The Ultimate Travel Companion: Budgeting Our Asia Trip with Macdeso

My partner and I took a leap and went on a 6-month sabbatical to explore Asia — something we’d always dreamed of doing.

It wasn’t about luxury or extravagance; our goal was to travel slow, stay longer in affordable places, and really experience each destination.

Since we didn’t have an unlimited budget (far from it!), keeping track of our spending was a top priority — and that’s where Macdeso came in.

We built our trip around budget-friendly destinations, spending a little more than half our time in places like Thailand and Vietnam, where the cost of living is low. This allowed us to stretch our money further. But we also made some time for higher-cost stops like Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, all while staying conscious of how much we were spending.

We used Macdeso daily to log every expense — yes, every single one — from street food and metro rides to accommodations and souvenirs.

Experiencing my first tuk tuk ride at night in Bangkok!

Easy Filtering expenses

One feature we didn’t expect to rely on so much — but now use all the time — is the ability to search through notes. During our trip (and even now), we often found ourselves looking for a specific expense: “Did we log that SIM card?” or “How much was our favorite hot pot in Vietnam?” Instead of scrolling, we’d just search keywords from the notes we’d added, and it made finding things so quick and easy. Of course, it’s up to you to make those notes useful, but taking a few seconds to write a clear note really pays off when you’re searching later.

Combined with filters like tags and the ability to check recent entries, it made tracking feel smooth, flexible, and way less intimidating when trying to find specific expenses. What started as a travel habit is now something we use daily to quickly find and double-check our spending.

Here’s an example of searching the keyword “hot pot” within a custom time range — a glimpse into our actual expenses from the trip.

Custom Tags for Every Country

One of our favorite features in Macdeso was the ability to create custom tags, which ended up being super helpful during our trip. We made a tag for each country we visited — 🇻🇳 Vietnam, 🇹🇭 Thailand, 🇰🇷 Korea, 🇯🇵 Japan, 🇹🇼 Taiwan — and even added one for souvenirs (because let’s be honest, we weren’t coming home empty-handed).

As we logged expenses, we didn’t need to create new categories — we simply added the relevant country tag to any of our existing categories like houses, eating out, transport, or entertainment. This gave us a really flexible way to track location-specific spending without overcomplicating our setup.

Later, those tags became incredibly useful when using the Total Sums feature.

All the tags we used to associate an expense to a certain trip.

Reports Page = Total Clarity

The Reports page — especially the Total Sums feature — made our tracking experience both easy and eye-opening. We set up totals for each of our country tags, which gave us a clear, organized view of where our money was going across the entire trip. Whether it was street food in Vietnam or a rail pass in Japan, we could instantly see how much we’d spent in each country, regardless of category.

One of our favorite parts was the graph showing total expenses per month. It was super interesting to see how our spending naturally shifted depending on where we were — some months were light, others (hi, 🇰🇷 Korea) crept up a bit. That monthly overview helped us stay grounded and spot patterns we wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.

The Total Sums feature made all of that possible and gave us an extra layer of visibility. By the end of the six months, we had a full picture of how much we actually spent — not just overall, but where, when, and on what.

Censoring our total spent here because I can 😅

Here’s a look at the total sums for each country we visited, plus the overall cost of our entire trip. We’ve hidden the exact numbers for a bit of privacy — hope you understand!

Why It Mattered

Tracking our spending with Macdeso didn’t just help give us visibility of our finances — it gave us peace of mind. We could enjoy the trip knowing exactly where our money was going. No guessing, no “wait… how much have we spent so far?” moments. Just clarity, and the freedom to focus on the experiences that mattered.

And you don’t need to make a huge trip to benefit from this. Even a weekend getaway is easier to manage and more relaxing when you have control over your spending.

Taking this trip was a dream come true, and using Macdeso made it possible to do it with intention, not stress.