Tag Archives: budget

Sad Mac

Posted by whitneyandjared in Travel, Whitney and tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

heavy sigh.

The above photo was taken as we left the Goldenmac service center yesterday. In the morning, my beloved (super old) MacBook began to make really disturbing noises, then froze and refused to turn back on when I tried to restart. I tried every troubleshooting technique that had worked in the past, plus a few more from the Apple support website, all to no avail. I feared that what I had heard was a death rattle, so we found Goldenmac through the Apple website and took “her” in. The technician tried all the same techniques, sighed and said, “you need to take this to the support center – immediately.” Wow, I knew it was bad, but the way she said it you would have thought it was endangering our lives. She showed us how to get to the service center by bus, (we asked if we could walk and she kind of laughed at us) and we walked up to the stop just as the bus was driving away. Seriously?!?

The diagnosis: I need a new hard drive. It’s probably going to cost about €200. I’m really frustrated, because this is a computer I was going to replace as soon as we got home, and it’s annoying to put more money into it for just a few more months of use. She’s 5 years old, but almost all the guts (hard drive included) were replaced just over a year ago. I would have bought a new laptop before we left, but we just didn’t have the money and I opted instead to buy an iPad for temporary back-up…I guess in case THIS EXACT THING happened.

The incredibly, wonderful, joyous, fortunate good news is that everything is backed up. I will have to figure out how to replace a few applications that I don’t have the disks for (though I was smart enough to bring a copy of my operating system), but all of my pictures, music, documents  and everything important is totally saved. Some things are even saved in two locations, but that’s due to my own (apparently completely well-founded) paranoia. I have learned much from the hard drive crashes of yore. Really though, I owe it all to the marvelous Carbonite, to which at this point I’m practically willing to give our first born child as thanks (offer not legally binding). I guess I also owe my boyfriend Ira Glass and This American Life for accepting Carbonite as a sponsor and so often mentioning them on the show? Ira, please get in touch so I can thank you in person.

Oh my, this post has gotten off track. To summarize: sad Mac; yay Carbonite. It’s really a traveler’s best friend.

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The Cold Reality of January

Posted by whitneyandjared in Finances, Jared, Travel and tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Jared contemplates this month's budget

While Whitney and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves in France, there’s just something about Spain (and Sevilla especially) that touches my soul. It’s a small big town, if that makes any sense. There is a big city vibe here, but you can walk across most of it in about thirty minutes, so it feels small. And the place where we are living has an East Village vibe, with lots of cool little stores, tapas bars (LOTS of tapas bars) and bodegas where all the people from the neighborhood hang out. Basically, all the people here stand around tables and drink these tiny beers all day. I don’t think anyone actually works. My kind of place.

A few complaints (to keep it real): while it’s warm here, as soon as you get out of the sun, it’s pretty damn cool. And our apartment is almost impossible to heat up, so I always seem to be cold. It’s like a San Francisco cold: there are definitely colder places, but the cold here kind of gets in your bones.

Also, we are having problems with our bed, so we don’t seem to be able to get a good night’s sleep. My head and neck are killing me (I think it’s the cheap pillows we have), so that’s been a bit of a drag.

All that being said, Sevilla is one of my most favorite places in the world. Just walking around here brings a smile to my face, and since I came here five years ago with my family, it’s been a dream of mine to come back, so I’m happy I have the chance to really get to explore it with Whitney.

On to finances. There’s no sugar coating it, January was a tough month for us financially. There were a couple of reasons for that. First of all, the south of France is simply not cheap, so it really shot a hole in our budget. Second, we have had a really hard time coming up with other sources of income, so my one part-time job had to cover us completely. I was able to get a few small jobs the past few months which really helped bridge the gap in our budget, but everything we had hoped would come through this past month (friends and family renting out our spare bedroom, Whitney babysitting, various other schemes) didn’t happen.

I’m not going to lie, it’s been frustrating, because I’ve been so close to picking up another remote job, only to have all of them fall through my fingers. We can make it on my one part-time job, but it really limits what we are able to do on this trip, and we’d both love a little breathing room at this point. I’m waiting to hear back from two jobs, so cross your fingers!

So here’s the financial breakdown, for those of you who are interested:

Our income this past month was $3340.

Our expenses were as follows:
Rent: $863
Food/Household/Shopping: $1026
Entertainment: $723
Travel Expenses: $585
Misc: $1334

Total Expenses: $4531

So we were over by about $1200 this past month. Fortunately, we broke even the first two and half months here, so after three and a half months, we’re only over $1200. Food and rent we’ve been able to keep under a grand each. The harder part is keeping everything else to under a grand. No matter how much you keep to your budget, inevitably there are things you don’t know about, or haven’t planned for. Such is life.

The good news is that if I don’t find additional work, our plan is to stay in southern Spain, which is probably the cheapest place we’ve been yet. Food and wine is half the price it was in France, and we know we can find another cheap place to stay.  We’d like to go to Barcelona for a few days and then Paris for a week, so hopefully our budget will allow it.

Santa Cruz-ing

Posted by whitneyandjared in Travel, Whitney and tagged with , , , , , ,

The first thing that we did to orient ourselves to the city was to walk over to the Santa Cruz neighborhood. Since we’re up in the northwest, we had to walk through the center of town to get to Santa Cruz and it took us through a good cross section of Seville. It was also at the top of Jared’s sightseeing list so…two birds with one stone. I just took pictures of everything I thought was pretty to capture my first impressions of the city, so these are presented without much comment.

On the way home, we stopped by the Central Market below the Metropol Parasol to shop for dinner (we’re going to go up and check out the viewing platform next week). It was so cheap that we got a ton of food for under 15 Euros – including a kilo of strawberries! We’ve been shopping there a lot since, and the quality is excellent! It’s easy to get into the lifestyle here, and our budget is certainly not complaining.

We’re on our way to Granada today so have a great weekend and I have lots to share next week!

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A Little Off the Sides

Posted by whitneyandjared in Travel, Whitney and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

When we were still in Seattle preparing for this trip, Jared needed a haircut. Rather than searching for a new barber (and Seattle has many excellent ones), I convinced him to let me try cutting his hair. My reasoning was that we didn’t know what we’d be able to find while abroad, it would save money and I would do my best to give him exactly the cut he wanted. Back in New York, it seemed like barbers were always cutting his hair way too short and with his light skin and hair, it’s a pretty severe look. We were so wary that he got a cut weeks before our wedding to give it time to grow out for pictures. By the time he figured out exactly what to ask for to avoid getting totally sheared, we moved out of the city. So for practicality and budget, I took over as barber. I wear many hats these days.

The first haircut wasn’t bad, but we agree that I’m getting better. I’ve cut Jared’s hair 3 times now and each time my technique is improving and I’m having more fun (and am less afraid that I’ll ruin Jared’s hair). We went for fancy tea and cakes again yesterday and I gave him a trim beforehand. When his hair grows long on the sides it starts to look a little “mushroom-y” (our term) so we thought we’d spiff up a bit (which is also why I am wearing a dress in the picture below).

before...don't worry, he's wearing pants.

during

he jokingly asked what magazines I offered, so I gave him this

the result!

Tea and cake was great, again, and we specifically went on a night that they had a piano player (M, W, F) and we were not sorry. The guy was really talented and super nice – eventually we were the only ones there so he came by and asked what we wanted to hear.

We were kind of pumped from being out so after dinner we went back out for some drinks. We’ve been giving this Irish bar a few blocks down another shot and are liking it more and more for nights when we want a little more liveliness. The bartenders are really sweet and the main guy immediately gives us a rundown of the cider inventory as soon as we walk in, since that’s what we always order. One of them just got a job working for Royal Caribbean and the other is obsessed with Chicago so we’ve given them our card in case they ever need contacts.  When we told them how long we were here, they looked at us like we were crazy – ha!  Maybe we are…

Money For Something

Posted by whitneyandjared in Finances, Jared, Travel and tagged with , , , , , , ,

It seems like it’s been a long time since I wrote something for this blog. Whitney has made it her baby, and I was more than happy to let her take it over. She’s done a tremendous job.

So we finally hit the end of our first full month in Dubrovnik, six weeks in total. Honestly, it feels like we have been here for six months. I’m not complaining; it seems like we have just hit our stride here, seen all that we can see, and now are in the groove here. The days and weeks pass quickly.

Most days, we sleep in a little (usually I’m up by nine, while Whitney wakes up….later). Then we usually are at the gym by noon, home by one, and then ready for work by two. I try to put in three hours of work a day, to pay for this damn thing, look for other jobs, find funny videos of cats, etc. You get the idea.

Before I get into the money breakdown, I’d like to mention a couple things I’ve noticed about our Croatian friends:

-       They like to smoke here. A LOT. Croatians smoke basically 24/7. Maybe this is true for all of Europe, I don’t know, but I feel like I’m in an episode of Mad Men.  It’s gotten to the point where I actually like the smell of cigarette smoke, but there have been times when we’ve had to leave places because I couldn’t breathe. God bless them, but I swear everyone here is going to die of lung cancer.

-       I have heard more 80s music than I care to hear ever again in my life.  Phil Collins? Check. Dire Straits “Money for Nothing”? You bet your sweet ass. Huey Lewis and the News? They are alive and well, apparently. It seems like they play the same 20 songs over and over again, and all of them are songs that were “hits” twenty five years ago. The Heart of Rock and Roll is apparently in Dubrovnik.

Okay, with that rant out of the way, let’s talk about money. This month we did pretty good, and assuming that I get paid for one of my remote jobs (a big if at this point), we are under budget for a second month.

We made about $3500 this month. Our expenses break down as follows:

Rent: $531

Food: $945

Entertainment: $871 (includes two trips)

Misc: $917

TOTAL: $3264

So we are under this month by around $250. We were under last month by about $500, so this puts us roughly $750 for the trip. Not bad.

But here’s what I’ve learned about expenses here: while two people can get by for roughly $3000 a month, they can only do that if they don’t travel at all, and basically stay in one place. And never eat out.

If you are planning on doing any sightseeing while in Europe, a much better budget would be $4000 a month. That would still be on the cheap, though.

If you want to really live here, including renting a decent apartment, going out to eat a few times a week, buying clothes and souvenirs, going out to coffee shops and bars, basically to live somewhat well, I would suggest a budget close to $5000 a month for two people.

We are getting by on $3500. Enjoying ourselves, yes, but just getting by. We are hoping that I can pick up a job or two more so we don’t have to live quite so close to the bone. I had thought that I would enjoy being poor, so to speak, but I’m finding that I would prefer to simply not have to worry about money as much as I do.

Until next time!

$crilla, $pondulicks, and $imoleons

Posted by whitneyandjared in Finances, Jared, Travel and tagged with , , ,

Professor Jared breaks it down (and yes, those are Whitney's glasses)

As you know, one of my goals for this blog is to document our finances so everyone knows how much you really need for two people to live (reasonably well) in Europe. I’m doing this partly to make sure that we are making at least as much as we are spending, of course, but also to see if our budget is reasonable or not (and if not, to adjust our budget as necessary).

So yesterday was the last day of the month, and by looking at our finances (we are meticulously recording every Croatian kuna we spend on a spreadsheet), I was able to get a handle what we spent last month by basically pro-rating what we spent versus what we made. We were only here for part of the month, nineteen days, basically a little over a half of the month.

Let me break down the numbers a bit:

Income: I made about $3800 last month. I pro-rated this amount so it would make sense against what we spent here in Croatia. So that pro-rated amount is about $2300.

Expenses: We lucked out on rent at $550/month. Pro-rated for nineteen days, it’s $334. Groceries (and by groceries, this included everything we spent at stores, basically) were $582. Entertainment (this is basically all the stuff we did as tourists including sightseeing, bars, coffees, etc.) was $545. Everything else (fixed expenses, incidentals, etc.) was $380.

Combined, we spent $1841 for 19 days in October. If you subtract that from the $2300 we made, you can see that we came out about $475 ahead. Not bad.

Our original budget was $3000/month: $1000 for rent, $1000 for food, and $1000 for everything else. We definitely came out ahead on rent, and as Whitney wrote the other day, we are spending about $28/day on food which comes out to about $870/month, so we are definitely ahead there. However, “everything else” was definitely more than $1000/month.

Here’s the takeaway for those of you bored reading the numbers: two people can definitely live in Europe for $3000/month (at least Croatia) if you do it like we are doing it and cook all your own meals and closely watch your expenses.

HOWEVER, what we are seeing is that to do anything else, like go on overnight visits to other cities and traveling from one country to the next (it will cost us about $800 to get from here to Nice, France, our next destination) blows that $3000/month out of water. We are looking to visit Kotor, Mostar, and the Plitvice Lakes National Park next month and that’s going to add about a grand to our expenses.

So the long and short of it is that I think a more reasonable budget to live on which takes both of those factors into account is something around $4000/month.

I hope this helps people who might be planning a trip like this. You can live on $3000/month as long as you stay in one place and don’t do much sightseeing apart from your home base. If you plan on doing some modest sightseeing to other cities, and plan on moving around from country to country, you need a budget closer to $4000/month.

Whitney would like me to add that she has a ton of good stuff to post from this weekend but she’s been a bit under the weather. Keep an eye out for a recap of our weekend in the next few days!

All About the Benjamins

Posted by whitneyandjared in Finances, Jared, Travel and tagged with , , , ,

Whitney pretty much covered our first day here in Dubrovnik, but I wanted to delve into some of the financial information for those of you who are interested.

Whitney and I worked really hard the last few months in New York to bring our savings up to a point where we felt we had enough for a nice cushion. Our goal is not to dip into our savings at all, though.  We only want to spend what we make each month, so we are carefully tracking all of our expenses.

I had a hard time figuring out how much to budget each month, so I basically just pulled numbers from thin air: a thousand a month for housing, a thousand for food, and a thousand for everything else. So we have three thousand USD a month to live on, which is roughly what I will be making (I’ll write about this another time, but basically I have a couple of telecommute jobs from the U.S.).

Luckily, with the help of our new friend Maja who is Croatian, we were able to find our totally cute apartment in the Old Town of Dubrovnik, for $545/month, which is half of what we figured we’d spend. We have no idea how we got this place so cheaply; every other place we looked at was at least twice that price. And this place has everything we wanted: wifi, a workable kitchen, and a comfortable bed. Since we plan on being here for two months, we will be saving a grand on housing, which is awesome (and will hopefully allow us to take some short side trips).  We plan on cooking most of our meals, and it looks like $250 a week for food will be doable.  Yesterday we found the supermarket and stocked up a bit, and this weekend our landlord has offered to take us to the bigger supermarket in her car, so we’re doing pretty well with cooking for ourselves so far.

Here are some of our other expenses we’ve had in terms of getting over here:

  • Less than $2000 combined for our airfare from Seattle to Dubrovnik. We took the red eye, but it was half the price of all other tickets.
  • $13/month for unlimited calls anywhere in the world via Skype. I was also able to purchase a (646) area code number for maybe $5/month or something like that.
  • $100/month combined for our health insurance (I’ll write more about this later, but basically this covers major medical in the case of emergency. The insurance carrier is Patriot International.).
  • We did some research and found that the Internet bank Ally only charges a 1% fee for any card transactions from Europe so we opened an account and made them our primary bank.  So far they have been very easy to work with.

I think that’s it for now. In my next blog posts, I’ll talk about what we did to get ready for this trip, and how this whole thing comes down to finding a job you can do remotely.