Don’t Kiss Me Mom, people are watching! (Santorini, Greece)
2017 was our 5th full year of this thing we are doing. You know, life.
We completed another full circumnavigation of the globe, spending 4 months in Europe, a month in the US, 6 weeks in Japan, and the remainder in Taiwan. Along the way Jr collected his 28th passport stamp. This is the first year we intentionally remained outside the US 330+ days (cuz taxes.)
At year end, upon arrival in Taiwan we signed an 18-month lease, making it our official recharge center. Jr has started part time pre-school, and we are doing our best to be completely normal in every way that doesn’t involve going to work.
Some highlights of the year:
- spring in Paris
- summer in Provence
- 10-20¢ mile valuation for Business class flights to Europe
- 5 Free hotel nights in NYC
- Alaska Cruise with Mom & Grandma (our first and final cruise)
- Meeting 100+ GCC fans at meet ups across the US. (Love you guys!)
- $5.60 Dreamliner flights to Japan
- I bought a bike! (yeah!)
- Oh…. and having the most expensive year of our lives….
2017 Cost of Living
Total spending for the year was $93,648 – about $7,800 per month or $257 per day. This breaks the previous record spend (set last year) by more than $20,000.
| Details | 2017 Annual | 2017 Daily | 2016 Annual | 2016 Daily |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Housing | $32,100 | ~$88/day | $20,723 | ~$57/day |
| Healthcare | $2,196 | ~$6/day | $2,887 | ~$8/day |
| Transportation | $11,591 | ~$32/day | $10,613 | ~$29/day |
| Groceries | $5,741 | ~$16/day | $5,010 | ~$14/day |
| Dining Out | $18,386 | ~$50/day | $16,903 | ~$46/day |
| Alcohol | $99 | ~$0/day | $914 | ~$3/day |
| Entertainment | $5,902 | ~$16/day | $2,854 | ~$8/day |
| Misc | $17,633 | ~$48/day | $12,099 | ~$33/day |
| Total | $93,648 | ~$257/day | $72,002 | ~$197/day |
A $257/day spend rate would require a minimum nest egg of ~$2.4 million, based on the 4% Rule.
Our average daily spend over 5 years is quite a bit lower, at ~$162. Including the cost of IVF and childbirth boosts that to ~$175/day.
Even as we ramp up our income and spending, I’m amazed that I haven’t had to add a row in the table for Income Tax. The Never Pay Taxes Again plan is real.
I’ve included the 2016 data in the table for reference, with full data for all previous years here: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.
Analyzing the Data
I was actually a little shocked when I looked at how much we spent in 2017; I thought it was going to be higher.
Aside from a few key decisions, 2017 cost roughly the same as 2016 – even our 4 months in Europe was similarly priced even though we toured completely different countries.
The main exception is Jr now eats more than Winnie (and I still eat too much.) Where we used to purchase 2 main dishes and share amongst the 3 of us, we now typically order 3. I now understand the phrase, eating us out of house and home ;)
The decisions that drove the majority of our increased spending were:
- Alaska Cruise – paid $7,200 for 5 people, including 1st class flights for my Grandma (my uninheritance)
- Spend 6 weeks in Japan vs SE Asia – our daily spend in Japan was on par with Europe, and easily 2x Thailand or Malaysia
- (re)Settle into Taiwan
- 3 bedroom apartment rent is higher than 1 bedroom (plus space for more kitchen stuff – Hello, new mixer!)
- Jr started pre-school
- I bought a sweet bike and gear for ~$2,500 (Ultegra pedals, etc…)
It was really during the process of making these decisions that it became clear most of my childhood money baggage was gone. Thanks for the advice, Elsa.
In the chart/tables above, I put the full cost of the Alaska Cruise for our family under Housing and the cost for Mom/Grandma under Misc. The bike went under Entertainment, and the cost of pre-school is under Miscellaneous.
World Tour
Since we went to all of the trouble of traveling, here are a few of my favorite photos. See many more on Instagram.
Conclusions and Projections
So yeah, we spent ~$94k in 2017. That bought a lot of good times. An Alaska Cruise was my Grandma’s dream vacation, so it was worth every penny. Otherwise, we mostly live the same lifestyle everywhere we go and some places just cost more than others.
2018 is off to a good start. We are enjoying a bit of time for adulting; Winnie is painting up a storm and I’m putting a lot of kilometers (miles?) on the bike.
We are planning travels around the school schedule, and just got back from Vietnam for Chinese New Year. However, travel will slow for a time… if all goes well there will be another little one joining us before Christmas (Winnie just had two embryos implanted today, so… Wish us luck!)
Thank you for reading and for your support.
Please share your GCC love on Twitter and Facebook!
Jeremy, Winnie, & Julian
Go Curry Cracker!
Well, that’s a pretty amazing year. Living the “FatFIRE” life, and no, I didn’t call you fat… just the budget. You know, the opposite of LeanFIRE.
I really like the per day spending breakdown, which is something I haven’t done, but it helps put things in perspective. Most days, we spend nothing on cars, but when you add up the insurance, gas, maintenance, and repairs, it’s more like $20 a day. Crazy!
Beautiful pictures — I want to go there. And there. And there!
Cheers!
-PoF
with a ph
GCC Great to see 90% reduction in alcohol bill,hope this is not the reason entertainment ballooned.
Nah, the new bike accounts for most of the entertainment delta. Don’t drink and ride ;)
$7,800 per month ? Gosh, this is not a blog I’ll follow anymore ! It goes against my struggle to achieve FI one day and spending all that is not a good example for me
Being a bad example is just one of the (free) services we provide here at GCC.
Good luck!
Too funny. I think this is a great example. Live beneath your means, but once you have enough – enjoy. Bravo !
@Anna – there is a coupon code for 50% off a gcc subscription if you hunt around
That sounds like an amazing year!!! As a twin mom I hope the two embryos turn into two babies! But, also as a twin mom, I hope it’s one haha!
Hi Cat!
Last time they implanted 3, and you should have seen my eyes bug out of my head when the Dr said that… We have friends in Seattle w/ triplet boys, and it is amazing and insane at the same time.
I was hoping for 2 last time – one pregnancy and done – but no such luck. This time though… one would be plenty.
I still remember the time a good friend called me and said “uhhh, they implanted 4 and they’re all “sticking”. Oh crap what do I do?” In the end only 2 were viable and now he has 5 year old twins :)
Best of luck with the baby(ies). In case it ends up being 2-3 kids, I hear bunk beds are pretty cheap. And minivans aren’t that expensive either ;)
Last time we had 2 cycles of 3 embryos, and only got the one. I think the odds are more in favor of zero than two.
One is a very good number in this case. Hoping for 1 for you :)
Wishing you and Winnie luck!!
First and last cruise, do tell. Not for you?
Thank you :)
It was nice having time for Mom and Grandma and Jr. And Grandma loved the cruise, so that was a plus. We just aren’t cruise people… the schedule is weird, it’s all too rushed, and you are stuck in a confined space. The highlight of the cruise was going into Tracy Arm Fjord to see glaciers, but we were only there for 4 hours from 5:30 am to 9:30 am and it was foggy. We’d much rather go on a smaller boat with a better schedule.
We ate well though.
Just curious, Jeremy, what do you use to track your spending? Back when we used to have iPhones, we used Trail Wallet, but since that’s not available for Android, last year we switched to the free AndroMoney App, which we actually like better now. With AndroMoney it’s super easy to divide up expenses up over 30 or 90 or 365 day time periods, so I’ve been doing that with expenses like monthly Airbnb rentals, World Nomads payments, our daughter’s school tuition. I feel like spreading payments out by recording the daily cost gives us a clearer picture of our spending.
BTW, congratulations on another great year of FIRE, and good luck with the new baby!
Thanks Shane, much appreciated :)
We do a couple things – we each have iPhones and use SimpleNote to jot down any cash spending. I manually enter these into a spreadsheet about once per week. I then compare this with Personal Capital since it tracks all of our ATM withdrawals. The charts and $/day calculations are all done in Excel.
I personally use DollarBird on Android. I manually enter my expenses and organize with custom categories. The best feature is exporting to Excel (csv file). I drop that data into a spreadsheet I made which tracks everything for me exactly how I want it.
There’s two versions currently. I really like version 1 for my needs. Version 2 does a lot more but was still in development last time I used it. It also didn’t have an export feature which was a deal killer for me. That was months ago, so I really need to give it another shot.
Oh my God…another ridiculously adorable mini-GCC (or two)?? I can’t…
Fingers crossed for you guys!!!
hopefully just one :)
Congrats. And good luck…. Ps that bike is a sweet ride!!
I love it! I’ve been riding it at least 100 km / week since I got it and it is awesome every time. I’m doing a 200 km bike race on Sunday. Check out the Go Curry Cracker Cycling Club too.
You guys are living it up! Great job. I’m very jealous, but that’s okay. We all have to find our own path.
Do you think more kids will change your lifestyle much? My brother has 3 kids and normal life is super hectic for them. They used to travel a lot more and had to cut back quite a bit. One kid doesn’t make a huge difference as far as traveling goes. Three sounds a ton harder.
It will be different. We have been stalling on kid #2 for awhile now… it’s a weighty decision to have more. One of the pros is whenever we go to a new place they will have each other.
These last 2 years have been hectic for us, with a lot of moving from place to place. We prefer to go more slowly, but we wanted to visit all the places we had considered as longer term residences. With more kids we would definitely slow down.
This is what I worry about! You guys are doing great, but you also have amazing blog income that covers your expenses (since you don’t fork over any in taxes) and it seems to be a “job” you enjoy doing.
I don’t know how the rest of us sans lucrative blog could really do this, though, even with 2.4 million in savings. Yes, it would technically cover your expenses, and yes the 4% rule has been endlessly validated, but there’s a huge psychological (and financial) difference between living off your savings and being able to live off your savings but earning other income that covers your expenses.
Inspiring and amazing. And a tough dilemma for those of us who can’t seem to come up with a reasonable and pleasurable side gig.
Is the worry that you would have (uncontrollable) steadily increasing cost of living? This was our plan from before we “retired.” Even without blog income, we can sustain this level of spending. The blog income is also insufficient to cover all of our expenses – only ~half (although I hope to improve upon that.)
Blog income helps with cash flow management, and it does have a psychological benefit. It would also ease withdrawals during a big stock market down turn. However, I assume the number of people reading early retirement blogs would also drop considerably. As such, we plan as if the extra income is just a temporary lucky break.
I think better than having any sort of side gig is to work a little longer while still living inexpensively. And then ease into a higher spend rate. This is what we did – I worked 3 years extra, saving 100% of my paycheck, and we started travel in really low cost of living countries, which is why our daily cost averaged over 5 years is so much lower. Then, if you happen upon some income generating activities on the side it is pure gravy.
Looks like a fabulous year, and your photographs are amazing. Fingers crossed on the babies, it’ll be interesting to see how you travel with a few more little ones in tow.
Me too :) Lots of people travel with multiple kids, so we’ll figure it out, I hope
So exciting about baby(ies)- hope all goes well!
Thank you!
Haha, love that picture of GCC.Jr (“Mom is kissing me! Oh the horror! the horror!”) :)
Hope you have more adorable pictures to come! *fingers cross about the baby(ies)*
He has been the subject of a lot of photographs since birth. Sometimes he’ll put his hand in front of the camera and say, “Enough, enough!”
Ahh! Wishing you the best of luck with GCC Jr. #2!!!!
Thank you Angela!
Continuing to be an inspiration for me and others visiting your site. Wishing you guys luck with the IVF.
Thanks Aytac!
I actually think for what you all did your spending was cheap!! How wonderful that you were able to take your grandmother and mother on a dream cruise.
I know it’s not about the camera (but the skill of the photographer) but what camera do you guys use? Your photos are pretty amazing. I thought they were professional stock photos until I saw your son in the Japan one.
I feel the same. I thought we were going to break $100k.
It’s a Sony a7ii. There is a full list of camera gear here. Winnie is a great photographer, even her iPhone photos look great.
Trully – what does your beautiful wife NOT do?! lol… I’d love her to blog – but I guess it is past-tense – about how she dresses so awesomely while traveling so light… Best wishes for kiddos!
well, she doesn’t put up with any of my bs, so there is that ;)
She has her own blog, but it is in Chinese.
BTW that is the most adorable sunset photo ever!
Ahhhhhhhhhh! I didn’t catch the embryo’s implanted at first. Read it a second time to be sure. Called great gramma at 9:30pm, her time, to share. She said she read the article most of the way down, then skipped to comments, so she didn’t catch that. We are super excited! Praying all goes well. Love you guys!
We should find out around the 18th if they took
We are going thru IVF (4th cycle) and its been rough. Its amazing that you guys are going thru IVF while on FIRE…you guys are doing what I strive to accomplish. Good luck and I hope it goes well
Good luck!
We have friends in Bay Area and Seattle do IVF locally, and so many cycles and lots of stress. I think we got lucky last time, but hoping this one goes well too.
Good luck with round #4, wish you the best
Best of luck with #2! My wife and I did IVF in Taipei last month (she’s Taiwanese) and remember you had written about it before so reading about your experience was helpful. We decided to go with one embryo and today just found out it was a success!
Congratulations! And thank you.
Which hospital or clinic did you go through? Was the cost similar to what we wrote about last time?
All the best with the IVF.
I read your comment that 0 is more likely than 2. Same here… We had a few 0 and the two to times a 1.
I would love to do a cruise, my wife dislikes. Reading your comment puts me now on the maybe side, rather than must side.
Thank you. We have one more cycle we can do if this one doesn’t work…
A cruise is technically better than a sharp stick in the eye, but there are so many nicer ways to travel imho. There was a much older couple on our cruise, and they had been on 90 cruises with Princess. Ninety! Guess they liked it more than we did… no planning, no finding restaurants, no language challenges. That is some of the best part though
We had a total of 4 cycles resulting in 2 kids. SO, all the best
Part of travel for me is to have to look around, to be surprised: the chase is better than the catch!
Great to see that all graphed out like that…I appreciate the visual support!
I have to say, I like that you included alcohol separately. My husband’s family are all big wine connoisseurs; gives me a headache, I prefer beer. I think ours would be a muuuuuch longer chunk of “alcohol” expenses :)
Sounds like an amazing exciting year! Wishing you guys the best of luck!
Hopefully all goes well with the baby making!!
Patricia and I are wishing you and Winnie total success with her pregnancy. I’m still an avid follower of your blog and am deeply grateful for the time we all had together in San Miguel de Allende. Keep up the great work on your blog!
Thanks Tom! Hi Patricia!
I know you said you could afford your spending even without blogging income, but if you didn’t have that blogging income, would you keep spending that much or would you be more conservative?
Good for you for enjoying it!
We are just following our original plan.
See “Foundation for Long Term Success” and “Summary and Conclusions” in this post.
Great post again! :) All the best on the baby bizziness :) Great examples of what folks can accomplish with a little know how and hard work etc … Spring is coming over here soon … it was 14 degrees here today … love the travel planning tips you pass on from time to time like with your 4 month Euro tour etc etc … thanks for posting your financial tips too. Michael CPO
Thank you Michael. It’s been great biking weather here.
Great posting! Good luck on the IVF. We did ours at Mayo in Rochester back in 2000. Transferred 4 back then and got a boy/girl. Graduate from HS this year then off we go traveling!! Our our Mayo “baby” boy will be 20 this year.. Interesting to think back on the progress.. Take care!
Good luck with the IVF! Exciting times.
Amazing photos! Going to Europe for the first time in about a month… hope I can get some good pictures as good as yours!
Hi I am from Taiwan too, I read both yours and Winnie’s blogs. The ETFs you suggested, they are only about 2% now, I am still puzzled that how you can make 4%? Or it’s just a long term average?
Dividends are just one income source. You also have capital gains.
If you become a resident of Taiwan what about Taxes? Hong-Kong has no capital gain taxes Neither sales taxes, … also have Vanguard index funds… Saw an interesting article on this recently… http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/canada-competes/hong-kongs-simple-low-taxes-dont-we-all-want-it/article13393877/
Taiwan also doesn’t tax cap gains, dividends, or overseas income (except under an AMT if you earn more than $200k USD/year.)
$200k USD earned/salaried income or including dividen/capital gains?
With your nomadic lifestyle, how do you transport all of your stuff, including this new bike? I can’t imagine you have a vehicle flying back and forth all over the place? I’m thinking with such heavy travel, it would pay to be as minimalist as possible
See this post for how we pack.
I won’t travel with the bike.
Hi GCC,
Awesome blog – and thanks for sharing the stories!
The 2017 costs breakdown is very interesting and it would be even more interesting to see the matching income breakdown – so as to understand how you finance all of these wonderful trips :)
I mean, what portion comes from stocks/ETFs dividends? I understand these are often only paid out quarterly and most ETFs have dividend yields of less than 3%… How exactly does it work out? I also imagine that this blog generates serious revenue (through ads, affiliates etc.). What if these are reduced to 0, would you still be able to finance a $7000+ monthly lifestyle?
Cheers.
I agree, that would be awesome. That’s why I share those things.
Blog income here. 2016 tax return here. 2016 Business taxes here. There is an archive on the top bar and a search box in the menu as well.