Shortly after arriving in St Martin to live on a friend’s sailboat for a few weeks, we took a drive to Sunset beach.

With a name like that, I had visions of a stunningly romantic scene perfect for admiring the setting sun with a mojito in hand and toes in the sand.

The warning signs along the roadside suggesting I might lose my life should have been my first clue that this wasn’t your average beach.

At the beachside, people were studying a chalkboard with what looked like airline arrivals information. Being close to the airport, I presumed that many of the beach-goers were awaiting friends arriving by plane and were just killing time near the airport until the plane landed.

Little did I know…

While settling into my beach chair, suddenly there was increased activity. People stood up and grabbed their cameras, looking expectantly at the ocean. Some people even ran to a point in the middle of the beach, and positioned themselves carefully and strategically near a fence post.

My gaze followed the collective’s, to discover that coming straight towards us over the ocean was a very large airplane. A very large, very low-flying airplane.

Like, I-could-see-detail-on-the-landing-gear sort of low.

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Every year I summarize my cost of full-time travel. It’s a great exercise in travel budgeting and expense tracking. And believe it or not, with the creative travel strategies I use to get free accommodation, travel slowly, and fly for pennies on the dollar, my cost of full-time travel is less than staying in one place.

Click here to see my cost of full-time travel in 2010.

What I Did in 2011

My full-time travels in 2011 had a lot of variety. The first five months was spent recovering from 2010(!) in New Zealand, then I had five months of hectic travels through North America, Europe, and Asia (including the Ultimate Train Challenge which spanned 10 countries on 29 trains in 30 days), and I finished off the year catching my breath once again on the Caribbean island of Grenada.

All in all I traversed 13 countries and 73,000kms in 2011. (Click here for a more detailed summary and video of my 2011 full-time travel adventures).

Price Tag for 2011

I was surprised to discover that my total expenses in 2011 were almost exactly what my full-time travel expenses were for 2010 (within $400)! This was far from intentional, and even a little surprising given some big-ticket purchases I had to make in 2011.

Drum Roll, Please…

My total cost of full-time travel in 2011 was $17,615.

All in. 

If you were to follow in my footsteps, you might have spent more, or you might have spent less. Travel is so very different for everybody (hence the popularity of my week-in-the-life series), and we tend to spend money on the things that are important to us and make adjustments in other areas that aren’t.

I could have spent less. But the end-goal for me is not to spend as little as possible; rather to simply spend within my means. (Which I do).

Because I specialize in finding free accommodation and flying for (almost) free, I am able to keep my overall expenses low enough that I don’t need to earn a lot of money in order to financially sustain my full-time travels.

Something must be working, because it has been five years and counting….

Breakdown

Following is a breakdown of my 2011 expenses, month by month. I’ve converted expenses from native currencies to US Dollars for ease of comprehension and comparison.

January

New Zealand

$524 USD

I started off the new year in New Zealand. January saw me traveling around the North Island, from Rotorua to Keri Keri. But I was exhausted from an incredibly busy 2010, and a desire to slow down the pace of my travel brought me back to my favourite haunt of Mana Retreat.

(I don’t have a specific breakdown of expenses for January, as I didn’t start recording my expenses in full detail until February. The month’s expenditures was largely a function of bus travel, food and drink, and gifts for hosts that I stayed with).

February

New Zealand

$725 USD

I volunteered in trade for accommodation and food at Mana Retreat for the month of February. Most of my expenses were discretionary and entertainment-related, with the exception of some banking fees, and $100 to extend my New Zealand visa.

February Breakdown

Food & Drink $177

Transportation $99

Phone $33

Personal Effects $74

Entertainment $133

Visa $109

Bank Fees $100

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Having discussed credit card insurance, it’s time to take your credit card on the road! I prefer to charge everything I can to my credit card, since it provides me with records of my purchases, I get a good conversion rate (more on that next week), there is a degree of theft protection, and (quite importantly) it’s a great tool for accumulating frequent flyer miles.

But credit cards are not always accepted, or ideal, and there are a few pitfalls to beware of. For example, cash advances should generally be avoided whenever possible, since interest is charged from the day you withdraw the money (as opposed to regular charges, which afford you a grace period).

I also have the discipline and wherewithal to spend within my means, and pay off my credit card in full each month (something I manage online). This is important, because if you don’t pay off your balance in full and on time you’ll be charged interest (not good), and ultimately it’s possible to work yourself into a financial pickle while traveling that could get ugly – especially if your credit card is your last resort. (See my Financial Travel Tip on Debt Management for more on this).

As with so many financial matters, knowing the best option is mostly about knowing yourself.

Here’s a comprehensive list of the pros and cons of using your credit card on the road, with a list of rewards cards you might like to consider.

Travel & Money: Using Your Credit Card on the Road

For just shy of two weeks now, I’ve been living on a boat anchored in St Martin.

This is ironic for me; in September I met a traveler in Portugal who said he’d be hanging out on his friend’s boat in the Caribbean come Christmas.

“You should come join us,” he said. “You’d look great on a sailboat with a big sun hat on!” (And no, he wasn’t coming on to me).

I guffawed. “No way you’ll find me on a boat, thankyouverymuch. I get seasick at the mere thought of it!”

And that was that.

So you can imagine my own surprise when, come Christmas, I was hanging out on a friend’s sailboat in the Caribbean in Grenada. A mere dip of my toes into the seafaring sailing culture in the Caribbean, and I was hooked! So I made the decision to test my sea legs by living on a boat for a while – hence my trip up to St Martin to board a friend’s boat.

And despite my previous disposition toward seasickness (even in calm conditions), I haven’t even fought pangs of nausea! I’m working on a theory that seasickness is much more fear-based than physiological.

So far, so good!

Check out my latest article on how to get free accommodation, as well as a few places I’ve been interviewed recently.

Care One

Four Ways to Get Free Accommodation on Your Next Vacation

Read this article to discover one of my biggest secrets to making full-time travel financially sustainable: free accommodation!

Profiles & Shout-Outs

Fellow traveler and Wise Bread writer Myscha of Trekhound wrote this lovely profile of my life, along with some of my general tips on keeping full-time travel affordable.

How to Be a Professional Hobo

I also chatted with Jon of Tantric Traveler for quite a while about how I came to travel, some of the challenges of the full-time travel lifestyle, and some tips and resources for how to do it. Have a listen! It’s broken down into four easy-to-listen-to segments.

Living the Travel Dream with Nora of The Professional Hobo

Jade and James are a Canadian/English couple that met while Couchsurfing in New Zealand. They – and their travel blogs – became inseparable after that. They hope to show that budget travel is possible for any budget and inspire people to get out there and explore their world. They like to travel slowly and prefer overland travel to fast paced city hopping. Here’s a week-in-the-life of Jade and James in New Zealand!

Day 1 – Wednesday

6:00 AM - Roll out of “bed” (which is the mattress on our friend’s living room floor) in Wellington, New Zealand. We packed all our bags last night, so all we need to do is get washed and changed before we are out the door. We have decided to walk to the ferry terminal in order to save money on the bus fare; it is a pretty short bus ride and we will be doing lots of walking with our packs in the next few weeks so it’s good practice.

8:00 AM - Check in at the ferry terminal and prepare for a three hour ferry crossing to New Zealand’s south island. I try to get some sleep as otherwise I would get motion sick.

12:00 PM – After lunch at a local bakery in Picton, New Zealand on the South Island we try to figure out what to do next. It turns out I had actually been living one day in the future, so we are a full day earlier than we thought we would be. We were supposed to stay with some relatives of James’ who he has not previously met, and feel a little awkward showing up early. We decide that the best way to avoid awkwardness is to walk the 24 km’s to Blenheim instead.

3:00 PM - A car pulls over for us even though we are not trying to hitchhike, and offers to drive us to Blenheim.

5:00 PM - The camping park wants to charge us $40 to pitch our tent and we decide that is outrageous. We instead walk to a local park and set up our tent behind some bushes. (Freedom camping is no longer legal in New Zealand, although at the time of our trip it was).

Day 2 – Thursday

8:00 AM - We wake up and pack up the tent and start heading to the highway. We still have some time to kill so we decide to hitchhike a few hours south to the seaside town of Kaikoura, which is famous for seals and whale watching.

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In previous Financial Travel Tips, we’ve discussed travel insurance and how you might already have some travel insurance coverage without even knowing it – through your credit card.

That type of insurance is automatic, and simply by charging a car rental or airline ticket to your credit card, you’re entitled to the associated insurance benefits.

But there’s also a form of credit card insurance that an agent will call you about. It goes by a few names along the lines of “balance protection” insurance, with promises to pay your balance (or more likely, your minimum payment) in the event of a job loss, disability, illness, or variety of other circumstances.

You have to pay for this insurance; the way they quote it (usually as “x” per thousand owing) the premium may seem like pennies, but those pennies add up. Dollar for dollar you’re much more likely to spend way more on this insurance than you’ll ever receive – even if you make a claim!

Not sure where I stand on the matter? Want more information? Check out this article:

Credit Card Insurance? No Thanks

I slam on the brakes. On the bank is a goat grazing dangerously close to the road. In front of me a driver stopped suddenly to chat with a friend on a road-side porch. In front of him is a wheelbarrow, inexplicably sitting on the road. In trying to manoeuvre around these obstacles, I skirt between a massive pot-hole with a muffler sitting in the bottom and the road’s edge (which involves a steep drop-off). Just ahead are more parked cars I’ll have to get around once I’ve let traffic coming the other way through. Adding further to the chaos, I plan to stop randomly at the side of the road myself to get some barbecued chicken.

Many of the roads in Grenada aren't in nearly as good a condition as this abandoned one!

Driving in Grenada is an off-road adventure, even when you’re on the road. A standard jaunt will probably result in your vehicle (at at least a few junctures) being on a highly vertical angle, navigating pot holes, broken concrete, and speed bumps that will take out the undercarriage of a car, and braking hard for anything from goats to buses to falling coconuts.

Anything goes.

Arriving and Driving

Having just come from the chaos of Vietnam and experiencing Saigon’s mad bike-filled streets, I learned that even among chaos, there is rhythm. And feeling that rhythm from the back of a bike in Saigon was one of the best preparations I could have had for Grenada.

It all boils down to “flow” (something I’ve often said encapsulates my attitude towards Grenada in general). In Vietnam, as well as Grenada, driving is about being alert to the possibility – nay, the probability – that anything can happen, and you just need to react to and move around it.

Avoiding Hazards

Here are some specific things you just might have to navigate and “flow” around while driving in Grenada. Put them all together on a short stretch of road and you’ll get a sense of the adventure!

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I look up at the moon, high in the sky as the sun disappears. And yet, darkness isn’t descending. The moon is almost full.

The moon was full when I arrived on the Caribbean island of Grenada for my three-month house-sitting tour of duty. And each time the moon shines full (as it has done three times since I arrived), I enjoy recounting the passage of time in Grenada.

And quite the few months they have been.

A Rough Start

I arrived in October, giddy to be in Grenada and excited for three months of living an easy island life. On my second day I got a live lobster from the local fisherman and figured out how to cook and eat one of my favourite foods – from scratch (literally – those spines are sharp!).

The following day, my plans changed dramatically when I realized l’d be going it alone and not with a partner as planned, and a few days after that, I came down with what I suspect was Dengue Fever and was bedridden for a week.

So that was my first two weeks in Grenada. Crash-Bam.

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The last two financial travel tips have been about flying in style with frequent flyer miles and getting the best deal on flights when you can’t use miles.

But a great financial travel tip (with environmental benefits to boot) is not to fly at all!

You’ll get a much more authentic travel experience if you go overland. You learn more about the landscape, geography, and often meet more people along the way. Indulge me in my professed love of trains, and you’ll learn why air travel should actually be considered a last resort.

Depending on your destination and available forms of transportation, you might find that flying is cheaper, or downright necessary. But I invite you to consider the cultural, environmental, and economical benefits of exploring some of the alternatives to flying if you can.

Check out this article for more:

Alternatives to Flying: Other Ways to Get from Here to There

On New Year’s Eve, I felt cold. I got my first goose bumps since arriving in Grenada three months ago.

How arresting it was, on this mildly chilly night (and by “chilly” I mean 20+ degrees Celsius), to realize that this was the first time I’d even contemplated what “cold” was since arriving.

This whole “winter in the Caribbean” thing is pretty sweet.

So, I’m staying.

In two days’ time, I’ll be flying from Grenada to St Martin where I’ll meet up with some newly acquainted friends to test out my sea legs with a month aboard a sailboat. The captain even has a parrot….I can just hear it now: “*squawk*! Nora just puked again! *squawk*”!

After that, I’m not sure what will happen, but possibilities like salsa in Cuba and yoga in Bahamas are both alluring and percolating. By the end of March, I’ll return in Grenada (yes, I love it here that much), to resume my house-sitting position for a further few months.

So in my plight to travel slowly and “LIVE” around the world (as opposed to simply passing through), I’ll be spending (at least) nine months in the Caribbean. What a privilege and a treat, to even temporarily refer to this idyllic place that is the breeding ground for world-wide visions of “paradise”… as “home”.

For those who are preparing for the world to end this year, here’s a little numerology to get you going: As I was driving along the other day, my eyes glanced at the odometer (something they never do). Just at that moment, it was rolling over to 212,000…..on the eve of 2012.

How cool is that?!

Okay, maybe not that cool. But these articles below are! Check ‘em out!

Wise Bread

The Secret to Time-Management and Work-Life Balance

If you want to be happy with your work-life balance, you might be surprised to discover it’s about much more than how you manage your time.

Care One

Surviving the Holiday Blues

“‘Tis the season,” alright! ‘Tis the season to be sorry, sick, and miserable. If this is how you generally feel during the holidays, don’t worry – you’re not alone. Here are seven things you can do to get through the holidays a little cheerier:

Profiles & Shout-Outs

I’m pleased that an article I wrote for Wise Bread about 100 Ways to Change your Life years ago (and one that has remained among Wise Bread’s top articles) inspired a post by Amy Gutman over at the Huffington Post. She has a nice take on the exercise by putting a different spin on New Year’s Resolutions.

Stuck on New Year’s Resolutions? Try This Instead

And Jenny Kerr, a columnist for GoBankingRates wrote an intriguing post about retiring abroad, and about less conventional retirement lifestyles. Although I’m not technically “retired”, I do live out the retirement dreams of many….so my lifestyle was profiled for the article. Check it out!

Save Money by Retiring Abroad: How to Retire Overseas for Less