The Cost of Living the Dream

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January 2016 income and expense report
How much did you save to go on your trip?
How do you make money on the road?
What’s your monthly budget look like?
These are the first questions people ask us whenever they find out what we’re doing (i.e. running a camp cooking and outdoor travel blog from the road). And for good reason! These are the exact same questions we ask whenever we come across somebody who is seemingly “living the dream.”

There’s no shortage of personal travel blogs and Instagram road trip accounts, but few of them are willing to reveal what we’re all thinking: “How, exactly, are they pulling it off?” We spent months trying to answer to this question in preparation for our own trip. We looked at other people living on the road and we guessed, we speculated, and we made assumptions. But ultimately we were flying blind. While many people inspired us to hit the road, few people really empowered us. It wasn’t until we made the leap ourselves that we got any real information.

Over the holidays, we listened to a fantastic Planet Money podcast about financial transparency. The podcast specifically examined what happens when companies make the salaries of their employees public. What happens when everyone knows what everyone else is making? And how does that information affect the decisions people make? (Spoiler: Everyone benefits.) While this is a noteworthy concept in its own right, it got us thinking more broadly about being transparent with our own lives.  

Because after six months on the road, we realized we were perpetuating the same cycle of misinformation. Up until now, we have been showcasing a lifestyle that many people find to be inspirational, but we haven’t shown how we make that lifestyle work. With these new monthly income and expense reports, we hope to shed a little light behind the scenes and give people a glimpse into what it actually costs for us to “live the dream”.

While no two paths can be duplicated in life, we hope you find the information here to be useful, inspirational, and empowering.

January 2016 by the Numbers

Miles Driven: 171
Train Rides: 3
Nights off the Road: 31 (We spent the month staying with family on both the East and West coasts)
States visited: 5 (CT, NY, RI, MA, CA)
Slices of pizza: 18 (NY style, SE CT Greek Style, and New Haven style!)
Oysters on the half shell: 16

Income

Notes: This was a slow month for us, income wise, because we put most of our energy into two things 1) Quality time with family, and 2) Generating new leads for freelance work in the upcoming months.

Blog Income:
– Affiliate Income $47

Freelance Work:
– Digital Content $325

Total $372

Business Expenses: $216 (includes monthly services like Adobe CC and food purchased specifically for recipe development)

Net Income: $156

Expenses

Notes: Since we stayed with family this month, we didn’t have to pay for camping, some of our meals were “comped” (thanks moms!), and our mileage was low. However, we did make up for that with train rides into NYC + Boston.

Gas $72
Food $486
Camping $0
Car maintenance & repairs $37
Insurance (auto/health) $389
Cell phone $50
Gym Membership $29
Misc. expenses $178

Total Expenses $1,241

Net for January ($1085)

Amount from Savings $1085
*As you can see, our earned income from our blog and freelance work doesn’t cover all of our expenses. We saved a lot before this trip, so this represents what we had to pull from our savings account for the month. We hope eventually the income from our blog and freelance work will cover the cost of our trip and perhaps some day return a profit.

If you have questions about anything we have listed in this report, please leave us a comment below and we’ll try our best to answer your questions. Thank you for your continuing support!

NB: This post was reformatted on 4/29/16 to provide better distinction between income & expenses relating to our freelance business, and the costs relating to traveling full time & living on the road. Ultimately, all numbers remain the same but have simply been re-organized.

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Adam and Linds
Adam and Linds

So great that y’all are doing this! Linds and I get the same questions and when we are just honest it creates a while lot more light bulbs and encouragement. At the end of the day, all is us nomads have a goal, save responsibly and then hustle hard.

Adam and Linds
Adam and Linds

I’m here to help for sure! I know. Tricky is a nice way to put it….I prefer to use ridiculous. Looking forward to hearing from y’all…AND really excited to try some of these recipes. Our Casita doesn’t have an oven, so I’m pumped to whip out the Dutch Oven and make some goodness in the skillet.

Stacy Walsh
Stacy Walsh

I appreciate your honesty and transparency. These are the questions I have, as well. I’ve toyed with the idea of taking our small family on the road… this kind of information goes a long ways towards making informed decisions. Thank you, and keep up the great work!

Caro
Caro

Fantastic! Looking forward to seeing some helpful trends develop over the next few months (especially the amount of pizza consumption)! Could I be a little impolite and ask what makes up the monthly blog costs?

Brittany Leffel
Brittany Leffel

I love this post! You help explain the true reality of it. There’s the pictures we all love and know on Instagram, then there is the reality that goes on off the camera.

I am always so inspired to want to try traveling this way, and always wonder how people can pull it off. The financial numbers put things into true perspective.

As a beginning blogger myself, thank you for demonstrating transparency of how income starts slow in the beginning, and how important it is to have a back up plan for savings in that beginning process.

Keep carrying on, your website is and will be a gold mine! Look forward to your future successes!

Katie
Katie

I applaud you for your transparency! It makes your commitment to adventure on the road and an interesting life all the more admirable. I’ve been so inspired by your and many other blogs, but – like many others – always wondered how you could pull it off. I tend to assume you all have lucrative remote-work businesses or you easily pick up seasonal work as needed. Your honesty shows that many people living this life are not breaking even once on the road. But they have done the hard work needed to save, and stared down the fear of not having a dependable paycheck once on the road. For me, this fear of not having financial “security” has been the biggest hump to get over in wanting to live on the road myself.

Keep it up! Your commitment to a life you love will never fail you. Now if only I could take my own advice 🙂

KJ | Omnomherbivore
KJ | Omnomherbivore

I really appreciate this!! Thanks so much for sharing. Its helpful even for life as a freelancer 🙂 This also makes me feel better about the money I spend on food :p I always feel like I spend a lot on food – but dang it, its food! haha I look forward to checking out your monthly reports! Keep livin’ the dream 🙂

Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor
Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor

Great post! It’s so helpful to see how other folks manage living a nomadic lifestyle. When we decided to chuck it all in and buy a sailboat to live and travel on, I found these types of posts super helpful in our thinking about how we were going to pull it off. We track and publish our costs as well – it helps keep us accountable for what we spend (and make better decisions about where we spend our money hopefully), but we also hope it helps others out too. If you’re interested, you can check it out here – http://thecynicalsailor.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_9.html

Looking forward to following along with your adventures! Cheers – Ellen