The other day I received a comment on one of my surf articles that caused me to revisit something I had already been thinking about. In a nutshell, the article in question was about how after nearly two decades of surfing, I have gone through phases where I lose my inner drive to surf. When we wake up every day and mindlessly go surfing just because… that’s what surfers do… you can lose the sense of “fun”. Long story short, the fun came back, I just needed to adjust my perspective.

Anytime you put your work out in the public eye, you are going to get the entire spectrum of feedback — negative, neutral, and positive. That’s just how it is. And as a writer, I’ve learned to brush it off. You can write the most innocent, harmless story, and someone somewhere will find a reason to hate it. C’est la vie. I usually don’t even bother reading the comments, but this story and one particular comment caught my eye.

In the article I mention how my recent 22-month trip around the world helped me reset my approach to surfing and find that passion that made me fall in love with it in the first place. In response to this idea, one person said: “All that money to travel around the world and you ask that question…? The Lost Generation!“

The “question” being referenced is whether surfing is fun, and, honestly, the title of the article “Is Surfing Actually Fun? Traveling Helped Me Answer That Question” got modified a bit in the editing process to sound a little more dramatic than I intended, but it’s close enough.

The comment got a little chuckle out of me. People’s perspective of how much it costs to travel is, apparently, extremely skewed. You don’t need to have a limitless Amex Black card or a trust fund to travel. You don’t even need to be earning minimum wage in California.

In fact, you can do it by earning less than the California minimum wage. I know this because I did it.

A quick look on the guy’s Instagram account and it appears he lives in San Francisco. Does he know what his San Francisco rent can buy him abroad? One could argue his comment could be flipped around: “All that money to live in San Francisco and…” Maybe that’s not what he wants. Fine. But it doesn’t make those who do want it entitled rich kids.

Money is a touchy subject, but I am of the opinion that it should not be so taboo. So, let’s talk about travel and money.

How much did I spend over 22 months?

When I started the trip I was pretty cautious of my spending. I wanted to know and calculate how long I could survive with this lifestyle — when I would need to start sending out resumes again. However, keeping track of the expenses gets complicated when you have two bank accounts and two credit cards, and many transactions abroad are paid in cash. I even did a similar post two months into my trip where I figured a month in Brazil costs USD $1,400. While I always had a general idea of what I was spending, after that, I stopped worrying so much about the minutiae.

When I got home last month I had been wanting to do these calculations even before that Instagram comment. I examined my bank statements, did some simple math, and here is what I came up with:

To travel for 22 months in South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, on average I spent USD $1,112.38 per month.

There are a few caveats to know in order to fully grasp this figure.

• This number does not count non-trip-related expenses. For example, I didn’t include my monthly student loan payments (which were frozen during the pandemic anyway) or car insurance payments (I decided it was worth it to keep my car in California instead of selling it).
• I lived frugally, but not that frugally. I often stayed in hostels or budget accommodations, however, I also splurged in some cases like a 10-day surf trip to the Mentawai Islands, renting scooters in many locations, paying for a surf guide in South Africa, and buying two new surfboards in Durban.
• I am an avid credit card churner. Many of my flights were free: San Francisco to Rio de Janeiro, Bogota to San Francisco, San Francisco to Bali, and Beirut to San Francisco. (I would have flown Cape Town to Beirut for free as well if United hadn’t canceled my flight.) If you are smart with getting travel cards that have good sign-up bonuses, you can get a lot of bang for your buck. (If you aren’t financially responsible, don’t bother churning credit cards.)
• Sometimes I stayed with friends or found hosts on couchsurfing.com for free lodging. For example, I found an incredible couchsurfing host in Mauritius that put me up for free during my entire stay.
• I traveled to “cheaper” countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Reunion Island, Mauritius, Mozambique, Madagascar, South Africa, and Lebanon. If this post was titled “a trip through Scandinavia”, you could bet the monthly spend would be astronomically higher.

Despite the seemingly low monthly cost, 22 months of this lifestyle is still a grand total of $24,000. It’s not exactly pocket change. So where did the dough come from?

How did I pay for it?

This dream of going to Brazil started way back in 2015. I was fresh off a year of study abroad in Chile and I was enamored with the idea of living abroad again. The problem was I had less than $2,000 to my name, I was more than $20,000 in debt with student loans, and I had to get a car, which set me back another $7,000 in debt. I sure as hell was not going to be traveling anytime soon.

So, I got a job. I started out at what by present-day standards amounts to a minimum-wage office job. I shared a house with five other people and for almost a year paid $400/month to live in a very non-private loft with curtains for walls. That first year it is safe to say I didn’t manage to save much, if anything at all.

Over the years I moved up to get more respectable wages for a 20-something-year-old with a college degree. But by no means was I getting rich. I was working for a non-profit, not a tech start-up. I started saving money slowly, but surely.

By the time I was 29, almost seven years later, I had $30,000 saved plus another equally good chunk of change sitting in investments that I could pull out if shit hit the fan. The pandemic certainly helped accelerate the savings, with the stimulus checks and more time staying at home.

When I started the trip in November 2021, I didn’t work for three months, which was glorious. Not having a never-ending inbox of emails felt like a huge weight off my shoulders. Life was simple and good — get on my bike, go to the beach, stop at the grocery store on my way home, cook lunch, meet up with friends, repeat.

At the three-month mark, I decided it would be good to start making some money. The idea wasn’t necessarily to jump into a full-time job and sustain myself, but more like to turn the money gushing out of my savings account into a controlled trickle.

I started working as an English teacher for an online school owned by a guy I met on a bus and I started picking up freelance writing gigs, mostly from the contacts created from my previous job. Six months after starting to work a bit, I had my first $1,000 dollar month, and then a few months later I had my first $2,000 month. I always made sure to not overcommit to work so I could allow myself time to still enjoy the travels. For example, I almost never scheduled anything on Mondays so I always had the option of a long weekend side trip if the opportunity arose.

After a year of travel, I was consistently getting $1,500 per month from my part-time freelance gigs, sometimes much more, sometimes much less (freelancing can be feast or famine). Regardless, it was still less than a full-time minimum wage job in California, but looking back at the calculated costs of $1,112.38 per month, you can see how suddenly the math was working and I got to a point where I wasn’t relying on my savings.

I know, I’m lucky

I am not trying to say leaving your life behind for a life of non-stop travel is always easy or feasible. It’s not for everyone. I also recognize that I have certain privileges: I don’t have children or family members that I need to support, I grew up in a household that taught me and encouraged me to travel, I have a passport that gets me to most countries, and I can earn in USD online, to name a few.

I consider myself extremely lucky to have been put in a place where that trip was possible. In fact, I can recall countless times when I couldn’t believe what my life had become — surfing solo in Sri Lanka watching the sunrise, pinching myself to be sure it was real. But the point is, if this is something that you truly want, it’s not impossible. On the contrary, if it’s well thought out, it’s rather attainable.

And that was just the path I chose. There are other paths. You can volunteer, work on a farm, go to countries that have working holiday visas and get a job, apply for a student visa, or do it the old-fashioned way and save as much money as you can. And for those who come from countries where visas are hard to obtain, you can make the most of national travel. I was particularly inspired by how many Indians I met who were exploring their own, incredible country. You don’t have to be rich. I could have spent considerably less, especially if I wasn’t a surfer (there are lots of fees associated with surfing).

So to the guy who thinks I am an ungrateful surf traveler with “all that money” and nothing to do but complain about surfing, I didn’t just jet off with my daddy’s credit card. Making that dream come true was the result of years of careful, thorough planning.

It’s very hard to find information online on how much people spend on this type of lifestyle. And the people who you often see, the famous influencers and vloggers, are getting paid to do it, which isn’t very relatable or realistic for most. So I hope this can help someone out there who is looking to make a similarly big change in their lives. I can confidently say I don’t regret it one bit.