August ‘26 Slow Travel Budget
And just like that we’ve reached the end of another month and it’s time for the August edition of the Slow Travel Budget!
Like I said in last month’s budget post, this is the type of budget breakdown I was searching for whilst planning our slow travels, so I knew I wanted it to be a regular part of this blog.
So let’s get into it!
On our way to hike the Flume in New Hampshire!
How This Works
A few things on the data you see below:
The accommodations budget reflects what we spent this month, not how much our current accommodations cost. This month we booked a 2027 stay, paid for several Furnished Finder background checks, paid for an overnight in New Brunswick on our drive to NH. We actually paid for our NH stay this month as well.
All numbers are in dollar amounts. I’ve begged Canva to let me put dollar signs in my data set for the pie chart, but so far they don’t allow it. Boo.
The tiny grey sliver without a label at the top is our utilities and subscriptions budget, and was $73 in August.
I’m not sure why Canva isn’t labeling the fuschia sliver at the bottom, but that is car insurance and gas and was $527 in August.
“Health” includes insurance and any other medical expenses. Ryan’s health insurance is covered by his former employer.
Once Again, We Showed Out
As you can see, our total spend for the month of August was $8178. This was quite a bit higher than July and I’m not entirely sure why.
We did return to the US, which means we are no longer benefitting from the amazing Canadian exchange rate- and we also did a two-day drive to get to New Hampshire which required a lot of gas and that overnight stay in New Brunswick.
But I don’t know? It will be interesting to see how things average out as we continue traveling this fall.
One thing is very clear though- we are continuing to spend our discretionary bucket with wild (for us) abandon! I actually wonder if this is the most we’ve ever spent on discretionary items. It really could be. I also wonder if it feels so much more “necessary” to go out to a brewery, restaurant or very very old Cog Railway because we are both feeling a bit lonely for friends, family and other people in general. Could be.
Thinking Ahead
————-Trigger warning: the following section is for FI nerds only…—————-
You’ve been warned!
I’ve mentioned Aubrey Williams’ amazing guardrails before. You can find more information on those here, but to keep it short: the guardrails calculate how much more (or less) you can spend depending on how market fluctuations impact your portfolio.
When I sat down to pencil in a budget for 2027 using Ramit’s Conscious Spending Plan, (no I won’t shut up about it) I wanted to see where our portfolio was to find out if I could hypothetically increase our spending.
And boy howdy! Thanks to the magic of compound interest, our portfolio has grown to our upper guardrail!
This means that even though we sold a portion of equities to fund our lifestyle for six months AND stopped investing in June, our portfolio has grown.
Obviously I understand the math behind this, but it still feels like a cheat code to life.
I should also note that we withdrew a bit less in June than the math said we could, simply because it was enough for us and it felt more safe as this was our first time selling an investment.
Still- here we are.
Now that we are at the upper guardrail and we feel a bit more comfortable, let’s get crazy!
At this point it looks like we will withdraw what the math says we can to grow our spending a little and do some extra fun things. More on that soon!
Questions?
As I said at the beginning of this post- this is exactly the kind of information I was looking for when I was dreaming of our early retirement travels.
If you are now in that boat too, please drop your questions about our budget below, or feel free to send me an email. And if you feel that I left anything out, please let me know that too.
I’m so happy to chat with fellow FI folks and future slow travelers! Have a great week, everyone- and thanks for being here.