What I spent in 6 months in Scandinavia

As we start another year and I look back at 2022, I decided to do a budget breakdown of everything I’ve spent in the last 6 months travelling Scandinavia. This was more for my sake than anything, I’ve never been a huge fan of budgeting and sticking to budgets, but I was curious as to how much I had actually spent over my travels. It ended up being a lot more than I realised! All up so far, I’ve managed to spend $16738.35 Australian dollars travelling in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. This doesn’t include my flights and travel insurance which I paid in advance from Australia which cost me $2985 all up. Lets have a look at where that money’s gone, where I’ve saved and where I’ve splurged.

My biggest expenses

By far my biggest expenses have been transport and equipment. Buying a second hand car in Norway though has been one of the best decisions I have ever made and worth every cent so far. The freedom to jump in and go anywhere I want has been incredible and especially more so now that the ski season has started and I am going snowboarding most days. Not only that, once I’m finished with it, I can sell it to recoup some of that money. I suspect I should be able to get something close to what I paid for it as I am not putting that many kilometers on it and second hand cars are still quite hard to get here. I will be out of pocket around $1500 for registration and insurance but should get back around $4000-$4500 fingers crossed.

My other big splurge has been on equipment. When I came to Europe I had only with me a small backpack as it was still quite warm and I like travelling light. This was great for the first month or so but once I settled here in Norway and it started to get cold I had to then go and buy a heap of winter clothes. It can get to minus 35 degrees Celsius and so good quality was essential. After consulting my Norwegian friends and people at the ski shops I went with a Norwegian brand called Norrona for nearly all my outdoor wear, which included a down jacket, Gore-Tex ski pants and jacket and thermal socks and base layers. These products are super expensive but they are extremely well made and I have been snowboarding in super bad conditions and been bone dry and completely warm which was amazing. I also spent a fair chunk on some hiking boots, snowboard, gloves, boots, helmet etc which brought my equipment expense up to my second highest category. I am one of those people that prefer to buy high quality items that last longer, following the age old saying of “I’m too poor to buy cheap things”.

Groceries

I was actually really surprised at how much money I had spent on groceries in the past 6 months. I thought my eating out at cafe’s and restaurants etc would be wayyyyy higher, but my food bill for cooking at home came out almost double. To be fair, I don’t really eat out that much by myself but I will if I am with a group of friends or socializing. It’s crazy expensive to eat out here. For instance a pizza can easily be $30-35 AUD and coke zero or something will be around $8 AUD at a bar.

Ways I’ve saved money

By not drinking alcohol I have saved myself a fortune. Not only that, I have been able to drive to all my social events and not have to get taxis etc. Exchanging work for accommodation has been another game changer for me. I talk about my experience using workaway in this blog post which has helped keep my housing costs super low. Other little things like packing my own lunches when I got to the slopes, making coffees at home and taking with me in a thermos, cashing in on recycling cans using the recycle stations etc have all added up to help me keep my cost of living relatively low for a high cost country.

Expenses looking forward

Now that I’ve got all the big ticket expenses out of the way, I expect my weekly expenditure to be around the $250 AUD mark. This includes all food and fuel etc and some play money for random expenses that always seem to pop up. I’m pretty happy with that especially because I’m having so much fun going snowboarding as much as I want with my season pass and all it costs me is the fuel to and from the slopes which is bugger all. I’m starting to earn a bit of money too for the extra work I am doing which is super nice as that will help fund more travelling once the snow season finishes here around May, meaning I can keep reinvesting all my dividends from my share portfolio. Looking forward to another 6 months of travel and what I can get that expense total down to!