I Traveled 12 Countries in a Year and Tracked Every Expense. Here Is How.

Last year I traveled through 12 countries - a mix of planned extended stays and spontaneous moves. Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Portugal, Spain, Morocco, Czechia, Poland, Hungary, Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador.

I tracked every expense. Not as a discipline exercise, but because I genuinely wanted to know: where is affordable, where is expensive, and where does my money disappear fastest.

Here is how the system worked, what surprised me, and what the data actually said.

The setup

Tool: DrakeAI on my phone. Text input, no bank sync.

When I logged: At the moment of purchase. Not at the end of the day. Not when I got back to my accommodation. At the register, at the food stall, at the ATM.

What I included: Amount in local currency, category (food, transport, accommodation, activities, misc), country tag, brief note for anything unusual.

What I did not include: Flights between countries (I tracked those separately as a travel cost budget), pre-booked accommodation already paid before arriving.

Why text input worked for this

I tried a form-based app first. The dropdown menus and category selections were too much friction on the road. A street food stall in Thailand is not the place to navigate a five-step form.

Text input reduced logging to "pork skewers 50 THB Thailand food." Four seconds. Done before the skewers were done.

The data after 12 months

Food cost per day by region:
- Southeast Asia (Thailand, Cambodia): $8-15/day eating well, street food and local restaurants
- Eastern Europe (Czech, Poland, Hungary): $12-20/day, similar to Southeast Asia in dollar terms
- Western Europe (Portugal, Spain): $25-40/day, harder to eat cheaply especially in cities
- Latin America (Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador): $10-18/day, enormous variation by city

Biggest surprises:
- Morocco was not as cheap as I expected. European tourists have driven up prices in medinas significantly.
- Poland was the most affordable European country by a wide margin.
- Mexico City was more expensive than Medellin for food but cheaper for accommodation.
- Japan was more affordable than its reputation - food is cheap, accommodation is not.

Biggest spending category: Accommodation, always. Roughly 40% of total spending across all countries.

Category I underestimated: Activities and sightseeing. In places like Japan and Morocco, guided tours and entry fees add up to $30-50/day on active sightseeing days.

What the data changed

I ended up extending my time in Eastern Europe because the data showed I was spending significantly less per day than in Western Europe, with a comparable quality of life.

I cut my Morocco trip short. The data showed I was not getting value for the cost at that destination at that time of year.

These are not decisions I would have made clearly without the data. "Feels cheap" and "is cheap" are different things.

The recommendation for travelers

You do not need a complex system. You need:
1. A fast logging habit - at the moment of purchase, every time
2. A few consistent categories - food, accommodation, transport, activities
3. A country or destination tag
4. A weekly 5-minute summary review

The data does not need to be perfect. Even 90% coverage gives you enough signal to make meaningful comparisons across destinations.

Try DrakeAI free on Android - iOS coming soon.