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| Mailbox in front of a house down the road from us in Trinity Beach, Queensland, Australia. |
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A long-time reader recently wrote inquiring as to the monthly/annual costs of full-time world travel. As our regular readers know, we post “final expenses” at the end of each stay in a particular country and specific location, usually within 24 hours of our departure.
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| A sign in front of the house which is currently for sale. |
We include the rental costs and fees for the holiday home, rental car, tips, groceries, dining out, entertainment, and miscellaneous shopping listed in a post. If you’ve never seen one of these charts, please click here (scroll down the page).
We also include the total expenses after the end of any cruise listing, including flights, cruise fare and taxes, WiFi, tips, and miscellaneous charges which may incur during the cruise, usually within 24 hours of disembarkation. To see our most recent final expenses for a cruise, please click here.
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| Statue of a horse, cart, and man in front of the house. |
Although these expenses include a breakdown, including the “average daily cost” and “average monthly cost,” we have not posted an average annual cost mainly due to the variances from year to year.
The single most significant factor in determining our annual cost is based on the number of cruises we’ve sailed, with considerable variances in price. For example, in 2018, we embarked on the ultra-expensive cruise to Antarctica, which far exceeded our monthly budget and annual budget (we’ll get to that soon), as shown below in the chart from this post:
| Expense | US Dollar | Euro |
| Cruise Fare | $ 34,500.00 | $ 27,945.00 |
| Airfare – inc in the cruise fare | $ – | – |
| Hotel Buenos Aires – 2 ngts | $ 140.00 | $ 113.40 |
| Taxi – paid by hotel | $ – | $ – |
| Cabin Credit | $ (101.23) | $ (81.00) |
| Wi-Fi on ship | $ 444.45 | $ 360.00 |
| Gratuities | $ 250.00 | $ 202.50 |
| Miscellaneous | $ 29.63 | $ 24.00 |
| Doctor visit on ship | $ 213.73 | $ 173.12 |
| Total | $ 35,476.58 | $ 28,899.02 |
| Avg Daily Cost – 17 days | $ 1,970.92 | $ 1,605.50 |
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| Interesting vegetation is growing in the garden. Notice Fred Flintstone on the left of the photo. Wait, more is coming. |
The likelihood of us booking such an expensive cruise in the future is slim. This cruise took a massive bite out of our preferred annual budget of INR 5621721, US $75,000, which has increased based on inflation since we began traveling.
As in the above case of the Antarctic sailing, following that cruise, we spent the next 15 months in Marloth Park, South Africa. At that time, still recovering from open-heart surgery, I didn’t take the time to post the final expenses for this extended period, although I did post them on our spreadsheet.
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| Relatively large statues of Barney Rubble and Fred Flintstone. It brings back memories from when my kids were young! |
What skewed those figures was the outrageous out-of-pocket medical expenses we paid, which our travel insurance company refused to pay. But, I can quote an average monthly expense for those many months, excluding the medical costs at approximately INR 299825, US $4,000.
Aside from the unexpected medical expenses, these lower monthly expenses helped offset the costs from the Antarctica cruise, an expense we’ll never regret after the fantastic experiences.
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| Even Dino from the Flintstones was there. This statue is most likely as tall as an adult human. |
Our annual budget continues to vary based on the number of cruises of any type that we book along the way. Some years, we’ve sailed on six cruises, and others none at all, as was the case while we lived in South Africa.
As for the future, our expenses could change based on COVID-19, which may result in increased airfares, holiday home rentals, car rentals, and other products and services. As for cruising, at this point, we have no idea if we’ll continue to cruise.
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| A different house on the same side of the street with pretty landscaping. |
Most likely, if we continue to cruise, we’ll book fewer sailings, all on smaller ships, which will result in higher fares. Obviously, the smaller the ship, the higher the fare, a situation we’ve found to be universal across the board.
Cruise lines seem to be working on ways in which to protect their guests from COVID-19 while sailing. However, many of these “adjustments” may remove the cruising features that most appealed to us, primarily centered around socializing nearby. Those days may have long passed.
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| Horses and a peacock in the front garden. |
Not much new on the horizon here today. After I finish posting each day and Tom checks for errors, I’ve been watching sci-fi movies on my laptop, using my earbuds to avoid bothering Tom.
There certainly are a lot of dystopian, end-of-the-world movies on Netflix and Amazon. Each afternoon, I watch one movie. Eventually, I’ll run out of options. In the interim, if they aren’t interesting enough, I’ll play Scrabble on my phone with other online players while the movie streams.
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| The mailman coming down the road. It appears most letter mail is delivered on a motorcycle. |
Also, once an hour, I stop to walk the corridors. I am now walking longer distances in shorter periods and getting done by 3:00 pm when Tom and I start watching shows together. In a few days, we’ll have completed the 230 (20-minute) episodes of the overly dramatic Irish TV cop drama Red Rock, a tremendous binge-watching series we’ve thoroughly enjoyed.
We’re good. We hope you are, too!
Photo from one year ago today, July 9, 2019:
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| Seagulls are prolific in Connemara, Ireland, close to the sea. For more photos, please click here. |