How Much It REALLY Cost Our Family of 4 to Live Abroad for a Year

Описание: We spent a year abroad and tracked every single dollar we spent and I’m going to spill it all.

On restaurants + groceries, we spent $9,944.73.
We usually ate at restaurants close to home and they were way cheaper, most meals were $10–$15 total for a family of four.
Groceries were also less expensive when we shopped at local markets and avoided imported stuff.

On transportation, we spent $4,981, and this does not include flights.
If we added flights it would be another $9k-ish, but that totally depends where you go.
This number is just trains, sleeper trains (so cheap and fun), buses, cabs, taxis we tried not to rent a car and only did twice the whole year.

For accommodations, this was our biggest category at $18,430.21.
We stayed almost completely in Airbnbs because we were doing long stays and I wanted a kitchen.
Sometimes we rented a room in someone’s home with our own separate space, which was actually really nice.

For activities, we spent $2,838.82 which was honestly the cheapest part.
Most of it was tourist stuff, but we didn’t skimp.
This doesn’t include hiking or outdoor adventures because those were basically free.

And our total spend for the entire year was $36,194.76

And guess what?

That’s a whole lot less than what we spent living in the U.S., which was usually over $100k a year once we factored in our mortgage, car payments, home repairs, school costs, and literally just… life.