2022 Budget and Lifestyle: Living Under $18,000 with a New Baby!
As a couple pursuing FI/RE (financial independence, retire early) while traveling full time, we’re very aware of our budget and what we spend year over year. We’ve been intentionally and slowly increasing our spending each year (just three years ago we were spending only $7,000 a year!), but this year came in at an 80% increase over last year because we had a baby! Read on to see how we continued to save money, where we increased our spending, and how we’re continuing to travel full time as digital nomads with an infant.
Disclosure: We may receive a commission for links on our blog. You don’t have to use our links, but we’re very appreciative when you do. Thanks again for your support, we hope you find our posts and information helpful! Learn more.
Quick Links
Don’t miss our Ultimate Gear and Packing Lists! Whether you’re traveling long-term or going on a short vacation, we'll show you how to travel with a single carry-on. We share our packing lists (his and hers!), packing tips, and our favorite gear. Plus, we discuss what we don’t carry and why!
Context and Background
First, before you dive into 2022’s numbers, we strongly encourage you to read How We Lived on $7,000 ($3,500 each) All-Inclusive for One Year. It’s an all inclusive look at what we spent in 2019, which may seem like a long time ago, but we highly recommend it because it takes an exhaustive dive into our financial philosophies and goals. We consider it something akin to our ethos. Plus, it’s full of a growing list of frequently asked questions and tips!
How We Lived on $7,000 ($3,500 each) All-Inclusive for One Year
Second, if you’re looking for a breakdown of our spending over time, we suggest taking a look at 2020 Budget and Lifestyle: Living on $7,000 a Year During COVID-19, where we dive into our previous decade of spending.
And finally, last year we started to intentionally increase our yearly budget and wrote about our full time travel and house sitting lifestyle. We encourage checking out our 2021 Budget and Lifestyle: Living on $10,000 as Digital Nomad House Sitters if you want to see why and how we started increasing our spending.
2022 in Review
This was a year of big changes, excitement, gratitude, and a lot of sleepless nights! Let us explain:
“After several years of trying to start a family, we found out we were pregnant in mid-2021! ”
We held the news close and didn’t announce it to family and friends until the beginning of 2022. It was important for us to know our little one was healthy and thriving before we shared the news.
If you’re at all familiar with the costs of prenatal care, delivery, and caring for a baby, you can correctly guess that our budget was quite a bit higher in 2022. But, the question we’ve been asked over and over is if we’ll continue our full-time travel, digital nomad, financial independence, retire early (FI/RE) lifestyle or settle down.
Our goal has always been to continue traveling full-time, but we knew there was so much about having a little one that we didn’t yet know. Thankfully, after nearly 9 months of having a little one with us, we’ve been successful in continuing our lifestyle, and even keeping our onebag (single carryon backpack apiece) travel style!
Note: We’ve decided to protect the identity of our daughter since she is too young to make a decision to reveal (or not) her name and image. We’ll be covering her face and calling her Little S. And for you keen observers, yes, we are now a family of all ‘S’ names! 😊
Gratitude and Perspective
“We do our best to be present in the moment and face each day with a perspective of gratitude. ”
There isn’t a day that goes by where we aren’t grateful for the resources and opportunities we have. We appreciate every moment, especially the ones with our Little S, and that we’re all healthy, safe and happy.
COVID-19 and RSV Precautions
While a large percentage of the world has returned to business as usual and people wearing masks tend to be less common than those that don’t, we remain cautious. We’ve said from the beginning of COVID-19 that we’d probably continue wearing masks after the pandemic subsided, and we have. We enjoy the protection not only from COVID-19, but also from colds and the flu. And now that we have a little one under a year old, we’re extremely cautious of Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection (RSV).
In the first years of COVID-19 we limited our travel to a few regions, but this last year we ventured out a bit more. As we travel, we not only wear masks, but we’re that couple on the plane sanitizing our seat area and not eating or drinking until everyone else has wrapped up beverage and meal service. We sanitize our hotel room, limit our touching of surfaces in public places, and rigorously wash our hands when we touch something.
Not only has our cautious approach protected us from COVID-19 and RSV, but it’s kept us from getting the common cold and flu. And, we got to say, it’s incredibly nice not being sick.
Global Entry
We’re incredibly grateful that we have Global Entry. In fact, Little S had her passport at five weeks and was conditionally approved for Global Entry by the time she was five months old!
We’re incredibly grateful for the benefits of Global Entry because they not only save us time (both flying back into the United States and domestically because it includes TSA Pre), but it also reduces our time in close proximity to other people in crowded spaces. Plus, it includes access to SENTRI lanes and pedestrian lines when traveling by land from Mexico back in the United states. When we’re in San Diego and visit Mexico for the day, we usually walk across the border and are able to not only bypass a one to three hour line at the border, but we’re able to quickly walk past hundreds (if not thousands?) of people who are typically not socially distancing and mostly aren’t wearing masks.
“We’ve traveled with family members that don’t have TSA (thanks to Global Entry) and we’ve timed our TSA experience at five minutes, where theirs was over 55 minutes! ”
We’ve never paid outright for our Global Entry applications and we currently hold two credit cards that will cover the $100 application fee (Capitol One Venture X and Chase IHG Rewards Premier). We charged our little one’s Global Entry fee to our Capitol One Venture X credit card and were quickly credited the fee on our statement.
Check our resources page for our recommended travel hacking credit cards.
Financial Independence, Retire Early (FI/RE)
For us life has never been only about FI/RE (financial independence, retire early), a magic retirement number, the four percent rule, or any other single factor. Our intentions are greater than that.
“It’s about legacy, generational wealth, enjoying life now and in the future, and most of all… freedom. ”
The truth of the matter is, we could have FI/RE’d years ago if we really wanted to. But we enjoy what we’re doing and have had some incredible opportunities in the last six years that we simply couldn’t pass up. Because of that, we’re continuing to build a rock solid FI/RE foundation which will enable us to spend more later, but also increase our spending a bit now.
We’re not looking to one day turn on the FI/RE spigot and all of a sudden spend exponentially more. Instead, we’re opting to spend a little more each year over time. So, last year was the first year where we decided to do a few things that we’d previously deferred, we opted to add in a few of life’s luxuries that we hadn’t had before, and continued charitable gifts. Add in the birth of our daughter, and this year, we essentially increased our budget 80% from last year!
Since we knew having a little one would be expensive, it comes as no surprise that we planned ahead and did our best to make the most of costs.
Meeting Our Out-of-Pocket Max
With the delivery of our little one, we met our medical insurance’s out of pocket maximum for the year. This meant that we wouldn’t incur any additional medical costs (outside of our monthly premiums) in 2022 if we kept our care ‘in-network’.
We capitalized on this as much as possible, since it meant that all of our medical and prescription costs would be covered at 100% for the rest of the year. So, all of the medical appointments we’d put off over the years, not necessarily for cost reasons but more because they weren’t urgent, we did this year. From the dermatologist to getting MRIs on joints that didn’t feel 100%.
For example, the special formula our little one needs due to a severe cow’s milk protein allergy (CMPA) is $50 a can, making a 90 day supply come in at over $3,000! Because our insurance carries this formula it was covered in 2022 at $0 because we had met our out-of-pocket maximum.
Deferring Our Medical Costs
We chose a highly rated hospital that supported our non-medicated delivery with tons of movement (think walking, squatting, birth balls, warm baths, etc.). This hospital also happened to have a 0% interest payment plan option that allowed us to put all of our medical costs for prenatal, delivery, and postpartum visits on a 22 month payment plan. So, rather than pay thousands of dollars at once, we can spread the payments over two years and invest our money in the meantime.
Second Hand and Using Less
We bought hardly anything new for our little one.
We were fortunate to have friends who gave us hand-me-downs from their daughter and gifted us nearly all the clothes we would need the first year. Plus, they sold us their infant car seat and bouncer at a very reasonable cost. For what we didn’t get as hand-me-downs, we still wanted to reduce impact on the environment and tried to purchase second hand. So, we went on craigslist for cloth diapers (that’s a story for another time) and a travel basinet and bought a warm outfit for cold weather at a thrift shop.
On top of trying not to buy things new, we also wanted to use less stuff. After all was said and done we put the remaining things we needed on a baby registry and it totaled less than $200 of stuff!
Stacking Promotions
We’ve always been keen on stacking promotions to get great deals. So when it comes to getting stuff, especially consumables, for Little S, we’re all about stacking deals to get great savings. One of our favorites this year has been with GoPuff (use our link and get $30!), especially when we’ve been able to pickup our orders (saving on delivery fees)!
“Chase partnered with GoPuff and many Chase credit cards offer a $10 monthly statement credit for GoPuff purchases... until 12/31/2023! ”
We took advantage of the offer on a few of our cards that have the promotion (Chase Sapphire Preferred Card, World of Hyatt, IHG Rewards Club Premier, Southwest Rapid Rewards) and stacked it with a free trial of GoPuff’s Fam subscription program that offers not only free delivery, but also $10 off your first three orders. Then, when we opened the GoPuff app to order and we were able to spin a wheel and got enough points to get us 10% off our order. So all in all, we got a $10 credit statement from Chase, $10 off from GoPuff and 10% off our order.
For a final price of just $3.23, we were able to get a pack of Honest diapers, Honest baby wipes, and a few groceries (Greek yogurt and nuts)!
Our order total after the $10 credit and 10% discount from GoPuff but before the $10 Chase statement credit (which was issued within two days). Not bad!
Travel and Budget Hacking
We’re all about travel hacking, from credit card signup bonuses and cashback portals, to mattress runs and stacking as many deals as possible! With that said, because of our limited time (digital nomad working + travel + baby), we shoot for the low hanging fruit and leave the more time consuming and/or smaller deals on the table.
Hyatt Mattress Run
We hold elite status with several different hotel brands and have had a wide range of experiences in hotels honoring and appreciating our status.
“In our experience, Hyatt has been one of the best brands when it comes to upgrades, free breakfast, and customer service. ”
We did a mattress run in 2021 to earn Hyatt Globalist, and spent the last two years taking advantage of our Globalist status. We usually had our status recognized, were upgraded to suites, received welcome gifts, and had wonderful customer service when something went wrong.
However, because we fast-tracked to Globalist in 2021, we didn’t get the Concierge Globalist benefit since it’s only given when you’ve actually earned a full 60 elite qualifying nights through stays. This year, we thought we’d make a mattress run of it and not only get 60 nights, but we’d max out milestone levels and get over 100 elite qualifying nights! We did this with an epic mattress run, the World of Hyatt Business Credit Card that gave us double elite qualifying nights, and several nights stayed through business travel.
We matched our Hyatt Globalist status with MGM (a Las Vegas hotel brand), which gave us MLife Gold with:
Access to the VIPLounge at the Excalibur, which drastically improves the check-in process.
Waived resort fees, saving us $35 or more a night!
Waived parking fees.
Room upgrades, which don’t happen often, but are nice when you can get one.
We planned several visits to Las Vegas with nights at the Excalibur, which is the least expensive property in the MGM portfolio (if you want to upgrade a level, the Luxor is the next most affordable property). We also focused our stays on Sunday thru Thursday nights, since the weekends are exponentially more expensive. Think $19 a night versus $100+.
On the weekends we spent our nights at nearby hotels with our free night certificates, (for example the IHG Rewards Club Premier credit card issues a free night certificate annually), or at category one Wyndham hotels (including the Wyndham partnered property, The Rio).
Between August and December, we were in Las Vegas for about a total of six weeks. And, in August we applied and were approved for the World of Hyatt Business card, which had a promotion that gave us double elite qualifying nights between August 23rd and December 31st. So, between our Excalibur MGM nights that were usually about $19 a night, but occasionally $30-$40 a night, and our work travel earlier in the year, we ended up with over 100 elite qualifying nights!
We’re looking forward to being a Hyatt Globalist again in 2023 and hope that the concierge benefit is all it’s cracked up to be!
A few Las Vegas tips:
Public transportation - You can take the residential CX bus from the airport to the strip and take one of many residential routes to a grocery store to stock up on affordable food (food anywhere on the Las Vegas Strip is very overpriced!). The Deuce runs the Las Vegas strip (Las Vegas Blvd.) and is $6 for two hours. However, residential buses are only $3. Download the RideRTC app to purchase digital tickets that are valid for two hours and work in all directions, meaning you can go to and from a destination as long as it’s within a two hour window. You can add funds to the app and apply it to ticket purchases, or simply purchase tickets in the app (valid for 30 days from the date of purchase) when you need them. Tip: Wait to activate your digital ticket until the bus arrives to make the most of the two hour validity of the ticket!
Trams – Many properties have trams that will take visitors at no cost to a partnered property. For example, there is a free MGM tram that goes between Mandalay Bay, Luxor, and Excalibur. This is an easy way to go several blocks quickly and stay out of the 110+ degree summer heat.
Groceries – There are stores on the strip where you can purchase groceries (Target, CVS, Walgreens), but they have limited selection and are generally really overpriced. To be able to get the type of food we wanted and pay a reasonable price, we did a grocery run every 4-6 days on the bus. We found off-strip stores, like Target, Sprouts, Smith’s, and Walmart that were easy to get to via the bus. Our go to in a hotel with a fridge is salad (bag of salad mix, bag of cabbage mix, and broccoli slaw) with refried beans and salsa to add taste and something similar to a dressing. We purchase a couple of bowls from the store (that we leave behind when we move to our next location), carry with us titanium silverware, and have yogurt, oats, fruit, chocolate, protein bars (Aloha for Shannon and Quest for Sergio) and/or peanut butter for a dessert.
Keep safe – The sun is incredibly harsh in the desert, so keeping our eyes and skin protected was critical. We always had a hat, umbrella, and sunglasses when outside. We even have sunglasses and a hat for our little one!
Noise protection – Vegas is loud! A bit of research and you’ll find that prolonged exposure to sounds over 80 decibels causes permanent hearing damage. We have a noise decibel reader on our phone and have found that airplanes are usually between 70-85 decibels. So we purchased ear protection for our little one that reduce noise levels by about 30 decibels. Since walking around Las Vegas is loud and generally easily exceeds safe ranges, we keep the ear covers on her while walking around Las Vegas (or anywhere loud for that matter), inside or outside. It took her a while to get used to them, but we started her early and didn’t give up. Now, they’re just part of her life. They also double as a great way to reduce noise when she falls asleep on a walk or while doing errands.
Avoid gambling areas to avoid smoke – If you don’t already know, it won’t take long for you to learn that Las Vegas allows smoking in gambling areas (the casino floor). Between cigarette, cigars, vaping, and cannabis smoke, we did our best to avoid areas where people were smoking, both for our and Little S’s lungs.
Go to the airport lounge – We’ve always been grateful for a quiet place to hang out before a flight, and now with Little S, we’re even more appreciative of a calm clean space to feed and change her before boarding. In the Las Vegas airport you can get access to The Club airport lounge with Priority Pass. We, and all of our authorized card holders get a Priority Pass membership with the Capitol One Venture X credit card. Or, you can get a Priority Pass subscription directly.
Capitol One Venture X Credit Card
This year we both applied and were approved for the Capitol One Venture X credit card. It has a high annual fee, but if the benefits of the card are used, it pays for itself and more.
We applied for the card during the credit card’s launch promotion and received a few one time offers which we’ve noted below.
$200 Airbnb credit (onetime offer)
$300 Travel credit
10,000 Annual points ($100+ value)
Priority Pass that’s valid for two guests and works at both lounges and restaurants (restaurant access was sadly removed Jan 1, 2023). Plus, authorized users also get their own Priority Pass (this is an unheard of perk!)
Amex and Chase Offers
We always keep an eye on what Amex and Chase offers are available for our credit cards. There are often offers that we can add to one or more of our cards that will give us cashback on purchases we’re already making. For example, cashback on streaming, groceries, and for using contactless pay/mobile wallet.
“We easily made a couple hundred dollars in cashback this year with credit card offers.”
Cashback Portals
We never purchase anything anything online without checking to see if there’s a deal through a cashback portal!
Here’s why, cashback portals offer a flat dollar amount or a percentage back for online purchases (and sometimes even at brick and mortar stores!) if you click through a ‘portal’ (link). In other words, you purchase something you were already going to buy but get paid to do so. We’ll take that deal any day!
To make our cashback accounts easier to manage and to have our payouts be quicker (cashback portals have minimum payout amounts) we focus on four of the top cashback portals.
Mr. Rebates - Sign up through our link and get a $5 bonus!
BeFrugal - Sign up through our link and get a $10 bonus!
Rakuten (formerly eBates)- Sign up through our link and get a $30 bonus!
TopCashback - Sign up through our link and get a $10 bonus!
By using cashback portals on purchases we were already going to make, whether things for ourselves, gifts, or work, we got over $180 back!
Tracking Credit Card Benefits, Sign-Up Bonuses, and More
Award Wallet – We’ve been using Award Wallet for years and it’s a game changer for tracking airline miles, hotel reward points, and certificates. Once set up, it will show you all of your miles and points, alert you to expirations and even show you free night certificates so you don’t lose track of anything.
CardPointers – When you get into the travel hacking lifestyle, you’ll quickly find yourself trying to track what credit cards have the best point/cashback redemption values for different categories of spend.
When we started over ten years ago, we printed labels for our cards that let us know which card to use at gas stations versus grocery stores versus eating out, etc. We then moved to notepads on our cell phones, which made it a bit easier to update and track, but it was still challenging and frustrating when we were standing in line at a store trying to figure out what card to put the purchase on.
Then, we found CardPointers and our administrative life was simplified dramatically. Between a desktop browser extension and an app on our phone, we can quickly see what card works best for a category of spend. Plus, we can track what benefits we’ve used and what we have left. For example, our Southwest Priority credit card comes with four upgraded boarding credits and the app allows us to track our use of them. The same goes for when we’ve used our travel credit or the Global Entry credit on our Capitol One Venture X credit card.
If you’re wondering how to travel internationally, or simply vacation nearby and not spend a fortune on airfare or hotels, then we’d like to welcome you to the world of ‘travel hacking’. See what credit cards we carry, and how we take full advantage of the points and miles we’ve earned.
Travel and House Sitting
Although, we spent a few months with family before and after giving birth, we still did a lot of travel and several house sits in 2022!
We started the year with one of our favorite repeat house sits in Carlsbad, California where we cared for Bailey. Bailey is just a love-bug that we’ve been able to care for over half-a-dozen times since 2019. We simply can’t turn down a chance to take care of a wonderful dog for a couple that have become family to us. Not to mention it’s mere blocks from a beautiful beach!
House sitting Bailey in Carlsbad, California.
While we normally would have taken off from Carlsbad and continued travelling to new places, last year was a different story. As Little S’s due date neared we wanted to prepare for her, have continuity of prenatal care with the hospital we’d deliver at, and be close to family. So, we headed to what was then our home-base, Portland, Oregon.
Once in Portland, all travel was planned around our Little S and prenatal care. We were able to take two trips to New York City, one of which was with Sergio’s mom. Visiting was on her bucket list and we loved being able to show her around!
Before going on maternity leave, Shannon wrapped up a big work project with a couple of weeks in London, which gave us a chance to enjoy parts of the city that we hadn’t explored before. It ended up being some of our favorite bonding time together before our little one was born!
As our delivery date approached we stayed closer to our home base and took a week long road trip and relaxed pre-baby in Welches and Olympia, Washington.
After delivery we stayed with family but we quickly realized that we needed to get out and start traveling with our little one to gain confidence, get our own routine, and figure out how travel would work with a baby.
“At three weeks old, our little one joined us on her first road trip. ”
We spent a week in a hotel on our way to a house sit in Seattle, Washington where we cared for a cat, JiJi for six weeks. Being his first time around a baby, Jiji adjusted to Little S quickly, but Little S was completely oblivious to the black cat that observed her from a close distance.
These first seven weeks on our own gave us the needed time to dial in a packing list of what we’d need for an infant. Trust us, most packing lists for traveling with an infant include way more of our ‘would be nice to have’ items than our ‘must have’ items! We also managed to get our little one a passport and start the application process for Global Entry.
After our Seattle house sit, we returned to Portland, Oregon with our new found confidence in travel with an infant and settled in quickly for a repeat house sit. Since our first sit for them in 2017/18, they’d moved to a larger home, had two kids, and become good friends! It was great to return and take care of their older cat Po (short for Potito) who had grown more affectionate and less shy over the years.
We were a bit concerned about taking our first flight after our Portland house sit, but it turned out well. We’re incredibly grateful that our little one does very well on flights and seems to not have an issue with the pressure changes. Plus, one of the flight attendants quickly eased any nerves we had by assuring us and making a joke that anyone could put up with her crying for the short amount of time we were on the flight. We landed in Las Vegas and started what would become an epic mattress run!
We broke up the Hyatt mattress run with a return to Gresham, Oregon where we cared for two cats, Sheba and Delilah that we’d met during the early time of the pandemic in 2020. It was absolutely a delight to stay a couple of extra nights and spend time with the homeowner Donna. Donna treated us like family and Little S like her own granddaughter!
We also took a trip to Midvale, Utah (outside of Salt Lake City) where we stayed at a Radisson to do a mini-mattress run to maintain our Radisson America’s Gold status. We’ve been pleasantly surprised at how often Radisson properties upgrade us to suites, which is so much more valuable for us now that we have a little one! There are so many options out there for travel baby sleeping set ups (slumber pod, travel beds, blackout curtains, etc.), but when we travel with just a 36L backpack apiece (seriously we do!), carrying all of these accessories is much less attractive than a hotel suite with a crib!
Note: We’ll occasionally opt to travel with a small bag (like a reusable grocery bag) to carry a few extra supplies to make arrival to our next destination smoother. This is usually along the lines of extra diapers, dinner for us, and extra formula for Little S.
In the midst of mattress runs and house sits we also relocated our home base! Shannon’s work asked that she be based out of a Texas office, so it made perfect sense for us to use Escapees to legally domicile in the state of Texas. This means we’re now in Texas frequently and have moved all of our legal, business, and medical services to the state.
It certainly doesn’t hurt that Texas is known to have a high concentration of category 1 thru 3 hotels across many brands!
In addition to our epic Hyatt and mini-Radisson mattress runs, we completed enough nights while in Texas at Marriott to earn Titanium elite status for 2023. We also learned how valuable a hotel with a washer and dryer is with a little one! We have to mention TownePlace Suites Houston Northwest for our appreciation of their wonderful staff, great breakfast, and an upgrade to a two bedroom suite that made a stay with a lil one that much better!
We’ve wrapped up 2022 by completing over 100 elite qualifying nights with Hyatt and we’re heading back to Carlsbad, California to care for Bailey, spend some time with some of our favorite homeowners, and introduce Little S to the Pacific Ocean!
Being Pregnant and Preparing for a Baby
Much of our family was convinced that a global pandemic, getting a full time job, the ongoing cost of travel, having traveled five years and counting, etc. would have us settle down by now. And, while our travel has changed over the years to adapt, nothing has made us want to stop full time travel.
Now, add a baby to our lives and our friends and family were certain we’d settle down. But, much to our parents’ dismay our intent since finding out we were pregnant, is to continue our lifestyle. So far, we’ve been successful… and are thankfully still enjoying it!
Of course, having an infant and soon a toddler (she grows so fast!) means that our travel style will have to (re)adapt. There are so many things we want for her from our lifestyle, but there are also things we need to be intentional about giving her.
“So just as we’ve been intentional about our life, we’re just as intentional about hers. ”
If you’re interested in what it’s like to plan for a baby, be pregnant, and travel while being digital nomad house sitters, stay tuned! We’re planning on publishing our experience, tips, and lessons learned soon. We’ll also be updating our His and Hers packing list to include how to pack for an infant and stay ‘onebag’. We’ll of course update it as she grows and her needs change.
If anyone has tips on how to potty train or a good solid food eating set up while traveling, we want to hear about it!
London, San Francisco, Paris, New York City, Athens and more?! Trusted Housesitters has allowed us to travel the world on a budget, but more importantly given us an opportunity to make new friends and have cute and cuddly companions along the way. Sign up and start your next great adventure!
Our Expenses in 2022: $17,800
Overview
In 2022 we spent a total of $17,800 ($17,799.48 to be exact) for the entire year, all-in. That’s only $8,900 apiece for two of us, or include Little S and it’s $5,933 each for three of us!
A note on our new ‘Baby’ category: Not all costs for a baby are clear cut. For example, we normally wouldn’t have rented a car, but we rented cars a few times this past year because of needing a car seat and a more convenient and faster way to get around now that we have a little one. While we haven’t included every indirect costs like that in the baby category, we have included all the direct costs, like diapers, wipes, medical care, etc.
Where Our $17,800 Was Spent by Category
Where Our $17,800 Was Spent by Month
Comparing Budgets Year Over Year: 2019 through 2022
If you’ve been following along, we had amazing total spends in 2019 and 2020. We even surprised ourselves when we were able to live such a comfortable (in our opinion) life in North America on only $7,000, all-in for both of us. We purposefully decided to increase our spending and in 2021 we had a 40% increase in our budget, landing us at $10,000 total for a year living in the United States.
We knew having a baby would dramatically increase our spending, and had been planning for this for years. As we mentioned earlier, we made a couple moves to spread the prenatal and delivery costs over two years, but there’s still a lot more that comes with having a baby.
Transportation while traveling with a baby is much more complicated. Where before we were up to taking multi-segment flights, arriving to a city later in the evening or night, and taking a 90+ minute bus ride to our destination, that’s all changed now that we have a little one. We prefer short non-stop flights that arrive in the afternoon and we’ll spend more money or miles on them. We opt not to lug a car seat around with us, so ride share is sadly out of the question. So, we prefer locations that have a good public transportation network, but if that’s not the case, we end up renting a car with a car seat. All of this means not only more logistics and planning, but the cost of travel significantly increases. But the wellbeing of our little one and as a by-product ours, is well worth it.
To have more flexibility and travel as a family, we’ve opted to do fewer house sits and more hotel stays. Because our commitment for a house sit is pretty much final, if Shannon ends up having to do business travel during a house sit, it means Sergio stays ‘home’ with Little S and Shannon has to travel alone. We don’t like this scenario, so we’ve decided to spend a bit more on lodging to give us the ability to travel together.
Consumables for a baby (diapers, wipes, over-the-counter medications, creams, etc.) can add up over time. More on this to come in our upcoming updates to our His, Hers & Baby packing lists!
Our tool box is full of resources! From travel hacking to house sitting, digital nomad jobs to privacy and security, financially independent retire early (FI/RE) to entertainment, plus travel hacking (credit cards, miles, points, and rewards), and much much more…
Beyond the increase in our spending for having a baby, we continued to increase our spend in other areas.
We went hard on the travel hacking and credit card game this year. We’re fortunate to be able to play in three-player mode with a close family member, and we pick up the fees and expenses on their cards. So in total we opened and met eight credit card signup bonus requirements, and had three credit cards that we got on the end of 2021, so those spend requirements and annual fees hit us in 2022. In total, between fees for using credit cards (like paying state and federal taxes) and annual fees for credit cards, we spent over $4,000. To be clear, those fees are included in this (and every year’s) budget, but what you don’t see here is the much greater value we get from the credit cards and their included benefits.
Chase Ink Business Unlimited (x2): 90,000 Ultimate Reward points and $0 annual fee
Chase Ink Business Cash: 90,000 Ultimate Reward points and $0 annual fee
Chase World of Hyatt Business: 60,000 Hyatt points, monthly GoPuff monthly credit, 2x Elite qualifying nights, and $199 annual fee
Capital One Venture X (x3): 100,000 Capital One Rewards, $300 travel credit, $200 vacation rental credit, $100 Global Entry Credit, Priority Pass, 10,000 annual miles, Capital One lounge pass and a $395 annual fee
Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Priority: 50,000 Southwest miles, 4 upgraded boarding passes, $75 Southwest gift card and $149 annual fee
Chase Southwest Rapid Rewards Performance Business: 80,000 Southwest miles, 4 upgraded boarding passes and $199 annual fee. Between both of our Southwest credit cards we earned the companion pass, which gives us a 2-for-1 fare on all Southwest flights. Considering we flew nine Southwest flights in 2022 and paid for them with points and the companion pass, we can easily value the perk and points at well over $3,000!
Wyndham Earner + Rewards (x2) (2021): 90,000 Wyndham points, Diamond Elite status (including matching to Caesars Diamond!) and $75 annual fee
Chase Sapphire Preferred Card (2021): 100,000 Ultimate Reward points, $10 GoPuff monthly credit, $50 hotel credit, DoorDash DashPass, and $95 annual fee
We gave more gifts to friends and family throughout the year. It’s important to us to show appreciation to those we love, so we gave things that we knew our friends and family would love and use, from travel to recycling program subscriptions.
In an effort to save time and limit rebuying stuff, we did a lot more shipping of supplies this year. This includes sending care packages with supplies for both of us, as well as things like prescription and hard to find formula for our little one. This makes life that much easier when we arrive to a hotel and everything we would have previously gone to the store to buy is, instead waiting for us.
We automated and simplified our life. When it comes to security of our data, we’ve always been incredibly cautious and did most of our backups, syncing and storage locally and manually. But with a baby taking up so much of our time, we found we needed to streamline and simplify the way we do things. So, we moved things to the cloud (TNO encrypted of course) and paid for a few services to do this. Our favorite has been Sync.com which is not only a secure backup and cloud storage for us, but also lets us access our files from our phone and share select directories/files with other people.
Total Expenses Over the Last Four Years
2019 through 2022 compared, by categories:
2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 compared, in monthly averages:
Final Thoughts
We’re incredibly excited and grateful to have added a member to our family. Having a baby has been both one of the most rewarding and most challenging things of our lives. The sleepless nights full of crying are followed by mornings where it seems she gained new abilities overnight. Her smile is incredible, her coos are heartwarming, and her laugh is amazing.
Thankfully the joys out weigh the tough times and we’re doing our best to be mindful and appreciate every moment with her.
We’ve had a mix of responses to our continuation and adaptation of our lifestyle with her, but we sincerely appreciate everyone who has cheered us on. We aren’t continuing to travel despite her, but because of her. We know how much travel changed our lives as kids, and we want to do the same for her. We’ll continue to adapt and be purposeful in making sure she has all the opportunities and emotional support she needs along the way.
On a lighter note, we’ve worked hard to travel with all the material and consumable things she needs and to all the naysayers we’ve come across, we’ve done it. We travel with two 36L backpacks for a family of three! No checked bags, no carts of luggage, and not even a car seat or a stroller. Now, let’s see if we can keep it up in 2023…😉
