Since UK and US immigration couldn’t understand how I create the means to travel and live like I do, I thought I’d share a little bit about how it works, continuing to explore how to live a (mostly) open and transparent life.

Dreams, Charleston, South Carolina, 2006

Many of the stories and photographs from my recent 89-day jaunt to Japan and across Europe are already online (click here for the map and links to all the posts; click here for the Flickr set of photos from the trip), but I thought this little pause in my trip would be a good time to share a bit about how I make it work, focusing on how much it costs to travel like I do.

This post will cover the details and expenses behind the most recent segment in my current year + of travel; if you’re interested in the expenses behind my cross-country road trip across the US, the details are available in two parts: Nov 30, 2008 to Feb 14, 2009 (including a detailed breakout of the expenses per-day) and Nov 30, 2008 to March 31, 209 (including some advice, thoughts and thank-yous).

Since UK and US immigration could barely understand how it all works, I figured this would be a good time to explain…

• $66

  Yes, $66 per day, everything included.* A bit higher than the $47 per day I spent driving across the US, but understandable given the different modes of transport and the distances involved. Excluding my travel costs of $2,900 (half of my overall expenses), my total expenses for “living” were $33 per day.

  The biggest components of my “living” costs: $19 for food, entertainment and eating out, a minimal $1.50 for phone and Internet charges, and $10 per day for “rent”. The rent charge is incredibly low for two simple reasons: 39 nights spent at hostels and 41 nights spent with friends, spending social capital instead of money. For the nights I had to pay for a place to stay, my average was $20 per night.

  I use quotes around “living” as a bit of sarcasm, because that level of frugality sometimes doesn’t feel like much of a life.

  But I’ll repeat:

  … it comes with a price: no big purchases, no clothes, computers, electronic gadgets or the “stuff” we spend most of our time acquiring. But it also comes with a certain peace of mind and soul: “what we own ends up owning us”, and by removing stimuli and focusing on true needs rather than wants, we can re-focus on people, relationships and experiences.

  Again: it’s not an expensive life, but it’s certainly rich.

• Where did that $66 take me?

  89 days in all, 40 days in the UK, 14 in Japan and 34 days in eastern and western Europe.

  Favorite places? Istanbul, Turkey; Sofia, Bulgaria; hiking in the Rila Mountains in Bulgaria; Brasov, Romania; Kyoto, Japan; and of course, London, England.

  But it’s the people and communities I met and re-met along the way that proved to be the highlight of my travels; I’ll remember the experiences, intellectual conversations and great fun more than the places themselves. You made my trip more than you realize.

• What’s next?

  New York City for PDN PhotoPlus, New Orleans for TribeCon, San Francisco from Nov 2nd to Nov 7th, Perth, Australia and Mumbai, India and then back to the US; beyond that, I really, honestly, don’t know. It’s a bit of a raw subject at the moment.

  Why? For one, I am no longer accepting new clients for Unstructured Ventures; while I will continue to answer questions and provide support for the free financial model for startups, smaller consulting gigs simply doesn’t interest me at the moment, and I find that larger, more holistic projects are better uses of my time and passion for me and for others.

  Secondly, living this kind of life, for this long, is proving to be tough for me, personally and professionally. I know many people that love living the nomadic life, and it’s because they have found better ways to do it than I have. Perhaps I will create a better way to live a semi-nomadic life after I finish my next couple months of already-planned travel, but in no way will my current year + of homelessness continue in the same form.

  Time to find and create new platforms, new edges, new hubs, new routes, new goals.

  Re-phrasing: it’s not an expensive life, and it’s certainly rich, but it could be far richer.

  We’ll see.

* Ok, a little bit of a cheat. Adding in medical and car insurance raises the total to $69. Still not bad.