Nomad vs Settled: How Much Does Housing Cost?
Whether you’re nomadic or settled, the main expense categories are the same: housing, transportation, food, health, and leisure. Only the amounts and proportions will change.
One advantage of being a nomad is that you can easily adapt if your income drops. In a pinch, you can move to a low-cost country to reduce housing costs. Stay longer in one place to cut transportation costs. Cook more and eat out less to lower food expenses. And of course, cut back on leisure.
Out of curiosity, I wanted to compare the cost of our Parisian apartment before we left on our world tour with what we spent during our first 10 months as digital nomads.
How Much Did Our Parisian Apartment Cost?
A common mistake is to think that the cost of housing only includes the rent. As we’ll see, there are many other costs to factor in.
Before leaving on our world tour, we lived in a 46 sqm apartment in the 17th arrondissement of Paris (Porte Saint-Ouen).
Here is a list of the expenses linked to this housing.
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MONTHLY TOTAL: €1,287
While rent + utilities represented €958, that was only 75% of the housing costs, which actually amounted to €1,287 per month.
In the long run, this cost is even underestimated because using the apartment will inevitably lead to some repairs.
How Much Does Our Housing Cost as Nomads?
The calculation is much simpler since we either stay in an Airbnb or a hotel.
In both cases, the set price covers all expenses (internet, insurance, electricity, etc.). There’s nothing to add.
Here are our housing expenses since we’ve been digital nomads. Since we rarely stay exactly 30 days in one place, I used a cross-multiplication to get a monthly cost (30 nights).
Our search criteria are quite simple: we look for a place as close to the city center as possible, with the best internet connection, and with a workspace. In most cases, we book an entire apartment, but sometimes we’ve stayed in hotels or booked a single room on Airbnb.
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Unsurprisingly, there are huge differences: €1,800 between the cheapest accommodation in Nicaragua and the most expensive in Japan.
So far, we rarely travel in a way that optimizes costs.
We only stay an average of one month, which isn’t enough to benefit from regular market prices (you’d need to stay at least 3 months for that). So we pay short-term rental rates, which are about twice the normal price.
In most cities, we were there during peak season (Central Europe in summer, Siem Reap at Christmas, Japan in spring, etc.) when seasonal rates are highest.
Despite that, out of the 31 cities where we stayed at least 7 nights, our housing only cost more than our Parisian apartment in seven cases: Osaka, Tokyo, Seoul, Miami Beach, Montreal, and Marrakech (where we stayed in a 4-story riad…).
Our temporary housing in Paris cost exactly the same (€1,300 vs €1,287) for a much smaller space, it’s true.
On average, our housing costs slightly less than our Parisian apartment (€1,077 vs €1,287), usually in more comfortable places. We could halve this cost by staying in Southeast Asia and keeping the same accommodation for at least 3 months at a time.
Conclusion
If you live in Paris, your housing is very expensive. By becoming a nomad, even if you pay full price (short stays + peak season), your housing will cost you less in most parts of the world.
