Spending breakdown — my first 37 days on the road

Thirty-seven days ago I started tracking every penny I spent on the road. In that time I spent €514 — €13.89 a day, under a hundred euros a week.

Here's how it broke down:

Supermarket ……………………………..€138.71………….26.99%
Alcohol out and about ………………….€108.50…………..21.11%
Eating out ……………………………….€80.27……………15.62%
Hostel ……………………………………€62.67……………12.19%
Transport ………………………………..€53.00……………10.31%
Health ……………………………………€33.00……………..6.42%
Activities ………………………………..€23.09……………..4.49%
Mobile ……………………………………€9.42……………….1.83%
Local transport ………………………….€5.34……………….1.04%

Transport should come down in the coming months — I normally get around overland by hitchhiking, but this past month I had to take a few ferries.

Hostels should drop too, since I'll be going to fewer of them and the ones in the next countries on my route are considerably cheaper.

Activities covers museums, cinema, spa, sauna, transport to tourist sites, that sort of thing.

Health is basically contraception — the only thing I've actually had to spend money on so far. I may need to shell out on mosquito repellent soon though, because the little bastards are absolutely obsessed with me. We have a love-hate relationship.

For the mobile I keep my Spanish number, using Pepephone — every euro I spend accumulates as credit towards Air Europa flights.

Local transport is barely a blip: just the odd occasion when I had no choice but to pay for it.

The problem becomes clear when I crunch the numbers and realise that roughly half of what I spent at the supermarket was on alcohol — and when I ate out I almost always had a beer with the meal, so about a third of "eating out" is also alcohol. I've probably spent over €200 on booze. Something like 40% of my total outgoings.

It's not that I drink a lot — I always order the cheapest beer on offer and in expensive places I don't bother at all. But the cost of socialising tends to mean more drinking.

I'll keep tracking my spending to see how things evolve over the next few months.