October was a chaotic month with two extremely long haul flights (first, second), round-tripping to Denver from Guam twice to pick up and drop off my mom. In all of that planning, traveling, and spending time with my mom, I completely forgot to document the October international travel FIRE budget.
The month of October was split nearly evenly between Osaka Japan (15 days) and Guam (16 days). By this point we were already familiar with the costs of Japan so we knew how that portion would come out before crunching the final numbers. The Guam portion was a mystery because numbeo doesn’t have enough data for it to give accurate projections. After some initial sticker shock in Guam, the prices really settled down to be roughly in line with what we expected.
I’m going to be presenting this budget from a couple different angles because of some money logistics related to Guam. It is the only location on this trip for which we specifically set aside money outside of our investments. We have been planning a trip to Guam for years, and it was the seed for what became our international gap year. One analysis will be the straight up full costs, and the other will be how the month impacted our investment withdrawals.
We primarily paid for the Guam days out of that special fund, and it gave us an opportunity to manipulate our October withdrawal rate. The benefit this provides is a checkpoint in our gap year funding. Allowing us to analyze our withdrawal rate so far, alongside projections for the remaining months. Ultimately we determined we wanted to hit (manipulate) a 2.08% withdrawal rate in October to stay on track throughout the year. When you subtract the majority of Guam costs, that is very doable.
Income
The one thing that will not change across the two angles being presented is income, and that is as follows:
| Rental Income | $3,500.00 | |
| Investment Safe Withdrawal Max | $3,803.13 | |
| Interest Income | $59.64 | |
| Auto Ins Refund | $981.00 | We forgot about this entirely when we cancelled our policy, and paid for the new policy out of our monthly budget. We consider this refund to be income now. |
| Core electric credit | $35.11 | Our electric is via a coop, and we got a credit, like some sort of profit sharing. |
| Total | $8,378.88 |
Actual Full Costs Analysis
Budget Numbers
The raw numbers for this scenario are a combo of Japan and absurd trip of a lifetime vacation numbers in Guam. They are extremely out of line with the rest of our frugal gap year. If we spent at this rate normally, we would run out of money rapidly.
Total: 12,304.72 Withdrawal Rate: 8.13%
| Accomodation | $4,301.92 | Osaka ($1,828.14) and Guam ($2,473.78) Airbnbs |
| Cigna Global Silver w/ US | $612.18 | Sinking fund |
| Grocery Store / Food | $2,084.44 | Osaka ($995.98) and Guam ($1,088.46) Food |
| House Escrow (taxes 4091.68, insurance 1518, Rent Profit Tax 3115) | $867.22 | Sinking fund |
| Discretionary (i.e. fun/unnecessary) | $885.12 | Osaka ($209.15) and Guam ($675.97) |
| Transportation | $1,894.55 | Japan rail, Denver Uber, Guam Car Rental ($1,392.49) |
| Storage Unit (10′ x 20′) | $190.00 | |
| Clothes | $100.00 | Sinking fund |
| Visas | $0.00 | |
| Life Insurance | $99.81 | |
| Vaccines | $91.58 | Sinking fund |
| Phone (Google FI) | $42.95 | |
| Gifts | $60.00 | Sinking fund |
| Sponsor Child & Giving | $43.00 | |
| Auto escrow (non-owner policy) | $41.50 | Sinking fund |
| Duolingo | $20.00 | Sinking fund |
| E-Sim | $20.00 | Sinking fund |
| Virtual Mailbox | $22.49 | |
| Amazon Prime | $11.59 | Sinking fund |
| Cloud Storage | $2.99 | |
| Property Management Monthly Fee | $350.00 | |
| Property Management Maintenance | $335.71 | HOA fee, sprinkler winterization |
| Flights | 0 | We didn’t yet book our flight to the Philippines in October |
| Kid Purchases | 135.21 | This comes out of money they earn, but it funnels through our account |
| Kids Invest | $85.50 | This comes out of money they earn, but it funnels through our account |
| USB C cable | 6.95 | One of our cables was giving out |
Analysis
The categories that have the increased cost from Guam which you want to pay attention to are accommodation, groceries, discretionary, and transportation. The discretionary spending in Guam is heavily centered around eating out, and many activities as well. Transportation for Guam is car rental and gas.
The full spending in October when you include Guam is unsustainable for our FIRE budget and not something we will repeat. For those of you who have achieved Fat FIRE, maybe you have the $3.7M in investments to sustain that, but we don’t.
Official Budget – Guam Costs Mitigated
Budget Numbers
In this scenario, much of the cost of Guam is removed from the monthly budget. Therefore much of the cost of Guam does not pull from our investments, but rather from a separate fund we saved for the Guam trip. The reason I say “much” of the cost is mitigated, is because if we paid for all of Guam out of that special fund, we would be under the target 2.08% withdrawal rate. In other words we over saved for Guam, and we decided to put some of the Guam costs into the budget to get up to a 2.08% withdrawal rate.
Total: $6,539.16 Withdrawal Rate: 2.08%
| Accomodation | $1,828.14 | For the 15 days in Osaka only |
| Cigna Global Silver w/ US | $612.18 | Sinking fund |
| Grocery Store / Food | $995.98 | Eating out nearly every meal in Japan. Guam food not included and paid out of special savings fund. |
| House Escrow (taxes 4091.68, insurance 1518, Rent Profit Tax 3115) | $867.22 | Sinking fund |
| Discretionary (i.e. fun/optional spending) | $350.00 | $209.15 in Japan. The rest is a portion of Guam that we were able to fit into the budget and stay under 2.08%. |
| Transportation | $226.35 | Japan rail and Uber in Denver when I picked up my mom to bring her to Guam |
| Storage Unit (10′ x 20′) | $190.00 | |
| Clothes | $100.00 | Sinking fund |
| Visas | $0.00 | |
| Life Insurance | $99.81 | |
| Vaccines | $91.58 | Sinking fund |
| Phone (Google FI) | $42.95 | |
| Gifts | $60.00 | Sinking fund |
| Sponsor Child & Giving | $43.00 | |
| Auto escrow (non-owner) | $41.50 | Sinking fund |
| Duolingo | $20.00 | Sinking fund |
| E-Sim | $20.00 | Sinking fund |
| Virtual Mailbox | $22.49 | |
| Amazon Prime | $11.59 | Sinking fund |
| Cloud Storage | $2.99 | |
| Property Management Monthly Fee | $350.00 | |
| Property Management Maintenance | $335.71 | HOA fee, sprinkler winterization |
| Flights | 0 | We didn’t yet book our flight to the Philippines in October |
| Kid Purchases | 135.21 | This comes out of money they earn, but it funnels through our account |
| Kids Invest | $85.50 | This comes out of money they earn, but it funnels through our account |
| USB C cable | 6.95 | One of our cables was giving out |
Analysis
The hit to our investments was only 2.08% because the Guam costs were essentially nullified. We were purposely targeting a 2.08% rate because it brings our average withdrawal rate through the first four months to 4%.
Conclusions
The only conclusions I have are that Guam is expensive, and it’s good we had this separate side savings to cover it. Otherwise including Guam in this sustainable travel year would make no sense at all. We enjoyed Guam a lot and I’m glad we were able to do it, but it’s not affordable.
I will do a follow-up to this for the expat cost of living series to show what it would cost to live in Guam full time. It’s obviously not a great financial option and pretty much the opposite of geographic arbitrage, but interesting nonetheless.
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