'We travelled the world for a whole year. Here is the breakdown of exactly how much we spent.'

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Last year, my husband and I got married.

Naturally, we wanted a honeymoon. The only catch was that we wanted our honeymoon to last at least a year. 

So, we (my husband, really) sat down and ran the numbers.

He calculated how much we'd need to save to be able to travel for a year, spending a total of $200 a day for both of us. This included the mortgage repayments on the property we share, accommodation, activities, food, flights… you get the picture. 

When we were planning the trip, there wasn't a lot of resources for people in our same situation, so I thought sharing the dirty details on the internet could be a great idea. That, and I love being nosey, so wanted to repay the favour. 

We used an app called TravelSpend to log our daily spending, which, if you're looking to do something similar, I cannot recommend enough. It was able to provide us with a daily running total, our deficit, and automatically translated the currencies to AUD. 

Before I get into it, some context. 

We spent five months of the year in Europe, a month in North Africa and six months in Asia.

When we were in Europe, we spent the majority of our time in the Balkans, where it's more affordable than Western Europe, and most countries are outside the Schengen zone — which makes moving between them easier.

In Asia, we went to a broad range of countries from China to Sri Lanka, where prices were consistently more affordable than in Europe. 

Accommodation.

Now, we're not dorm people. We stayed in a few dorms here and there, where we were priced out of private accommodation in cities, but our preference was always for a private room with 'kitchen adjacent' amenities. 

Our mortgage repayments came out of our daily travel budget. For the most part, this net out to zero spend with the rent we received. In instances where rates, repairs or bills came out, we just took the spend as a loss against our daily budget. 

Accommodation was naturally our biggest expense, totalling $25,417 for the entire year (or $489 per week). Not bad when the average rent in Australia is $650 a week! 

Restaurants and food.  

Behind having a place to sleep, food was our next biggest expense. 

Depending on where we were, we either hit the grocery store for our meals or dined out for almost every meal. In the UK, for example, I think we went to ONE restaurant in two months, while in South East Asia we ate out for breakfast, lunch, dinner and coffee and snacks in between.

We spent $13,729 on restaurants and $4,460 on groceries. 

Note, we absolutely overspent on our budget here. But when you're travelling, food is the best part!

Image: Supplied.

Activities.

It's important to have budget to be able to actually experience the places you visit. 

We tried to balance the mix between splurging on bucket list experiences (a Nile cruise in Egypt and a tour to the Sahara Desert in Morocco, for example) and finding free alternatives to things like seeing Stonehenge from outside the visitor's fence. 

In total, we spent $9,431 on experiences. 

Image: Supplied.

Exchange fees. 

If you're looking to do a similar trip, something you need to budget for that no one tells you about is ATM and exchange fees. 

In places like Egypt, the amount you can withdraw from an ATM is quite low and the fees to do so are high, so you'll be spending money each time you withdraw cash. Likewise, in Southeast Asia quite a few ATMs charge a fee. So, make sure you research your best option before you withdraw cash. We tried to find the ATMs of the national bank in each country for the best rates. Plus, our Wise card had pretty good exchange rates.

In total, ATM and exchange fees cost us $955. 

Flights and transportation. 

Getting to and from places, especially while trying to stick to $200 a day, is a big strain on your budget. 

We aren't overnight bus people (I'm over 30!), so we opted for flights and trains that were cheap without sacrificing 24 hours spent on board a bus. 

In total, for 12 months of flights, buses, trains, ferries and everything in between, we spent $22,986. 

Image: Supplied.

Insurance.

Because of the credit card and home loan we have with Commonwealth Bank, we were able to access free travel insurance for the entire trip for free. 

We just had to pay to add on Africa as we didn't include it in our initial submission. This cost us $180, which was a price we were happy to pay for 12 months of insurance! Friends who have done trips for a similar length have spent at a minimum $2,000. 

Phone coverage.

Being connected while you travel is very important to us.

Normally, if we're taking a trip for the short term, we share one eSIM between us, but given we were basically living overseas, we spent quite a bit on connectivity. 

Make sure you have a look at the prices for physical sim cards (which can you buy from convenience stores, the airport, dedicated stores etc) before you buy an eSim as they can be quite expensive in some places. And always check for discount codes when buying an eSIM. 

We did a mix of both and ended up spending $976 for the year. 

The total spend.

I haven't mentioned every category here because I fear that would bore you to death, but I know you're chasing the total figure, so I'll cut to the chase. 

In total, we spent $81,470 for the entire year for both of us. 

This includes an overspend of about $10,000 that we pulled in from our personal savings for things we just didn't want to miss out on, like meeting up with friends and bucket list experiences. 

Listen to this episode of Mamamia Out Loud, where women come to debrief. Post continues below.

This included us not living aggressively on a budget. We had beautiful dinners, beers as the sun set most days, and had nice accommodation in great locations everywhere we went. 

Image: Supplied.

We also didn't miss out on anything. Everything we wanted to do we were able to do; our bucket list is well and truly ticked.

If you're keen to do something similar, happy travelling!

And if this has inspired you, happy savings! 

Feature image: Supplied.