100 percent I love how you guys place a high value on experience. It helped me reframe things cause I used to go out to eat a lot when traveling and see that as part of the experience, but its cool especially for long term travel to find ways of eating out that you can still experience the culture but still make it affordable. It was really helpful when you could see that eating out 20% of the time cost almost as much as the groceries 80% mind blown. You guys are inspiring
Thank you so much for your kinds words and for sharing what you learned with us! We totally agree that trying the local cuisine is a great way to get to know a culture, but as you noted, it really adds up on a long term trip. Its also super cool to check out the grocery stores around the world because they vary so much, so do your own cooking has other perks too :)
Nobody ever lies on their death bed and says, "Gee, I wish I'd bought more stuff". Before I die, I want to say I've lived. Memories are priceless, make as many as you can.
I am much older than you and have been to many of the places you have. I did my 1st backpack trip 30 years ago, and have done many more since. I have LOVED watching your videos, it has brought back such amazing memories for me. I did them all before youtube ha ha so only have photos. Take it from me, NO AMOUNT OF MONEY will ever replace those experiences. But just a warning, once you start it can be very difficult going back to the "normal" world, :)
I see a lot of couple videos with monthly expenses, and for someone traveling full-time for 2 years I'd say as a single person I average from 1800-2500 a month. Can probably do with a lot less depending on location and lifestyle. Just to give context to folks that are single.
You two have amazing chemistry. So glad I found your channel. Thank you for giving me an idea of the costs to travel full-time. What an adventure you're having and the memories must be priceless! I'd love to hear about your future adventures together, whether you're able to support yourselves solely through TH-cam, and other travel hacks to get the best value for your money. Happy travels!
Great advice about prioritizing spending on activities rather than lodging, especially since we’re unexpectedly finding ourselves on a reduced travel budget. Very helpful for planning our trip!
Yeah we would get groceries and make our meals all day just so we have a bit more leeway in the activities and tours. Glad you found this helpful and please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. We love connecting with other people who caught the travel bug like we have 😊
We love talking money and travel as well and hope sharing our experience will help other people make their travel dreams a reality! Thanks for coming along with us :)
This video was great! Love seeing the breakdown, thank you for being open about finances and loved that you included flights. I feel like when most creators do videos of how much they spend it doesn’t include that.
We are so glad to hear you enjoyed it! We did our best to be super open about the costs, there is nothing worse than clicking a 'cost of travel' video and not getting all the numbers 😂
I've watched a few of your videos so far and I'm loving the easy to digest format! My questions: How do you come back to work after traveling for a year? How does this impact one's long-term financial goals? I worry about my career skills getting rusty if I were to go on vacation for a very long time with the intention of coming back.
Hey there, thanks for watching! I think for us we feel like we are constantly learning while traveling, and while what we are learning may not be directly related to the fields our careers are in, the things we learn on the road and life lessons that transfer to every area of our life. TH-cam also helps because we are learning so much about a new topic and constantly using our creative sides which are exciting skills to practice! And for us, the financial impact is 1000% worth the experiences we are having, but that is a very personal choice! It will certainly bump us back financially for a little while, but personally, we are well setup to bounce back quickly if/when we choose to go home. If you are too then the financial and career risks feel less scary. And truly, once you get out of the hustle-life culture you realize it just isn't all its cracked up to be and the best thing you can do is live how you want 🙂
Thanks for sharing that info! I think it's great if more people get a general idea of what their in for when they go on trips like this. It's good for awareness 😊
This is great, and I also really like how you shared the raw data spreadsheet on your website - I haven't seen a lot of posts that would go into such detail - do you plan to do another video like this after year two? It would be interesting to see what has changed, if anything.
We're glad you found it helpful! We haven't actually thought about making another video about year 2 expenses but we will give it some thought now that you mention it! It would definitely be interesting to see the change
This was super informative guys! We're planning our own year-long 'round the world' trip and the hardest part BY FAR has been trying to figure out how much to save & budget! It really does come down to what you prioritise! Totally worth it for you two, those experiences look incredible!
@@nicoleandmico We'd love to cover Asia, Middle East and South America. We can't wait, travel seems to be really be opening up now after the past few years!
That sounds like a wonderful trip and we hope you have an amazing time 😊 Of course if you have any questions about travel and costs we are always happy to help 🤗
Hi guys! I've just started following you/ Thanks for your honest, authentic, Canadian ways! And I noticed that you both smile at least 80% of the time ! :)
Thanks for a helpful video. As others have mentioned the spreadsheet link is not working. Did you decide to take it down? Please let us know either way. Thanks
These are my favorite types of videos! Thank you so much for being so transparent in order to help others in their journey. This isn't a budget related question, but I'm really curious about how you handled all of the vaccines needed for each place since you visited so many regions. Did you get them all prior to leaving, or did you get them as you went along? I remember there were like 10 recommended vaccines when I was planning a trip to Chile before COVID, so I can only imagine the amount needed for all of the different areas you visited.
Great question! We love answering questions like this one! We got as many vaccines as we could before we left to start traveling. Prior to leaving Canada we were still both employed full-time, so we were able to save a lot of money when we got our vaccines because our health insurance policies through our jobs covered a lot of the injections. We went as far as to get our rabies vaccines as well because we have a very hard time not saying hello to the pups we meet around the world. When we first left for travel, COVID vaccines weren't accessible yet, so this is actually the only one we have gotten on the road! We got our first covid vaccines in the USD (that's why we randomly went to NYC after Sri Lanka) and then when we went home to Canada for Christmas in 2021/2022 we were able to get our booster dose. We hope that helps!
Nicole and Mico, thank you much for sharing this very helpful video. I am planing to do solo traveling myself. This gives me a good idea of what I need to do. Happy Travels! Questions I like to know: What do you both do for a living before this? How has travel change your view on life, people, etc. For me, I don’t take things for granted any more because I see how others around the world can have so much less but are happy. Thanks again.
We are so glad to hear you found the video helpful and are cheering you on for your solo trip! Woohoo! To answer your questions, Mico is an engineer and I (N) am a Social Worker back in Canada. Travel has changed our perspective on so many things, definitely not taking things for granted as you've said, but one of our biggest lessons has been about how we can live our life. We have met so many amazing people living alternative lifestyles around the world and we hope to one day set something like that up for ourselves! It's amazing to see how possible it can be!
That is so kind, thank you! For a long time we felt like it was irresponsible to prioritize traveling so much, but we quickly realized that it's what we love and that's a good enough reason to make it the centre of our world. Have an awesome time when you head out for your own travel adventures!
Thank you so much for the kind words! We're glad you enjoyed it and hope you found it useful 🤗 Let us know if there's any other travel topics you'd like to see from us and we'll be sure to look into it 😁 PS fingers crossed you're right 🤞😆
Thank you for your very honest information! Just two questions: 1/ My wife and I are retirees? So, one expense category we are probably more concerned that both of you, are the medical/dental expenses. We are in good health; any idea on what you think would be a reasonable amount to budget? 2/ How Many more years do you intend to continue traveling?
Hi there! Apologies for the delayed response, we have been hiking in Peru with very limited service recently, but we are back! To your first question, our suggestion would be to find a travel medical insurance that works for your travel style and medical needs, and that will make up the most of your medical/dental expenses while on the road. We use SafetyWing's Nomad Insurance which is sufficient for our needs (and costs $42USD/month in our age range), but as someone in their retirement years you may both feel the need to get more coverage. We have heard good things about the insurance provider 'World Nomads' as well, although we found it difficult to navigate their requirements for being in the country when extending insurance (this was the case when we were first researching insurance companies 2+ years ago, things may have changed with them now). They are definitely more expensive, but may be worth looking in to. Other than having travel medical insurance, the only medical/dental expenses we have incurred are for medications (just the basics like Tylenol, Advil, Gravol, etc.), massages when our muscles need some help, and we had a teeth cleaning in Ecuador for $30USD that sadly did not live up to our expectations! I'm not sure that helps as much as we would like, but our suggestion would definitely be to start budgeting for this category by finding the right travel medical insurance for your situation and expect that to be about 80-90% of your medical/dental expenses for the road! In answer to your second question - we really aren't sure! We hope to be traveling for at least another year but our budget as well as some activities coming up back home in Canada will have a lot of impact on our timeline! Thanks so much for watching our video and asking a thought-provoking question! Let us know if you have any others, and happy traveling!!
Great video - although I assume you cannot quite cut a couple's budget in half to get the budget of a single traveler, as some expenses, including housing and food, are cheaper shared across two.
definitely worthy! it can be a one in a life opportunity and you never know if you are going to come back to that country so yes! I will also prefer stay a shorter time and do all activities as possible, and even if my budget is not enough for that I will always enjoy food anywhere 😋😋
Yes there's not many times in our life where we can just drop it all and go! We decided it was right for us and we haven't had any regrets. The money is something we can get back over time but it's not too often we'll be able to visit such beautiful and very far away places. We know there's a lot of cheap ramen to eat in our future and we're okay with 😅😋
What do you do with your bags during the day of travel. Every worried about stuff getting stolen? Thanks! Also from Calgary as well. Would love to meet up with you guys some day!
O so cool! It's great to meet another fellow Calgarian ☺️ for our bags we thankfully have never had anything bad happen to them. We always keep a close eye on them, especially if traveling by bus or train. We also make sure that our passports are in our daybag too, never tucked into the larger backpack that might be checked in or inside the luggage hold of a bus. We usually prefer cheaper public transit when getting around but for travel days when we have all our stuff with us we tend to take ubers or taxis. More expensive but better to have direct transportation. These are just general tips and we hope this helps!
Really informational vid. Not a lot banking options out there for Canadian backpackers. Any tips on saving weekly ATM and FX fees for long term travel ? . How did you manage cash while traveling ?
Great questions! We have an account type with TD bank that gets us free foreign ATM withdrawals on TDs end, so we still have to pay the ATM fee that is set by the ATM we are using (some are free, some are as much as $9!), but there are no fees from TD for taking money our while abroad which is great! The account is called an all-inclusive account in case that helps. And for credit cards we use the Scotiabank Visa Passport which has no FX fees, so that helps reduce the cost of fees a lot! The Scotiabank passport comes with some lounge access as well which we love!
Oh and to your last question, we do our best to balance not carrying too much cash with not having to take out cash multiple times per week. Generally, we try to take out enough cash for one week at a time and then each day we only carry what we expect to need for the day. Everything else stays safely locked in our backpacks back at our Air BnB. So far this strategy has worked well for us!
@@nicoleandmico Thank you so much for explaining in depth. I do have the TD all-inclusive account. I didn't know ATM withdrawals where free. Thanks again for the tip.
Good video and very informative. One thing bit shocking for me is the travel insurance, I pay around £80 annual fee to cover travelling worldwide including Covid-related expense (but excluding USA, Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and Cuba). I guess if those countries are included or also involve with extreme sports or certain activity may need more, but over $1000 a year was still bit shock. Anyways, thanks for sharing.
Yes health medical and general travel! I think one time we had to get extra coverage because we were doing a more extreme sport (hiking above 5000m) but other than that they got all the basics covered.
Hey guys ive just discovered your site through you Indian videos and am really enjoying your content. This is such a great video. a quick questions for some of your experiences (I am thinking Everest Base camp in particular) which requires specialist gear e.g hiking poles, goose down jackets, did you buy them or hire? If you bought them did you continue to cary them around?
Hey we are so sorry we missed this comment! For EBC we had most of what we needed for clothing (we had a good layering system already) but we needed extra things like poles and heavy jackets. We ended up buying them in Kathmandu which was okay for some things (like the poles) because they weren't thst important. The jacket however, we regret buying it there. I don't think it kept us as warm as we wanted it too as the later days of the trek got VERY cold. It was cheap and it meant we avoided having to carry around an expensive jacket so at the end of the day it got the job done. After the hike we donated all our extra gear we didn't want to carry from Nepal to Sri Lanka. Some gear (like shoes and extra layers of clothing) we shipped back home to Canada from Kathmandu. Total cost of the small shoebox of clothes and what not was under $100 which was less than the cost of the clothes so it was worth it. It took a long time to get to Canada though but since we kept traveling, it didn't bother us. We're sorry this info is late! Happy travels and don't hesitate to ask us anything else!
Really enjoyed! Thanks guys! How do you factor in international flights into daily spend average? Do you count it on the day of travel? Date of purchase? Or is it its own separate budget?
Awesome question! We enter it in on the day of travel. Of course that means certain days look like they have huge expenses, but with the Travel Spend app that we use we are able to see a daily average across the whole trip so we can get a clearer picture of the cost of our travels overall.
Really enjoying your videos! Super informative, lively and fun to watch. Thank you for sharing your budget as well! We are a family of 5 (two adults and three kids) getting ready to backpack around the world for one year. We reside in California, heading to Colombia, then Peru. Your videos on Peru have been so helpful. Again, thank you! After watching your budget video I'm just shocked at how low your costs were for flying! What's your secret for cheap flights? San Francisco to Lima was 900 usd dollars each (x5), one way! Thats almost half of what you spent for the year (of course we are 5, not two, but still!!). We booked budget coach flights with carry on only. We searched via incognito, but we just couldn't find anything cheaper. We found the flights within country to be so expensive as well. What's your approach to keeping this cost down? Are you still traveling?
We are glad you enjoyed the video! Money can be such a taboo subject, even when it comes to something really fun and exciting like travel. We're hopeful that sharing our experiences and budget can help more people out in their travel journeys 😊 On that note, you're trip sounds amazing! I can't imagine what great memories you and your kids will have from such a huge and significant adventure. Of course we wish you the best of luck in that. If you have instagram then make sure you add us so we can follow too haha. With regards to flights I think we employ pretty much the same techniques: use Incognito mode when looking at prices, always book directly with the airlines if you can (as opposed to going through a third party website). For South America sometimes their airlines have an "american" website ending in .com and sometimes they have a local website for those booking within the country (e.g. Peru, Chile, etc). We found prices can be more expensive on the "american" website so always try to see if they have a local in-country website instead. Also when on those websites we try to use the local language and local currency. If you use the "english" version of their website we heard it can also alter prices to be more expensive. Lastly we use a VPN to move our location around as booking from different countries can cause prices to change. If you don't have a VPN service we highly recommend you get one - it can be handy when you're full time traveling. Also I just checked flights from SFO-LIM and saw flights with United (1 way, 1 stop and departing 2 weeks from now) for $370 USD per person. The $900 each sounds very expensive so maybe you have something in your search that's raising the prices? Let us know what you find!
Love seeing this!! We’ve been traveling for a year now too but haven’t gotten to check how much we’ve actually spent in total - kind of dreading it actually! 😂😂 looking forward to watching the rest of your journey ❤️
That's amazing!!! It is a little scary to see the total, but somehow we also feel really good about spending our money this way. It sounds like you guys feel the same!
@@nicoleandmico yes definitely!!! Spend money on moments you’ll always remember instead of things you can always replace - our new life motto ❤️ hopefully we cross paths somewhere in the world someday! You guys seem like a lot of fun to travel with 👍🏽
This was a very insightful video! Looks like you both did a healthy share of research, preparation and budgeting before your trips. Thanks for sharing! When do your worldly adventures end or do you anticipate more full-time travelling in the coming years? :)
Thanks so much! We love hearing you found the video helpful. For now we expect to be traveling for another year or so, but we have learned to keep things open so really we aren't too sure!
Mostly just with lots of research, and accepting that depending on what country we're in, we might have to give up a few luxuries to stay within our budget. We also do our best to book directly with people whenever we can and offer cash for payment, which usually reduces the price by taking out fees for booking services. Occasionally we stay in hostels when there's no private space in our price range for a reasonable cost, but that has been really rare on our travels as we really aren't fans of hostel living.
It could have been cheaper or it could have been more expensive. The important thing is to have a number that fits your style of travelling, and doesn’t compromise or limit the experience. I think your budget is very reasonable considering what you’ve been able to see and do on your travels.
Your flights seem really random - how much was the route planned, and how much did you just make up as you went along? A few years ago I did a "Round the World" trip - IN THREE WEEKS! 😮 (Bangkok, Hong Kong, Sydney, Hawaii, San Francisco). By the end our body clocks were so messed up I wanted dinner in the morning and breakfast in the evening 😂 The worst thing was the different climates though, we had to pack for everything. It was a super fun trip and it went surprisingly smoothly, but we did spend a lot of time in airports, we only had a few nights at each destination. Happy Travels!
Yes it did look a little random didn't it 😅 we mostly made it up as we went along depending on what countries were open for travel. The first trip over the Atlantic to NYC was to get our vaccines and then we decided to resume travel roughly in the same part of the world meaning we had to go back. Then we decided to go home for Christmas before starting the south america leg so we again flew over the Atlantic before heading south. Honestly we knew what country we would go to next, roughly 1 week or so out - there was a lot of spontaneity to it which we enjoyed in some ways. Your trip around sounds amazing! Fast paced and adventure dense. I love it! Thanks for watching 😁
My trips are always packed, perhaps too packed, very little contingency in the itinerary, and not much time for rest. I do as much research as I can and plan every detail to make sure we see and do as much as possible in the time available. Usually trips are planned months and months in advance. I'm not so good at spotaneous 😂 We're going to Jordan in less than 3 weeks, actually staying in Memories Aicha for a night. And we're going to Ecuador later this year - Amazon, Galapagos, Mindo, Cotapaxi. Both trips were planned for last year, but the pandemic changed our plans. It's always fun watching your channel, you seem like a lovely couple.
Awesome that's a great way to see many things in a short amount of time. Your trip to Jordan sounds amazing! We absolutely loved that country and even stayed at memories Aicha too! We made a vlog on memories aicha and wadi rum in case your interested in what we got up to. We felt like we just had such a magical time there 🥰. Ecuador is also going to be incredible! we didn't show it in this video because we were only covering the first 12 months of travel but we actually ended up staying 6 weeks in Ecuador. Should you have any questions about travel in these two places, of course we'd be happy to help 😊
Fière d'être canadienne quand je regarde vos vidéo. Nous repartons faire le tour du monde pour 21 mois et nous nous inspirons grandement de vos experience. MERCI ! on se voit sur la route ?
I think when i start this i will section my trips off. South and Central America, asia, africa, europe, and middle east. It will take much longer than a year, so i will probably section it off as 9 months traveling and 3 months at home base in USA
@@nicoleandmico its strange because I really need to go- but when it finally happens its so scary. I was due to leave last year but partner then sabotaged it. Now I've met an amazing guy I'm so scared… scared of ( like prior) selling everything, like everything! I've been living on a mattress in an empty home for 12 months now. It's scary that's for sure ❤️
Sorry about that! We had some edits to the website and the link stopped working. We've updated the link to bring you to a google spreadsheet where you can see the data. You can also just click here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Dk_2bC5S4oPHfNudyZonDkSrUOgB0Pb5/edit?usp=share_link&ouid=104446010082319510694&rtpof=true&sd=true Hope that helps!
Good video guys. We are in Toronto and on the journey to becoming Financially Independent in 2024. We would like to know the taxes implications. Not a fun topic, but whats your experience with CRA and taxes? Stay safe and love the videos. :)
Hey we're glad you liked the video! We think what you guys are doing is great and personally we hope to get there one day ourselves instead of just digging into savings and investments for the time being. Regarding the tax implications we haven't noticed anything major yet. We left in 2021 but had two months of employment which obviously contributed to the bulk of our income that year. On paper it was normal tax year but we just made significantly less. We also started renting our townhouse in Canada for the first time which meant some additional tax forms for investment property. We filed a declaration of tax residency with CRA to confirm that we are still tax residents of Canada which has some benefits especially since we hold property in Canada. I don't mind getting to the details if you want to know more, just connect with us via email or instagram DM if you'd like to talk further 😊
@@nicoleandmico thank you very much. We think this is a good idea, and this option would also leave you with room to contribute to the TFSA :) We will send a DM!
People always ask me if I’m a Filipina princess as well - I say yes and I sold a few of my islands there to afford traveling full time. Also, the ransom from kidnapping my white husband helped too 👍🏽 😂
Yeah it can definitely be expensive sometimes but when we lived in Canada we just waited for deals most times. Also our flights in the video were always one way and never too far (as compared to when we flew from North America to anywhere else in the world). Flying on a budget is not cheap for sure but not impossible 😊
What do you think - are the experiences and memories worth the money, or is too much (or maybe we didn't do enough!)?
100 percent I love how you guys place a high value on experience. It helped me reframe things cause I used to go out to eat a lot when traveling and see that as part of the experience, but its cool especially for long term travel to find ways of eating out that you can still experience the culture but still make it affordable. It was really helpful when you could see that eating out 20% of the time cost almost as much as the groceries 80% mind blown. You guys are inspiring
Thank you so much for your kinds words and for sharing what you learned with us! We totally agree that trying the local cuisine is a great way to get to know a culture, but as you noted, it really adds up on a long term trip. Its also super cool to check out the grocery stores around the world because they vary so much, so do your own cooking has other perks too :)
Nobody ever lies on their death bed and says, "Gee, I wish I'd bought more stuff". Before I die, I want to say I've lived. Memories are priceless, make as many as you can.
100%
I am much older than you and have been to many of the places you have. I did my 1st backpack trip 30 years ago, and have done many more since. I have LOVED watching your videos, it has brought back such amazing memories for me. I did them all before youtube ha ha so only have photos. Take it from me, NO AMOUNT OF MONEY will ever replace those experiences. But just a warning, once you start it can be very difficult going back to the "normal" world, :)
I see a lot of couple videos with monthly expenses, and for someone traveling full-time for 2 years I'd say as a single person I average from 1800-2500 a month. Can probably do with a lot less depending on location and lifestyle. Just to give context to folks that are single.
You two have amazing chemistry. So glad I found your channel. Thank you for giving me an idea of the costs to travel full-time. What an adventure you're having and the memories must be priceless! I'd love to hear about your future adventures together, whether you're able to support yourselves solely through TH-cam, and other travel hacks to get the best value for your money. Happy travels!
Wow that's so cheap...for all that you did and the beautiful memories made...That's AWESOME...
We totally agree!! For us, the memories and experiences are worth so much more than what we spent! It's awesome to hear you agree 😀
you guys are so charismatic!!
Awe thanks!!
Great advice about prioritizing spending on activities rather than lodging, especially since we’re unexpectedly finding ourselves on a reduced travel budget. Very helpful for planning our trip!
Yeah we would get groceries and make our meals all day just so we have a bit more leeway in the activities and tours. Glad you found this helpful and please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. We love connecting with other people who caught the travel bug like we have 😊
Oooh excited for this!! I love talking money + travel and really appreciate y’all sharing this breakdown! 💚
We love talking money and travel as well and hope sharing our experience will help other people make their travel dreams a reality! Thanks for coming along with us :)
This video was great! Love seeing the breakdown, thank you for being open about finances and loved that you included flights. I feel like when most creators do videos of how much they spend it doesn’t include that.
We are so glad to hear you enjoyed it! We did our best to be super open about the costs, there is nothing worse than clicking a 'cost of travel' video and not getting all the numbers 😂
I've watched a few of your videos so far and I'm loving the easy to digest format! My questions: How do you come back to work after traveling for a year? How does this impact one's long-term financial goals? I worry about my career skills getting rusty if I were to go on vacation for a very long time with the intention of coming back.
Hey there, thanks for watching! I think for us we feel like we are constantly learning while traveling, and while what we are learning may not be directly related to the fields our careers are in, the things we learn on the road and life lessons that transfer to every area of our life. TH-cam also helps because we are learning so much about a new topic and constantly using our creative sides which are exciting skills to practice! And for us, the financial impact is 1000% worth the experiences we are having, but that is a very personal choice! It will certainly bump us back financially for a little while, but personally, we are well setup to bounce back quickly if/when we choose to go home. If you are too then the financial and career risks feel less scary. And truly, once you get out of the hustle-life culture you realize it just isn't all its cracked up to be and the best thing you can do is live how you want 🙂
Wow I’ve never seen someone do a video like this, it’s amazing, thank you
No problem, happy to hear you found it useful!
sounds about right, for a similar solo trip in Middle East/SE Asia/South America in 2010-2011 I spent $27k..
Thanks for sharing that info! I think it's great if more people get a general idea of what their in for when they go on trips like this. It's good for awareness 😊
Would love to hear about how you find places to stay beyond AirBnb
This is great, and I also really like how you shared the raw data spreadsheet on your website - I haven't seen a lot of posts that would go into such detail - do you plan to do another video like this after year two? It would be interesting to see what has changed, if anything.
We're glad you found it helpful! We haven't actually thought about making another video about year 2 expenses but we will give it some thought now that you mention it! It would definitely be interesting to see the change
Thanks for sharing and best night honesty!
We are happy to share! Thanks for watching 😀
Great info. Thanks for the Travel Spend app.
Our pleasure!
This was super informative guys! We're planning our own year-long 'round the world' trip and the hardest part BY FAR has been trying to figure out how much to save & budget! It really does come down to what you prioritise! Totally worth it for you two, those experiences look incredible!
Ahhhh that's amazing! You are in for the adventure of a lifetime! Do you already have a rough idea of the regions you hope to visit?
@@nicoleandmico We'd love to cover Asia, Middle East and South America. We can't wait, travel seems to be really be opening up now after the past few years!
That sounds like a wonderful trip and we hope you have an amazing time 😊 Of course if you have any questions about travel and costs we are always happy to help 🤗
@@nicoleandmico Thanks so much!! We definitely will reach out if we have any questions. Safe travels guys!!
Thanks, you guys too!
Great video, thank you for this work! Excellent videos and operational details on travel
Glad you enjoyed it! We probably need to do an update for year 2 haha
Hi guys! I've just started following you/ Thanks for your honest, authentic, Canadian ways! And I noticed that you both smile at least 80% of the time ! :)
Welcome!! And thank you for the compliment. We are generally a pretty happy bunch 😄
Thanks for a helpful video. As others have mentioned the spreadsheet link is not working. Did you decide to take it down? Please let us know either way. Thanks
Thanks for sharing guys 👍🏼 so transparent 💯
No problem! We love sharing anything we can to make travel easier and more accessible for more people!
These are my favorite types of videos! Thank you so much for being so transparent in order to help others in their journey. This isn't a budget related question, but I'm really curious about how you handled all of the vaccines needed for each place since you visited so many regions. Did you get them all prior to leaving, or did you get them as you went along? I remember there were like 10 recommended vaccines when I was planning a trip to Chile before COVID, so I can only imagine the amount needed for all of the different areas you visited.
Great question! We love answering questions like this one! We got as many vaccines as we could before we left to start traveling. Prior to leaving Canada we were still both employed full-time, so we were able to save a lot of money when we got our vaccines because our health insurance policies through our jobs covered a lot of the injections. We went as far as to get our rabies vaccines as well because we have a very hard time not saying hello to the pups we meet around the world. When we first left for travel, COVID vaccines weren't accessible yet, so this is actually the only one we have gotten on the road! We got our first covid vaccines in the USD (that's why we randomly went to NYC after Sri Lanka) and then when we went home to Canada for Christmas in 2021/2022 we were able to get our booster dose. We hope that helps!
Hi guys the link to the expenses doesn’t work. Love the video
Awesome video woow,
star to saving money ✅
right now
Thanks
Good luck and let us know if you have any questions! Saving and travel planning is part of the fun of a big adventure ☺️😊
Nicole and Mico, thank you much for sharing this very helpful video. I am planing to do solo traveling myself. This gives me a good idea of what I need to do. Happy Travels!
Questions I like to know: What do you both do for a living before this? How has travel change your view on life, people, etc. For me, I don’t take things for granted any more because I see how others around the world can have so much less but are happy. Thanks again.
We are so glad to hear you found the video helpful and are cheering you on for your solo trip! Woohoo!
To answer your questions, Mico is an engineer and I (N) am a Social Worker back in Canada. Travel has changed our perspective on so many things, definitely not taking things for granted as you've said, but one of our biggest lessons has been about how we can live our life. We have met so many amazing people living alternative lifestyles around the world and we hope to one day set something like that up for ourselves! It's amazing to see how possible it can be!
@@nicoleandmico You guys are so smart to travel while young. I don’t know why I never thought this was possible when I was younger. Thanks.
That is so kind, thank you! For a long time we felt like it was irresponsible to prioritize traveling so much, but we quickly realized that it's what we love and that's a good enough reason to make it the centre of our world. Have an awesome time when you head out for your own travel adventures!
Amazing content and quality! Can't believe you're less than 10 k subs. I'm sure you'll blow up.
Thank you so much for the kind words! We're glad you enjoyed it and hope you found it useful 🤗 Let us know if there's any other travel topics you'd like to see from us and we'll be sure to look into it 😁 PS fingers crossed you're right 🤞😆
Thank you...... this is great info.....
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you for your very honest information!
Just two questions:
1/ My wife and I are retirees? So, one expense category we are probably more concerned that both of you, are the medical/dental expenses. We are in good health; any idea on what you think would be a reasonable amount to budget?
2/ How Many more years do you intend to continue traveling?
Hi there! Apologies for the delayed response, we have been hiking in Peru with very limited service recently, but we are back!
To your first question, our suggestion would be to find a travel medical insurance that works for your travel style and medical needs, and that will make up the most of your medical/dental expenses while on the road. We use SafetyWing's Nomad Insurance which is sufficient for our needs (and costs $42USD/month in our age range), but as someone in their retirement years you may both feel the need to get more coverage. We have heard good things about the insurance provider 'World Nomads' as well, although we found it difficult to navigate their requirements for being in the country when extending insurance (this was the case when we were first researching insurance companies 2+ years ago, things may have changed with them now). They are definitely more expensive, but may be worth looking in to. Other than having travel medical insurance, the only medical/dental expenses we have incurred are for medications (just the basics like Tylenol, Advil, Gravol, etc.), massages when our muscles need some help, and we had a teeth cleaning in Ecuador for $30USD that sadly did not live up to our expectations!
I'm not sure that helps as much as we would like, but our suggestion would definitely be to start budgeting for this category by finding the right travel medical insurance for your situation and expect that to be about 80-90% of your medical/dental expenses for the road!
In answer to your second question - we really aren't sure! We hope to be traveling for at least another year but our budget as well as some activities coming up back home in Canada will have a lot of impact on our timeline!
Thanks so much for watching our video and asking a thought-provoking question! Let us know if you have any others, and happy traveling!!
Great video - although I assume you cannot quite cut a couple's budget in half to get the budget of a single traveler, as some expenses, including housing and food, are cheaper shared across two.
definitely worthy! it can be a one in a life opportunity and you never know if you are going to come back to that country so yes! I will also prefer stay a shorter time and do all activities as possible, and even if my budget is not enough for that I will always enjoy food anywhere 😋😋
Yes there's not many times in our life where we can just drop it all and go! We decided it was right for us and we haven't had any regrets. The money is something we can get back over time but it's not too often we'll be able to visit such beautiful and very far away places. We know there's a lot of cheap ramen to eat in our future and we're okay with 😅😋
What do you do with your bags during the day of travel. Every worried about stuff getting stolen? Thanks! Also from Calgary as well. Would love to meet up with you guys some day!
O so cool! It's great to meet another fellow Calgarian ☺️ for our bags we thankfully have never had anything bad happen to them. We always keep a close eye on them, especially if traveling by bus or train. We also make sure that our passports are in our daybag too, never tucked into the larger backpack that might be checked in or inside the luggage hold of a bus. We usually prefer cheaper public transit when getting around but for travel days when we have all our stuff with us we tend to take ubers or taxis. More expensive but better to have direct transportation. These are just general tips and we hope this helps!
Super helpful video! The budget link doesn’t appear to be working 😢
Great video! Out of curiosity, what did you do with the furr puppy while traveling for a year?
Thanks! Our dog was living with family 😊
Really informational vid. Not a lot banking options out there for Canadian backpackers. Any tips on saving weekly ATM and FX fees for long term travel ? . How did you manage cash while traveling ?
Great questions! We have an account type with TD bank that gets us free foreign ATM withdrawals on TDs end, so we still have to pay the ATM fee that is set by the ATM we are using (some are free, some are as much as $9!), but there are no fees from TD for taking money our while abroad which is great! The account is called an all-inclusive account in case that helps. And for credit cards we use the Scotiabank Visa Passport which has no FX fees, so that helps reduce the cost of fees a lot! The Scotiabank passport comes with some lounge access as well which we love!
Oh and to your last question, we do our best to balance not carrying too much cash with not having to take out cash multiple times per week. Generally, we try to take out enough cash for one week at a time and then each day we only carry what we expect to need for the day. Everything else stays safely locked in our backpacks back at our Air BnB. So far this strategy has worked well for us!
@@nicoleandmico Thank you so much for explaining in depth. I do have the TD all-inclusive account. I didn't know ATM withdrawals where free. Thanks again for the tip.
Happy to help!
Good video and very informative. One thing bit shocking for me is the travel insurance, I pay around £80 annual fee to cover travelling worldwide including Covid-related expense (but excluding USA, Mexico, Canada, the Caribbean and Cuba). I guess if those countries are included or also involve with extreme sports or certain activity may need more, but over $1000 a year was still bit shock. Anyways, thanks for sharing.
Is safety wing also health insurance?
Yes health medical and general travel! I think one time we had to get extra coverage because we were doing a more extreme sport (hiking above 5000m) but other than that they got all the basics covered.
Hey guys ive just discovered your site through you Indian videos and am really enjoying your content. This is such a great video. a quick questions for some of your experiences (I am thinking Everest Base camp in particular) which requires specialist gear e.g hiking poles, goose down jackets, did you buy them or hire? If you bought them did you continue to cary them around?
Hey we are so sorry we missed this comment! For EBC we had most of what we needed for clothing (we had a good layering system already) but we needed extra things like poles and heavy jackets. We ended up buying them in Kathmandu which was okay for some things (like the poles) because they weren't thst important. The jacket however, we regret buying it there. I don't think it kept us as warm as we wanted it too as the later days of the trek got VERY cold. It was cheap and it meant we avoided having to carry around an expensive jacket so at the end of the day it got the job done. After the hike we donated all our extra gear we didn't want to carry from Nepal to Sri Lanka. Some gear (like shoes and extra layers of clothing) we shipped back home to Canada from Kathmandu. Total cost of the small shoebox of clothes and what not was under $100 which was less than the cost of the clothes so it was worth it. It took a long time to get to Canada though but since we kept traveling, it didn't bother us. We're sorry this info is late! Happy travels and don't hesitate to ask us anything else!
Really enjoyed! Thanks guys! How do you factor in international flights into daily spend average? Do you count it on the day of travel? Date of purchase? Or is it its own separate budget?
Awesome question! We enter it in on the day of travel. Of course that means certain days look like they have huge expenses, but with the Travel Spend app that we use we are able to see a daily average across the whole trip so we can get a clearer picture of the cost of our travels overall.
Really enjoying your videos! Super informative, lively and fun to watch. Thank you for sharing your budget as well! We are a family of 5 (two adults and three kids) getting ready to backpack around the world for one year. We reside in California, heading to Colombia, then Peru. Your videos on Peru have been so helpful. Again, thank you! After watching your budget video I'm just shocked at how low your costs were for flying! What's your secret for cheap flights? San Francisco to Lima was 900 usd dollars each (x5), one way! Thats almost half of what you spent for the year (of course we are 5, not two, but still!!). We booked budget coach flights with carry on only. We searched via incognito, but we just couldn't find anything cheaper. We found the flights within country to be so expensive as well. What's your approach to keeping this cost down?
Are you still traveling?
We are glad you enjoyed the video! Money can be such a taboo subject, even when it comes to something really fun and exciting like travel. We're hopeful that sharing our experiences and budget can help more people out in their travel journeys 😊 On that note, you're trip sounds amazing! I can't imagine what great memories you and your kids will have from such a huge and significant adventure. Of course we wish you the best of luck in that. If you have instagram then make sure you add us so we can follow too haha. With regards to flights I think we employ pretty much the same techniques: use Incognito mode when looking at prices, always book directly with the airlines if you can (as opposed to going through a third party website). For South America sometimes their airlines have an "american" website ending in .com and sometimes they have a local website for those booking within the country (e.g. Peru, Chile, etc). We found prices can be more expensive on the "american" website so always try to see if they have a local in-country website instead. Also when on those websites we try to use the local language and local currency. If you use the "english" version of their website we heard it can also alter prices to be more expensive. Lastly we use a VPN to move our location around as booking from different countries can cause prices to change. If you don't have a VPN service we highly recommend you get one - it can be handy when you're full time traveling. Also I just checked flights from SFO-LIM and saw flights with United (1 way, 1 stop and departing 2 weeks from now) for $370 USD per person. The $900 each sounds very expensive so maybe you have something in your search that's raising the prices? Let us know what you find!
Love seeing this!! We’ve been traveling for a year now too but haven’t gotten to check how much we’ve actually spent in total - kind of dreading it actually! 😂😂 looking forward to watching the rest of your journey ❤️
That's amazing!!! It is a little scary to see the total, but somehow we also feel really good about spending our money this way. It sounds like you guys feel the same!
@@nicoleandmico yes definitely!!! Spend money on moments you’ll always remember instead of things you can always replace - our new life motto ❤️ hopefully we cross paths somewhere in the world someday! You guys seem like a lot of fun to travel with 👍🏽
Awe that's a beautiful motto, we just might steal it! Here's hoping an in-person meet up is in our future 🤗
This was a very insightful video! Looks like you both did a healthy share of research, preparation and budgeting before your trips. Thanks for sharing! When do your worldly adventures end or do you anticipate more full-time travelling in the coming years? :)
Thanks so much! We love hearing you found the video helpful. For now we expect to be traveling for another year or so, but we have learned to keep things open so really we aren't too sure!
@@nicoleandmico Awesome, looking forward to all those future videos from you two! 😃
Thank you!!
How did you find accommodations for both of you from
Like $20-$30
A night? Love you video
Mostly just with lots of research, and accepting that depending on what country we're in, we might have to give up a few luxuries to stay within our budget. We also do our best to book directly with people whenever we can and offer cash for payment, which usually reduces the price by taking out fees for booking services. Occasionally we stay in hostels when there's no private space in our price range for a reasonable cost, but that has been really rare on our travels as we really aren't fans of hostel living.
It could have been cheaper or it could have been more expensive. The important thing is to have a number that fits your style of travelling, and doesn’t compromise or limit the experience. I think your budget is very reasonable considering what you’ve been able to see and do on your travels.
Thank you! We have made so many memories traveling that we wouldn't trade for any amount of money in the world 😀
I think for what you did, awesome! Consider rent, food, gas, clothing, travel! BARGAIN❤❤
Thank you! We totally agree. We may not have been making any money as we went, but we sure do love the memories we made along the way!
Your flights seem really random - how much was the route planned, and how much did you just make up as you went along?
A few years ago I did a "Round the World" trip - IN THREE WEEKS! 😮 (Bangkok, Hong Kong, Sydney, Hawaii, San Francisco). By the end our body clocks were so messed up I wanted dinner in the morning and breakfast in the evening 😂 The worst thing was the different climates though, we had to pack for everything. It was a super fun trip and it went surprisingly smoothly, but we did spend a lot of time in airports, we only had a few nights at each destination. Happy Travels!
Yes it did look a little random didn't it 😅 we mostly made it up as we went along depending on what countries were open for travel. The first trip over the Atlantic to NYC was to get our vaccines and then we decided to resume travel roughly in the same part of the world meaning we had to go back. Then we decided to go home for Christmas before starting the south america leg so we again flew over the Atlantic before heading south. Honestly we knew what country we would go to next, roughly 1 week or so out - there was a lot of spontaneity to it which we enjoyed in some ways. Your trip around sounds amazing! Fast paced and adventure dense. I love it! Thanks for watching 😁
My trips are always packed, perhaps too packed, very little contingency in the itinerary, and not much time for rest. I do as much research as I can and plan every detail to make sure we see and do as much as possible in the time available. Usually trips are planned months and months in advance. I'm not so good at spotaneous 😂
We're going to Jordan in less than 3 weeks, actually staying in Memories Aicha for a night. And we're going to Ecuador later this year - Amazon, Galapagos, Mindo, Cotapaxi. Both trips were planned for last year, but the pandemic changed our plans.
It's always fun watching your channel, you seem like a lovely couple.
Awesome that's a great way to see many things in a short amount of time. Your trip to Jordan sounds amazing! We absolutely loved that country and even stayed at memories Aicha too! We made a vlog on memories aicha and wadi rum in case your interested in what we got up to. We felt like we just had such a magical time there 🥰. Ecuador is also going to be incredible! we didn't show it in this video because we were only covering the first 12 months of travel but we actually ended up staying 6 weeks in Ecuador. Should you have any questions about travel in these two places, of course we'd be happy to help 😊
That is an accelerated round the world trip! Which I wanna do someday!
Definitely! It's such an amazing experience and we're surr you'll love it! 😊🙌
Love this !
Thanks for the support Nick!
Fière d'être canadienne quand je regarde vos vidéo. Nous repartons faire le tour du monde pour 21 mois et nous nous inspirons grandement de vos experience. MERCI ! on se voit sur la route ?
We hope you have the most amazing trip! It would be awesome to bump into you one day 😊
Link is not working
I think when i start this i will section my trips off. South and Central America, asia, africa, europe, and middle east. It will take much longer than a year, so i will probably section it off as 9 months traveling and 3 months at home base in USA
Great videos and I’m about to do the same 😜❤️
So exciting!!!!!
@@nicoleandmico its strange because I really need to go- but when it finally happens its so scary. I was due to leave last year but partner then sabotaged it.
Now I've met an amazing guy I'm so scared… scared of ( like prior) selling everything, like everything!
I've been living on a mattress in an empty home for 12 months now.
It's scary that's for sure ❤️
Hi! The link to your budget isn’t working
Sorry about that! We had some edits to the website and the link stopped working. We've updated the link to bring you to a google spreadsheet where you can see the data. You can also just click here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Dk_2bC5S4oPHfNudyZonDkSrUOgB0Pb5/edit?usp=share_link&ouid=104446010082319510694&rtpof=true&sd=true
Hope that helps!
Good video guys. We are in Toronto and on the journey to becoming Financially Independent in 2024. We would like to know the taxes implications. Not a fun topic, but whats your experience with CRA and taxes? Stay safe and love the videos. :)
Hey we're glad you liked the video! We think what you guys are doing is great and personally we hope to get there one day ourselves instead of just digging into savings and investments for the time being. Regarding the tax implications we haven't noticed anything major yet. We left in 2021 but had two months of employment which obviously contributed to the bulk of our income that year. On paper it was normal tax year but we just made significantly less. We also started renting our townhouse in Canada for the first time which meant some additional tax forms for investment property. We filed a declaration of tax residency with CRA to confirm that we are still tax residents of Canada which has some benefits especially since we hold property in Canada. I don't mind getting to the details if you want to know more, just connect with us via email or instagram DM if you'd like to talk further 😊
@@nicoleandmico thank you very much. We think this is a good idea, and this option would also leave you with room to contribute to the TFSA :) We will send a DM!
People always ask me if I’m a Filipina princess as well - I say yes and I sold a few of my islands there to afford traveling full time. Also, the ransom from kidnapping my white husband helped too 👍🏽 😂
Hahahah that is so great! We will have to add the ransom joke to our repertoire for a future video 😂
I don't beleive you about the flights. When I look for my wife and I for one flight to Tokyo is 3k! Haha can you help us?
Yeah it can definitely be expensive sometimes but when we lived in Canada we just waited for deals most times. Also our flights in the video were always one way and never too far (as compared to when we flew from North America to anywhere else in the world). Flying on a budget is not cheap for sure but not impossible 😊
I KNEW you were a Filipino prince! All those years…
Haha shhhhhhh
How do you keep romance alive?
Living out our dreams together makes that part easy!
How did you guys managed to travel so cheap?!
We travel very slowly, taking short flights from one country to the next and we do a lot of our own cooking to save money on food. I hope this helps!
👌👍
How old are you two ?