Living in Europe on Social Security Budget: (Slow Travel Expat Expenses)

Living in Europe on Social Security Budget: (Slow Travel Expat Expenses)

hey there digital Nomads expats slow Travelers retirement Travelers and anyone striving to become one of these um those of you that are already subscribed and following us know this answer already but for the newbies do you know that you can actually live in Europe on less than what the average couple makes from Social Security in the US it might sound unbelievable but today we’re going to look and share how our full time slow travel has made this a reality keep in mind we’re not trying to live a life of frugal living but you might think we’re living frugally from our monthly cost averages yeah so but anyway before we actually share our latest monthly expenses remember we are living a unique lifestyle and so we’re going to be diving into this it’s a full-time slow travel lifestyle this isn’t just about ticking off destinations on a bucket list and trying to go fast and furious through as many countries as you can it’s a way of life that allows you to immerse yourself in different cultures and truly experience the places that you’re visiting so we spent the past month split between two countries but we also took a quick day trip to a third country if you remember from our previous cost of living video we shared our cost for our month split between Italy and Albania and it came out to $226 so we finished our time in s Albania at the beginning of this month of April we spent $118 for six nights we had also spent several days in March as well so we were able to get that one month discount yeah so if you remember when we were in Albania in the last video the majority of that month or was in Albania with a little bit in Italy with the ferry crossing over so now this that month was focused mostly in Albania this one’s got a smaller slice of Albania and it was a really cheap place to be it was and we spent $30 in groceries during that six days but we ate out a lot oh we love Marinis um yeah so I what did we spend like $162 in restaurants we the month and but we went out a lot and we went to Marines and um greatest salad and we we miss so um that that was every meal was well worth every penny we spent uh at that location we went to other restaurants as well and uh you know but that’s a whole other video that’s the last video so you can check out more about that Albania trip um from last month yeah and then we did this really awesome trip we we spent $78 for a round trip to Corfu Greece by ferry and we were so excited and we bought those in the city the day before we left so really you can do it right there on the spot yeah and um something I guess happened I just found out about through Facebook but uh I guess that fairy caught on fire the other day so hopefully the fair is still running okay but it was going full speed high speed when we were on it and I think there’s several fairies going so hopefully that fair is still up and going but it was a $78 round trip as Julie had mentioned and uh we we spent a nice afternoon in Corfu uh we were out with some friends that we’ve traveled in so many places with that uh we met up with again down in uh s and so we went to uh Corfu Greece and to say it was more expensive than um s is a underst understatement we spent $50 in coru and we had lunch we had dessert we had coffee um but Corfu was a lot more expensive than S uh in comparison so we’ve been spoiled in the Balkans quite a bit so36 for our meal a salad little bit of chicken and a beer not what we’re used to but food was good it definitely is a different standard cost of living here than 30 minutes away after being spoiled by the prices in s it was hard to uh stomach looking at the prices in Greece but if you’re sitting in the United States or Canada you’re probably like oh that still sounds cheap um and Corfu was gorgeous well worth the day trip we took yeah so um we left uh sonda to head to where we actually have our home base to Montenegro and um so we’re in the tat Montenegro area right now this is our home that we used to home base from and just so you know when we are in our home base when we’re doing our monthly budgets we charge ourselves for your knowledge uh was it 4 $40 a day $40 a day as though we were renting here so we’ll kind of give you the cost of what is actually cost for us to be here as homeowners but we’re going to also give you the cost that if you were rent here instead what it would have cost so it would be roughly $1,200 a month in an Airbnb here if you wore here in Airbnb as a as a couple yeah exactly and our groceries in Montenegro totaled $440 55 so you know not bad so we’re going to one of the larger stores in our area this is HDL and we are now in monegro I’ve been amazed at some of the prices I’ve encountered despite inflation because we actually are paying about5 a kilogram for chicken right now yeah that’s I guess pretty high I you know I hate to say this no that’s fantastic so Bia pasta 99 cent Euro so you have it all the way at 399 great prices green lettuce €29 per kilogram oranges 99 Cents Euro kilog apples 89 Cento kilog Tomatoes this particular variety €159 a kilog €135 a kilg white potatoes 89 cent per kilog carrots 85 Cent per kilog is that 6 L of water €139 1 L of milk 99 cent Euro got on it energy drink 65189 400 G feta cheese 469 we’ve been out to a few restaurants this time around um and you know they’ve gone up exponentially but our total for that is $137.4 yeah and we’ve been having some nice times getting out we’ve actually ran into some viewers while we’ve been here and been able to have coffee and a beer with a couple people too so lots of fun yeah always always good to come back uh to Montenegro where we feel like it’s it’s our home so to speak we’ve been coming and going from here since 2016 when we had our first home here and then we uh sold that first home bought our new home here little less than a year ago and by the way this we do not have Rosen City in Montenegro so we uh just Shuffle in and out of here spending less than 90 days and on our way and uh you know we’ve done some house swaps or people have rented our place viewers and um we have a new group yep yeah we started a new house swap group so if you’re not part of it uh please check out the wjt shingen shuffle house swap group and um we only have one month left on our house for this year uh mid-september to Mid October so if uh somebody’s in a place of interest you know let us know before that month gets booked up yeah and unfortunately for me I had to have a dental cleaning and uh so that cost us40 or $43 we have um other costs too so we have like a really minimal cost for our VPN that we have surf shark and we have a link for that in our website at Warren jul travel.com if you’re interested but it’s $80 for 26 months through our link yes so we just switched over from using Express VPN over to Surf shark VPN and so that is a uh $3.7 a month on average over the 26 months so hard to beat that price um that’s less than a cap Chino in Corfu Greece yeah and then of course health insurance we pay our $240 and 25 cents for that per month yeah so we just did a video about health insurance so if you’re expat Nomad um American living abroad or somebody living abroad um you don’t have to be American you can go and check out what it cost for um health insurance by going to waren jully travel.com as a reminder I’m an agent in the US so I would be um your agent in most cases we have um now just added as of uh today I actually don’t have a link yet but just got a a fifth uh company that I’m representing in this as well so uh we have uh siga we have geue we have IMG safety wing and geny is uh the new one just waiting to get the new link but I would hope that you guys would uh come through our website and use our links if you appreciate what we’re doing doing and we don’t want to Panhandle you for money to say hey give buy me a coffee or do these things like some people do or do a patreon thing but if you actually need something using the links in our website would uh would help out a little bit and we also have an Amazon store so even if you’re going to go buy a can of beans or baby diapers or whatever if you use our Amazon link we’ll get a small little uh fraction of percent or something in that just motivated yeah it’s it’s it’s nice to get a little something but we are officially retired and we don’t live off of this Channel or any of the monies we’re making off of it but it does help to supplement a little bit so anything I don’t have to spend from our retirement savings or dividends is uh money that gets to keep uh compounding so anything you can do to uh help out we appreciate it so we do have a car and we uh drive all around Europe and we have that car through our Corporation if you watch us you’ll know a lot more about us we have it through a Bulgarian Corporation we have more videos on that but we’re also showing you right now the cost for public transportation and uh we’ll also discuss a few day trips you can take so you don’t have to have a car um well let’s let’s go back to our car first off for those of you that are new there’s a couple different methods to have a car in Europe without having residency and it is a little esoteric we’ve done videos on these things but if you need information on that feel free to reach out and we can either give you our German option or Bulgarian option and or give you the videos that explain that to you and our email of course is war JRA gmail.com so we have a our car is great uh Abby is our Citron berlingo and she gets fantastic mileage about 45 miles to the gallon um and when you’re dealing with high European gas prices sometimes six seven or 8 a gallon uh you want to have a a vehicle that that treats you well economically with with gas yeah we’re really excited right now because here in Montag we paying 148 per liter so that’s one1 48 per liter and I think that’s about $67 per gallon yeah so when we talk about our fuel this month we spent $35 in fuel how does that work we actually filled up the month before last um in Albania so when we started off with our full tank in Albania and then we got uh across the border Montenegro we topped off again at $35 worth of fuel and that took us through the rest of the month so we we really only spent $35 new dollars and uh you know maybe we spent an equivalent of a tank of gas in the month which maybe would ramp that up a little bit higher but that was kind of put into last month’s budget so we we just uh didn’t have to spend much at all for fuel this month and you can actually you know if you’re here locally in Montenegro and near IND DOA which is uh a little suburb outside of cter Oldtown you can get a bus a public transportation bus it’s called the Blue Line and you pay €1 and that’ll take you from Dober to cter Oldtown so there are ways to get around without a car yeah and you know while we speak about car or speaking about cars our Bulgarian attorney is going to be sending us our car insurance for the year and I think he said it was going to be like 400 uh for the whole year so um I used to pay that a month in the United States yeah so so we’re looking over $30 a uh a month for car insurance for our our vehicle each month and so if you’re um if you were going by bus I don’t know if it would have been much different to go from Albania to Montenegro um so you know we got by pretty pretty inexpensively but we also did have a breakdown in Albania so check out last month’s video if you’re curious about that that’s in the bonus footage um and as I said you know there’s some great tours through throughout uh Montenegro and one of them is a boat tour and it’ll take you from cter Waterfront opposite of cter Oldtown to the Blue Cave mamula and Our Lady of the Rock in Paris which of course if you’re here you have to see our lady of the Rock and the cost of this tour is quite reasonable we have a link for it in our video description and we really encourage you to check this tour out as well as the Serbian Orthodox ostrog Monastery there’s a tour that’ll take you from cter to the beautiful dermat mountain and it it’ll take you to the deepest canyon in Europe which is the Tara Canyon and I mean breathtaking you can have a a hike around the Black Lake and then you visit the ug Monastery and this trip is 13 hours well you know I I I want to bring up because we have a lot of our viewers that have come here to Montenegro from our videos to come look at real estate and to look at this as an expat destination because we’ve covered this thoroughly about why we are here in Montenegro and there’s so many good things and we’re going to focus on our budget today but if you’re coming here to look at real estate um you know these are trips we’d like you to probably try to fit in some of this tour stuff we’ve done it quite a few times we have friends come or something we go do this stuff with them so we don’t do this every time we come um but try to fit into your schedule because there’s so much to love about this country and we done a we did a video about the best places to visit but if you’re coming here to visit for Real Estate also send me an email at War jully trvel gmail.com and I’ll hook you up with our favorite agents here so that you can uh get you know hit the ground running with a uh plethora of opportun opportunities to find real estate um as a reminder we bought this one uh less than a year ago after all was said and done it was $163,000 we did do it about another 8 or 9,000 in kitchen renovation and some renovation in the place but you know two bedroom um 900 squ ft approximately plus a um about 100 foot or more deck yeah and we’ll put that video in the video description as well and you know we did the top destinations in Montenegro and we’re going to link that one so you can see what we love so much about here so now well let’s let’s cave out this we’re going to give you the total for the month that we spent with the $40 markup and then we’re going to tell you what it actually costs us to be here as homeowners so if you’re choosing to come here and live here whether it’s part-time like us or full-time doing residency which of course we do our residency video um you know we’ll give you that information but our total for the month of April was $ 22569 and so if you are a typical American Social Security couple American living abroad um your typical Social Security in that bracket is approximately $2,900 so if you looked at our full year uh average from last year we came in less than 2900 and you would think we’re living frugally but we’re not trying to have a Frugal Living lifestyle this is just what things cost so we’re really happy that uh we get to have a great lifestyle at a very low cost that would probably be unachievable had we stayed in the United States and we’d probably be working and you know this would just be going out for our groceries and uh car insurance probably um almost for this and and homeowners insurance and you know we’ve been slow traveling for four years and we love slow travel and we highly recommend it to people and it is so worth being able to see Europe yeah it’s it’s a you know slow travel is a lifestyle and you know knowing how to do the shingan shuffle this is it’s not about hey let’s hurry up and go spend 2 days here and jump on another Plane 2 days here jump on another plane you know that that’s much more expensive much more exhausting we really want to enjoy the places we go to and get to know people yeah and we travel with dogs so we have a little bit more layers than some people so let’s talk if you chose to buy a home in Monty uh we Monty by the way is what a lot of us nickname Montenegro when we’re talking about it so when we’re in Monty um our utilities came out to be what $8 for the month for water yep uh $66 for the electric 650 for garbage yeah our mtel for the internet was $47 equivalent now mtel has not only internet we also have cable television as well so that covers that as well and we have a local cell phone plan on yes so the total for the month as a homeowner was [Music] $1,464 41 so when when we come back here it is low cost we but you know what Julie always finds a way to spend some more on oneoff things I do so uh so yeah it was 1464 for all of the basic things going out and buying groceries and all the things you would have but you’re not married to Julie and so she needed to upgrade our 55 or or 40 something inch TV 55 in TV so we have three TVs but the living room is now a 55 in and so that ended up uh costing us a bit what what did we spend on your 55 in TV 519 okay and then you bought some sort of a a cook top uh I bought an appliance small appliance and it’s a 12in one and I love it and I paid €109 and then we had to buy a dehumidifier yeah so so it can be um you know there’s more humidity in the air in in certain times of the year here so we’ve got a dehumidifier and know we actually love it um and that came out to be $235 mhm yeah 235 I’m sorry um so those are some one-offs that we had yeah and those are not included in that 14644 you know because that is one-offs and and it isn’t your normal every month lifestyle we do also like to tell people we don’t include our vlogging cost like apple storage and things that are not going to be your normal Nomad cost these are you YouTube related really yeah we we love our little place in Montenegro here and you know so if if we really wanted to live here year round and have residency which we could do because we’re homeowners um that would really come out to being a an $188,000 a year um for two uh living here fulltime and not counting one off so you know if you’re married to Julie that 18,000 can probably easily become 24,000 um but you know so it’s uh it’s it’s quite uh doable and it’s a beautiful location beautiful place so we hope that uh you’ll find some of this information inspiring so if you’re an American looking to live abroad early retire you’re um trying to figure out how you’re going to stretch your um your dollars for retire if you’re on Social Security we hope that you’re subscribing and following our Channel and also joining our Facebook group with other like-minded expats Nomads people that want to be expats or Nomads that want to live abroad and live overseas and see what it’s like to to to be a um slow travel early retirement and you don’t have to be an American to join our groups we have people from all over the world so go to our Facebook groups don’t forget we have our new house swap thing uh so that if you’re wanting to buy someplace on your but you can’t get residency you can swap with People Like Us in monten and the non sh we have some nice ones coming in I mean we have one in Malta that looks amazing we have great one in Turkey we have one in the United States well we’ll be swapping for three weeks uh in going to Copenhagen here pretty soon too um so anyhow we hope you’ll subscribe give this video a like and as a reminder Julie and I we’re traveling the world with our two dogs we’re trying to see what it’s like to live in different places we’re sharing our experiences and expenses with with you and uh please join us and be part of our community and until next time have a great day everybody byebye ciao

Join us on our full-time slow travel journey living in Europe as retirement travelers on less than a typical couple’s social security budget. This video explores our monthly expenses as an expat couple enjoying early retirement overseas in Europe. Discover how we maintain a slow travel expat lifestyle without breaking the bank, covering expenses like restaurants, accommodation, groceries, transportation, and more. Watch as we showcase our lifestyle and show you how retirement overseas is not about compromising on quality. If you’re interested in living abroad on a budget, this is a must-watch to see how living in Europe can be affordable and enjoyable!

Stick around to the end for the bonus footage if you are interested in our expenses as American’s that own a home in Montenegro, a country not in the Schengen. We cover it all!

🔔Subscribe to unlock the secrets to affordable expat living! Join for tips on frugal living, retiring early, navigating limits, and more. Perfect for nomads, digital nomads, retirees, and anyone dreaming of financial freedom: https://www.youtube.com/@WarrenJulieTravel/?sub_confirmation=1

🕒 Chapters:
00:00 – Introduction
01:00 – Albania
02:38 – Corfu Greece
04:50 – Montenegro
17:48 – Homeowner Cost
20:40 – Conclusion

🔗 Stay Connected with Us.

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For the Tours Mentioned in the Video see below:

Boat Tour
👉https://gyg.me/LjchJkQq

Ostrog Monastery and Tara Canyon
👉https://gyg.me/Uyv4bYiF

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✅ Videos Mentioned:

👉We Bought a Home Here

👉Do You Need Expat International Insurance?

👉How Much to Budget for Life in Saranda, Albania

👉How Americans Own Cars in Europe

👉How Affordable is Nomadic Retirement

👉How Americans Can Buy and Register a Car in Europe

👉Montenegro Travel, Top Destinations

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