It’s been almost 5 years since I sold everything I owned and started living in Airbnbs. Every year, my thoughts, revelations and strategies for being a full-time nomad seem to change, so I like to record them here for posterity and in case they can help anyone else take full advantage of the awesome-ness that is long term Airbnb stays. So let’s get into it!
I’ve written a lot of posts about my Airbnb experiences and things I’ve noticed, such as how I find great stays or how I’m now a lot better at instantly falling asleep in a new place, but in case you want all of that info, it’s here:
- How I Choose Great Airbnb Stays: A Peek Inside A Full-Time Nomad‘s Travel Planner
- Lessons Learned After 3 Years Of Airbnb Nomad Life
- Lessons Learned After 2 Years Of Airbnb Nomad Life
- Lessons Learned After 1 Year Of Airbnb Nomad Life
- What’s It Like Living In A Monthly Airbnb?
The main tip that I still always use from those posts is to take advantage of Airbnb’s weekly (7+ day) and monthly (28+ day) discounts, which can be substantial. Our record this year was the automatic 49% monthly discount that our Airbnb in Amsterdam offered. These discounts are built into the Airbnb website. I’ve never personally asked a host for a discount or anything like that.
As I’ve mentioned before, I have strict criteria for all of my Airbnbs and I think this is one of the reasons that I’ve never had a bad stay (*knock on wood*). This is my Airbnb criteria:
- Superhost
- Rating of 4.75+
- 100+ reviews
- Free cancellation
- 1+ bedroom
- $2,400/month total on average
- Note: I increase this each year with inflation
- Our own space (aka no shared apartments)
- Full kitchen with microwave
- In-unit washer/dryer
- Walkable to city center and grocery store
- Fast Wi-fi
- AC/heat
And in the last year I’ve lived in Airbnbs in these locations:
USA🇺🇸
International
- Montréal, Canada🇨🇦
- Montréal, Canada #2🇨🇦
- Iceland🇮🇸
- Iceland #2🇮🇸
- Iceland #3🇮🇸
- Iceland #4🇮🇸
- Iceland #5🇮🇸
- Iceland #6🇮🇸
- Switzerland🇨🇭
- Bologna, Italy🇮🇹
- Amsterdam, The Netherlands🇳🇱
Extra Days
I’ve mentioned this in previous posts, but I am still loving incorporating overlap days into my Airbnb plans. For example, we had an evening flight out of New Zealand recently so I just booked an extra night in our Airbnb and for an additional $30 per person we got to leave our Airbnb whenever we wanted to instead of leaving at 10am and finding a place to chill with our bags for hours before a combined 17 hours of flights. Beyond worth it 🙂 .
Following the trend of me getting bougier in my retirement, I have noticed that more and more, I value comfort and ease over anything else. When I was in my “frugal phase”, booking an extra night that I won’t be sleeping in an accommodation would have made me wince a little since I would be ‘wasting’ money, but I no longer see it that way.
I’ve even started doing this when I move within a city because then there is no gap between my reservations with check out usually being in the morning and check in being in the afternoon. For example, our flight from New Zealand to Japan landed at 6am so I started our Airbnb booking the afternoon before and we didn’t have to wander the streets of Tokyo for hours while jet lagged like my friend who we met up with in Tokyo did. For a few extra dollars, I can move in a leisurely fashion and that means the world to me at this point 🙂 . Sweet freedom!
Cushion Days
Generally in retirement it’s not been a big deal if I have a travel delay because I usually stay places for a month or more. However, my trip to Iceland was the first time I’d planned daily travel and moving Airbnbs every day.
And our flight was delayed a whole 24 hours. I usually have a chill day or two planned at the beginning of a trip for that very possibility, but IcelandAir’s max stopover is 7 days and I didn’t want to waste one sitting around instead of seeing that gorgeous country. However, I’ve now learned my lesson 🙂 .
Going forward I’ll be planning an extra day at the beginning of every single trip so we don’t have to rush or skip out on staying in cute little countryside Airbnbs like the one above in the event of a travel delay.
Google Translate
This hadn’t happened in previous years and I guess I got lucky because all of my Airbnb hosts in the past have messaged me in English. However, this year hosts messaged me in Italian, French and Icelandic. But thanks to my free Google Translate app, I’ve been able to have a conversation while speaking different languages. Very cool!
Also, the Airbnb messaging interface sometimes has a “translate” button at the bottom of their messenger, but that doesn’t always appear for me so I rely on my Google Translate app instead. If that translate button starts working all the time and is accurate, it would be a game-changing feature in these situations though.
Homey Items
I’m still bringing around small items that bring me comfort on the road and surprisingly, that’s still helped me feel “at home” no matter where I am. My biggest homey item used to be my Bombas Gripper Slippers, but after those got holes in them my Partner bought me the new Bombas Sherpa-Lined Slippers for Christmas and I’m in love! My ankles have never been so comfy.
Googling Instruction Manuals
After all these years of figuring out how to use different appliances often in different languages, I have discovered a foolproof way to not break a washing machine in another country: Google it! Shocking, I know 🙂 .
But seriously, I used to anxiously muddle through trying to use new stoves, ovens, showers and washing machines before realizing – I can just google the exact Make and Model and read the exact device’s manual in English. This obviously shows me precisely how to use it.
Instead of randomly pushing buttons and taking 5 minutes to figure out how to get hot water in my Montréal shower, I looked up the make based on the logo and discovered that I have to push a red, child-safe button to get the shower as hot as I want. Good to know!
I now know which drawer location to properly place washing machine detergent and how to use a stovetop that doesn’t have buttons. Such a simple solution that took me literal years to add to my arsenal 🙂 . So don’t make my mistake and instead, look up instruction manuals while traveling because it changed my life.
BYOS
A few people have asked me if I travel with a spice cabinet in my 40L Backpack. And I always respond the same – I don’t, except for Montreal Steak Seasoning.
We would travel with a few ounces of it because it’s our favorite seasoning on our sous vide creations (which I’ll talk about more below). However, I’ve hilariously see that exact seasoning – same brand and all – in grocery stores around the world. So we stopped traveling with it this year.
Besides that, I have specifically curated my go-to cooking recipes to focus on meals that don’t require a lot of seasoning. They basically only require salt and garlic powder and every Airbnb has salt and so far every grocery store in every country has had garlic powder. And if one day it doesn’t, I could just use actual garlic 😉 .
Sous Vide to Oven
Since we’ve been to so many international locations this past year that have different outlets to the US and even with an adapter don’t work with US-based heat producing items, such as sous vide machines, hair dryers and heating pads, we lent our sous vide machine to family while we went international this year.
It was the first time we’ve done this and to be honest, I was sad about it. Sous vide cooking has been a godsend to helping me cook a variety of meat without having to babysit it all the time.
However, without the option to use it in other countries, I had to adapt. So in the last year I taught myself how to bake chicken (my go-to meat protein while eating keto) in the oven and in a saucepan. I’m basically a Top Chef 😉 .
So I acquired a new skill and we save extra weight in our luggage carrying something we couldn’t use most of the year anyway – win/win!
Conclusion
And that’s what I learned in my 4th year of being an Airbnb nomad! I continue to lean more towards convenience and comfort than saving a dollar, which is so far from how I acted when I started this FIRE journey that’s it’s wild. I’m proud of myself 🙂 . I’ve also learned about additional items I no longer need to travel with, such as steak seasoning and our sous vide machine. So efficient 😉 . Here’s to Year 5 of exploring the world!
Discover more from A Purple Life
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Comfort and convenience is underrated. It’s definitely worth it to avoid hours of wandering or holing up in a cafe. Your budget is also generous which is helpful for decent Airbnb places.
How is your portfolio doing with all the recent market upheaval? I know the usual line is to stay the course, but are you experiencing any feelings about it?
I’m not sure if you remember me talking about it, but I’m getting to a stage of being done with travel and have started looking for work again. My only worry about this latest kerfuffle is about finding work, and whether I should invest some savings into the dip while looking. I have enough to do it, but what if I need it in case of employment taking longer than expected?
Agreed 🙂 .
My portfolio is fine and I have no feelings about the slight market decline. Exposure therapy made me not bat an eye when the market was falling 10% a day in 2020 or when we were down 25% in 2022 or when we were up 25% in 2024. I still have way more money than I did when I retired so I’m all good personally.
Good luck finding a job – you’ve got this. I’m not buying the dip personally, but doing that was never part of my plans. So I don’t want to offer advice about that when I’m not doing it myself.
Fair enough 😁 keep steady.
Thank you! I’m remarkably relaxed about job hunting for possibly the first time ever. I will DCA the dip but only so much. I did that back in 2020 and it worked out super well – which doesn’t mean it will this time! But it’s an opportunity, so I’ll just go for it.
Do you strictly use Airbnb, or have you tried other rental platforms like Vrbo? I’ve used both in my travels. Many rental houses are listed on both, but sometimes I find nice places on one that aren’t on the other.
Home-rental platforms have been incredibly useful for me. I have a kid, and when you’re traveling as a family, it’s so much better to stay in a place with more than one bedroom. Hardly any hotels have that as an option anymore.
I only use Airbnb. I tried using VRBO once – and only once 🙂 . I booked a place in 2019 for a 2020 trip and they wouldn’t give me my money back despite travel not being allowed to that country during the pandemic. So I’ll never use them again. Airbnb in contrast gave me all my money back immediately.
However, I am open to using other short term rental booking websites if they have a robust number of reviews, but I haven’t found one that matches that criteria yet compared to Airbnb. And yeah multiple bedroom places and having a full kitchen is fantastic.
Google helped me discover what a sous vide machine was.
Loved this post. Made my mind wander.
Haha thanks!
Which card do you usually use to book Airbnbs? Do you try to maximize the points accrued on these since housing is such a big part of an annual budget?
I use my Chase card for everything in my life so no I don’t intentionally optimize it with Airbnbs though Chase does give 2x points on travel, which Airbnbs count as.