Whoa, it's been pages since I've posted a chart. Slacking, obviously.
FullRes
(Trying to be as close to the green line as possible. Below the red line is bad.)
I continue to trend in the right direction. The learning curve for Project TTM5k continues. The majority of my expenses this month were transportation:
335$ to travel from Tangier down to Zagora, then back up all the way to near Foix, France. Malaga to Barcelona was $110 itself, because it's tourist season now and the day-of prices went bananas.
120$ for shelter, mostly 10$/day hostels when I'm not at a workaway. My workaway in Morocco was $6.50/day, which covered food expenses. That's not typical for workaways, but is a thing in really poor areas like Tagounite.
Then a few sloppy spending mistakes, and that got May closer to TTM10k levels.
My only fixed costs are $42 health insurance and $10/mo for my website. (Once I push out a couple more podcast episodes I'll have to start paying 8/mo for that.) Theoretically, if I were at a workaway for a whole month, my CoL could be $52.
Lessons learned so far from TTM5k Slowtravel Style:
- Frequent overland travel adds up. Once a month is probably the maximum amount of long distance overland travel a 5k budget can handle, assuming buses and trains and such. Obviously I could travel as much as I wanted if I were walking or biking and wild camping. I'm not there yet though.
- Hostels need to be kept to bare minimum. In Morocco they can be had for 10/day, but that only leaves 4/day for everything else including fixed costs like health insurance. In europe 20/day hostels is about the best you can find. So,
- I need to be better about stitching my workaway gigs together to have smaller gaps in between them. Also, I haven't yet explored couchsurfing and housesits. Housesits generally require longer term commitments, which I'm not into at the moment.
- When putting in overland travel days, it's nice to be able to just not eat, or only eat once a day, and for that to be just a loaf of bread and a block of cheese.
- Taking an overnight bus is a great way to not spend money on accommodations.
- Workaways are hit and miss. You can't assume you're going to show up to a place with the idea of staying a full month or two, and still want to stay a full month after the first week. I'm enormously glad I'm doing this, but the though of doing mainly workaways for a full year is not appealing. It's possible I need to explore some other styles of workaway though - ones that are a little less demanding. Doing a hostel volunteer position might be like that if the hosts don't suck. The one I'm currently at (in France) I think I'm going to like being at for a full month, and I might even like to stay longer but I have to leave the EU before the end of the month due to my visa deadline.
On that note, my plan is to stay here till the last week of June, then cross over to England. I'll visit a friend in London who has a flat I can crash at, and then aim to get on to a workaway without spending much on hostels. My current host is friendly with a commune in Somerset that makes cider he offered to intro me to, and i'm interested in finding other ecovillages in the UK to check out. The UK is known for having some respectable communities and I'd like to see what the deal is. I also want to visit Ireland and Scotland.
I need to stay in the UK (/out of the Shengen zone) until the end of August. At that point, it's possible my current host will ask me to sail to Greece with them, which would be perfect to set me up with some experience for my end of year Atlantic passage back to the Americas. If not, I'll meander in the general direction of Greece/Turkey/Georgia, keeping an eye out for sailing opportunities.