If you are a long time reader, you know that I enjoy spreadsheets, keeping lists, keeping tallies of stuff, and talking about finances. My favorite time of year is the end of the year (or the beginning of the new year, I suppose), when I get to do all of that in one post, the annual money pie post. I know that not everyone loves doing this as much as me, but I do think the number one step to financial freedom is tracking your expenses so that you know (a) where your money is going and (b) how much you would need when you retire or (c) what you would need in an emergency if you lost your job or something like that. Knowledge is power.
You may recall that in 2024 my pie was a little hard to bake because I sold my house in March and so I had a bunch of extra fees due to that and it was hard to extrapolate everything in an organized manner. I am pleased to report that this year was much cleaner and I even have some fun facts for you! Let's do it.
Accommodation: $11,925.14 (42%) As always, this is my highest expense. I generally rent a one bedroom apartment with a kitchen, air conditioning and a washing machine in or near the city center. For five months in 2025 (see below denoted with !!), I rented a place for an entire month; otherwise I typically stay 4 days to a week in one place, but sometimes when hiking or cycling, I am moving each day. In some places accommodation is more like 50% of my total spent for a month, but once you average it out, due to camping, staying with friends and family and housesitting, the cost comes down a little bit. Here is how the months stacked up depending on location.
Jan: $1,419.97 France!!
Feb: $1,067.49 Poland/Amsterdam/Belgium
Mar: $979.57 Spain!!
Apr: $1,377.07 Türkiye!!
May: $652.99* Türkiye
Jun: $ 810.34 Georgia!!
Jul: $1,127.05 Latvia/Lithuania/Poland
Aug: $1,238.71 Balkans
Sep: $905.96 Bulgaria!!
Oct: $862.39* Scotland
Nov: $1,156.60* England/Wales
Dec: $327.00* US
Dining Out: $3,333.61 (12%) I am not one to eat out a lot; I typically buy groceries and cook at home for the most part. However, on average, I ate out about twice a week, plus had some beers, wine, coffee, ice cream and pastries while out and about. Here are the average costs for a few of my typical meals: Lunch or dinner (sometimes with a beer or glass of wine included) averaged out to about $20, beers ranged from about $3 (Spain/Balkans) to about $10 (Wales/US), but averaged around $8 overall. A glass of wine was about $5 on average and a typical pastry was about $2.25.
Groceries: $1,646.99 (6%) As I mentioned, unless I am in a hotel with no kitchen, which is fairly rare, I mostly just buy groceries and cook at home. I don't cook very much meat when at home; that is something I am generally more likely to order when out, and so my main meals often consist of lots of salads, veggies, fruit, bread, beans, rice and yogurt, eggs or oatmeal for breakfast. When you are moving around a lot, it doesn't always make sense to buy a lot of complicated items, so I typically eat pretty simply. I also don't buy a lot of booze, although when in France...or Georgia...or Spain...I may have had a few bottles of wine. Coupled with dining out, my total food cost per day came out to about $13.50.
Shopping: $2,456.09 (9%) This consists of anything I have to buy like toiletries, travel gear, clothes, shoes, electronics, or in my case, camping gear. The bulk of it is electronics, as I had to buy a new phone, and an extra SSD hard drive. I also bought three new pairs of shoes over the year (one in the UK, which was about $170 - ouch!), and replaced a few ratty clothing items that were past their prime. Actually, you will be happy to hear that I found some semi-unicorn pants (remember this post?)! I also bought a new carry on backpack (the 42L version of this one) and ended up getting these packing cubes!
Transportation: $2,134.18 (7%) This consists of any overland transport from one place to another (trains, busses), public transit within a location, car rental, gas, maintenance, parking fees, ferries and one hourly bike rental. It does not include any flights. The bulk of this cost was in the fourth quarter, when I was in the UK and US, as that was almost $900 of the total. If you break that out since it is an outlier, the average per month would have been about $140. I feel like that is pretty reasonable, as I took a train 32 times ($734 total) and a bus 32 times ($617 total) last year!
Misc.: $1,780.58 (6%) This usually consists of any random costs for shipping, bathroom fees, haircuts ($11!), and generally is not that high. However, it does include random life stuff like my CFA dues ($300) and tax prep ($183). This year there were also a few outliers, such as when I sold my house when I was in Tbilisi and had to get documents notarized and sent ($300) or when I renewed my passport when I was in the UK ($180). These things add up!
Health: $1,411.52 (5%) This consists of my monthly health insurance premium and any visits I have to any doctors. My health insurance was about $235 a month for the first three months of the year and then I switched to a different carrier, and now it is around $85 a month. I also went to the dentist for a cleaning in Tbilisi, which was about $60. I did not have any other doctors visits, but in 2026 I plan to do an entire comprehensive exam, so my health costs for this year will be a lot higher.
Utilities: $1,295.28 (5%) This consists of any credit card fees, cloud storage, internet security (VPN), phone and subscriptions (Garmin, GoPro, Trusted Housesitter). This category is a little lumpy, because some of them like NordVPN and Trusted Housesitter, I only pay every couple of years. For phone, I bought a worldwide eSim which cost about $60, plus I pay $5 per month to keep my US number while abroad.
Entertainment: $1,226.02 (4%) The bulk of this ($570) is tours and walking tours, but it also includes bike rentals, kayak rentals, museums, caves, hiking permits, and strippers. Just kidding; I couldn't resist. This also includes a prorated amount from the repositioning cruise I did, as I broke that into accommodation, dining out, travel and entertainment.
Travel: $1,181.70 (4%) Like I said, I broke part of the cruise into the travel category, but the bulk of this category ($890) was the cost of flights. All in all, I took 10 flights over the year, but I only paid for five of them in full, and used points for the other five. I will discuss this a bit more in a minute.
Grand Total: $28,391.11 or about $2,400/month or $77/day. You may recall that my goal was to stay under $2,500 per month. However, there were definitely some months that I was over, but in the end I snuck under. To be honest, this goal is a bit arbitrary, and I don't skimp on comfort. However, I just don't need to go out to eat that much, or to go to all of the attractions in each city.
A quick note about points. I won't bore you by droning on about points, but the short of it is that I got 13 hotel nights and 5 flights for "free" or even if you net out the cost of all of my travel credit cards, this saved me anywhere from about $2,000 to $3,000 depending on which methodology you use. If I would have paid for these things, I would have been over budget. In all honesty, if I would have had to pay for them, I may have only spent half that much (for example, I got a business class flight that I probably would not have paid out of pocket for), which is why I said "depending on methodology."
Lastly, what are my financial goals for 2026? My goal for 2026 is to just keep experiencing life and if I need to raise my budget, I will do that. I am not stuck on it, but I do believe that it is good to have a target, and it is also good not to buy stuff just to have stuff. I am having experiences, and I am enjoying them, and I plan to keep doing that. I will close by saying that I stayed in the cutest little B&B in Snowdonia in Wales that cost $98 per night, was comfortable, was warm and had breakfast included. In the mornings I sat and shot the breeze with the proprietor about hiking and photography, during the day I hiked and took photos, in the evening I ate steak pie and drank beer and I had such a great time. I mean, really, what more could a girl want? I guess whatever makes you happy and sets you free...
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| Everything a girl could want |
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