It’s time for the second monthly budget article - yayy numbers!! But really, it’s great to see how we’re doing with money so both us, and you too can see if we are travelling in a sustainable way. Are we saving up tons of cash as we explore New Zealand or racking up an abundance of debt?
More to the point, is taking a working holiday for an entire year something that’s actually realistic for most of us or is it all just for show?
Let’s find out... As you may already know, on our homepage is a number that shows how much money we are spending during our stay in New Zealand. We call it the ‘actual budget’ and it’s basically just a number that sits at the top of our blog, jumping up and down as we save and spend on our journey.
But that’s the thing... it’s just a number, and whilst clicking on it will take you to a page explaining what it is exactly, you won’t find a breakdown of our spending there. Cue the monthly budget article, where each month, we break down every last cent so you can see exactly what we’re up to and gain an understanding of the cost of a working holiday... or at least one in New Zealand. Don’t forget though that this is a budget for two people, so some of our wallet activity (especially food) will be higher than that of a solo traveller and on the other hand, we’ll probably spend less on transport (because we split our fuel bill etc) and occasionally get deals on accommodation.
Above is a screenshot of our ‘budget summary’ for March. It’s difficult to compare last month to February (when we arrived in New Zealand) because we arrived towards the end of the month, and the initial costs upon arriving in any country are obviously going to be slightly higher respectively as we get the ball rolling. For example, in February we had to buy a car and subsequently insurance, as well as take out phone contracts etc.. you get the picture, these aren’t exactly regular expenditures.
As we got more comfortable with our surroundings and started to find our feet, our spending began to level-out as we developed habits such as staying in free campsites and shopping around for better deals on food. We even got jobs in March, and as a result had much more money in our pockets at the end of each week compared to February... of course you know this already because you check out all of our articles right? ;)
With that said, March’s end-of-month budget was still $633 below the previous month’s. So wait, despite getting jobs we still ended up with less money overall than the month before? Yes, we did, and here’s why...
Food/drink
Let’s start with the good stuff - as it happens, we did very well with our food and drink spending, budgeting way more than we actually spent. This was for two reasons; the first being that we intentionally slightly overestimated how much we’d spend just to be on the cautious side, and the second being that meals were provided when we started working which is of course something that we didn’t foresee the month before.
Accommodation
Next, we saved on accommodation too. This was due to a combination of being lucky enough to find lots of free campsites (again we played these numbers safe) and also because of the subsidised accommodation we eventually moved into that was provided with our jobs. We expected to pay around $250 a week on accommodation, this being a figure based on the average prices in the area with a little extra on top, but again this was without anticipating the help we received from our employer.
Transportation
We made some pretty accurate estimations on how much we’d spend on fuel, missing the mark by just $82. It’s safe to say we made a few surprise trips in March which we tried to anticipate but hey, this is why we keep track - now we know to budget a little more for fuel.
One thing that really stung us though was new tyres. We have a rough figure of how much we’d generally expect to pay for maintenance on a car this age, but occasionally things happen. In this instance, we needed to buy 4 replacement tyres at a cost of $300. At least this doesn’t happen often... We’re still hopeful that the car maintenance costs will average out over time, to eventually fall somewhere near our overall predicted expenses as we progress through the year.
Personal, and Other
These two categories are probably the hardest to predict. This month we invested in some new camping gear and also treated ourselves to a new GoPro after losing it in Lake Wainamu.
Despite spending $800 in these categories, we still believe we got the best deals that were available at the time.
Income
Our expected income for the month of March was $4620 between us, but how did we arrive at this number?
Well, working a fairly modest 35 hours a week, multiplied by 4 equates to 140 hours per month individually. At minimum wage ($16.50 at the time) that’s a Beverly Hills-competing $2310 per month each, meaning that our next article will most likely be posted from our private yacht...
Remember that this is before tax however, but at least we were kind with the numbers here, only counting on receiving minimum pay and working some pretty short hours. In reality we did much better but this was offset by the fact that we didn’t start working until the 16th of the month. Ultimately, we fell short in this category too due to the delay.
Unnecessary stuff
If you know even the smallest amount about Sabina then it probably comes as a surprise to you that this category is even listed. Sabina doesn’t spend unnecessary money does she? Well apparently so...
We ate out a few times.. so we’re guilty of a mcdonalds or two but we justified this by not wanting to sacrifice job-hunting time for cooking time. As you may be aware, doing anything whilst camping generally takes much longer and so, there were some occasions when we decided that the extra time wasn’t worth the hassle and went for just grabbing some food in town as opposed to cracking out the camping stove and chairs.
As for the alcohol, if we were really strict we could have saved just under $100 on drinks in March. It’s hard to go into too much detail with drinks because as we know, they just kind of happen. Even so, we don’t think we did terribly bad considering.
Travel
As you can see, we visited a few places where you have to pay for entry. This is not usually our style but we don’t regret these at all. In our opinion, both Hobbiton and Craters of the moon were well worth the money and therefore, money well-spent as we see it.
Online shopping
No really, but wait - it was nothing ridiculous. We bought an Apple SD card reader (so we can transfer our video footage with better quality) a DSLR gorilla pod (for better shots) and a replacement GoPro H7 Black for $430 which to be honest is an exceptional price. This all still adds up to $580 in total though but we saw these purchases as an investment into ChewyPineapple. We’ll almost certainly never recoup that money but at least it will keep us happy for a long time.
Summary
Overall, we were happy with our finances at the end of March. Assuming we didn’t lose our GoPro again (or ruin our tyres) then one more month in the Chateau would be enough to potentially bring our budget back up to $0, meaning we would have the same amount of money as when we arrived in Auckland on day one.
Like to see how we’re doing? Stay up to date with our actual budget or check out our weekly blog posts!
Happy travels!
S+L