in Australia and New Zealand all along. Which I did. I had a tourist visa for Australia, which allowed me a full year of access to the country for 12 months. This means my visits were restricted to periods of a maximum of 3 consecutive months before I had to exit and reenter the country for the visa to stay legit.
For my travels New Zealand I applied for a working holiday visa right before I turned 31, which is the maximum age to apply for a working holiday in New Zealand. This means I had access to the country with working rights for 12 consecutive months after entering the country without restrictions.
And since I started my own company as Virtual Assistant in The Netherlands in the beginning of last year, I had to stay registered in the Netherlands and the condition for being registered in the Netherlands is that you can only spend a maximum of 8 months abroad per year. I like to stick to the rules when it comes to things like that, so it makes sense that I ended up spending most of my time in those 3 countries.
All the other countries (Spain, UK, Belgium, and Indonesia) were short trips and holidays.
But let’s not forget that in these countries, I’ve also travelled around a fair bit. So, the total count of places I’ve visited (and spent at least one night) is 45 different places. On average, that’s a different place every 8 days of the past year.
AND NOW LET’S SEE WHERE I SPENT THOSE NIGHTS 😏
# Different beds slept in | 62 |
The reason why I included the number of different beds I’ve stayed in for the past year is because I was just very curious. Like I mentioned before, I sometimes think my life is pretty boring and that feeling usually creeps in as soon as I spend over a week in one location and accommodation. Once there is room for routine and structure to develop, I go into “boring” mode. And that’s where my brain needs to be rewired. Because structure and routine don’t equal boring AT ALL. It’s actually the best thing that could happen. I love structure and routine. It’s just that little voice in the back of my head that gets me confused sometimes.
But anyways, I’ve spend the night in 62 (!!!) different beds in one year.
That’s a lot of beds. That’s a different bed for every 5 days of last year.
And here’s an overview of the different types of accommodation I’ve stayed in over the past year based on how many nights per type:
The category “Other accommodation” includes hotels, hostels, guesthouses, Airbnb, and other paid accommodation.
Have you noticed that I’ve spent 4% of the nights in transit? Overnight buses, boats, and planes have become relatively common places for me to call home for a night or two.
Lucky for me, I am a decent sleeper and I own a great pair of earplugs for the noisier and bumpier nights. Otherwise, I might have not survived, because sleep is VERY important to me.
BUT DOMI PLEASE, CAN YOU TELL ME HOW YOU CAN AFFORD ALL OF THIS? 👀
Sure.
I will give you an insight in the money side of things when it comes to my travels:
Total cost accommodation | €6261.78 |
Total cost transport | €4418.28 |
That’s it.
I’ve spent €6261.78 on accommodation last year. Which breaks down to approximately €17 per night.
The cost of transport includes all the flights (3 of which were across the world which is not something I would recommend doing too often for environmental and health reasons 😐), long distance train rides, and a rental car for 6 weeks.
And then there's this:
You can see here that I only spent money on accommodation for about 52% of the time last year. That is a HUGE money saver.
Some good options for saving money on your accommodation are:
Housesitting (through platforms like TrustedHousesitters, AussieHousesitters, KiwiHousesitters, etc.).
Volunteering (through platforms like Workaway, Worldpackers, WWOOF, etc.).
Staying with family or friends instead of renting a place when you go back home and/or visit a city where friends or family of yours live. Don’t feel shy to ask! But try not to take it personally if they say no either.
I could have gotten my total cost for accommodation much lower if I didn’t spend those 5 weeks backpacking the East Coast in high season, but I’d saved plenty of money and enjoyed every single minute of it. Just wanted to point out that what I did is not even as low as you can go. At all.
Anyways, there you have it: about €10,600 to travel across the globe twice in one year.
BUT don’t be fooled by these numbers.
It doesn’t include cost of living, which can be completely underestimated. On top of the transport and accommodation costs, I’ve spent about €6,625 on food, other types of transportation, LOTS of chai, and basically just living life. Considering I don’t drink alcohol or do much leisure shopping on a regular basis anymore AND the fact that I’ve spent 3 months living with my parents where they paid for most of my food, this number could have been waaaay higher without much effort. So go figure.
Life is not cheap 🙃.
And a final disclaimer:
As mentioned before, things will inevitably go to shit every once in a while. You’ll run out of money, won’t have working rights, can’t get the visa situation sorted (and/or have no control over it), lose your wallet, have your credit cards blocked, you name it.
It really helps to have a support system you can fall back on and accept the fact that sometimes you will need some help and/or accept a shitty temporary job to keep going. That’s not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of an extremely strong sense of knowing what you want in life and doing whatever it takes to keep on going.
In all honesty, I am currently struggling with my financial situation. By choosing to study in Australia, there were a lot more costs involved than mentioned above. I am not able to call myself financially independent anymore. At least not right at this moment. I need to emphasise that that happens sometimes when you choose this lifestyle too. It’s important to always think a few steps ahead and take into consideration that this can be a very unstable way of living and you might find yourself stuck in a situation for a little bit where you need to stay creative, be flexible, and depend on support of family, friends, and even kind strangers to make it work.
But there’s also this side: things will always find a way of figuring itself out in the end. It’s an ongoing life lesson. It’s really up to anyone to decide whether they think it’s worth giving up on a consistent sense of security or you are willing to take the risk and live high highs and accept low lows as they come. Or, you know, be anywhere in between.
There’s a whole spectrum between these two extremes: living secure and locked in on one side and less secure but completely free on the other side.
What I’m trying to say here is that it’s up to everyone to decide what spot on that spectrum they want to be in. And that it’s okay to change your mind from time to time. As long as your decisions come from within and are not influenced too much by the noisy external world.
That was a long read, wasn’t it?
Congratulations on making it till the end.
I will go enjoy the summer now. ☀️
Talk soon!
Xoxo Domi
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