One Month In Kuala Lumpur | 2024 Digital Nomad Budget Breakdown

I recently spent two months living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As part of my goal to show how much I spend traveling full-time as a digital nomad, I figured it’d be good to share my spending for one of those months, June 2024.

This is the fourth time I’ve been to Kuala Lumpur, and the first time I stayed for longer than a week. I really like it! The food, the friendly people, the nice parks and the good transit options make KL very easy to live in. While it’s not as walkable as I’d like, and the air quality can be fairly bad, overall I really enjoy coming here and I’m probably going to come back again for another couple of months.

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Costs for one month in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

This year, I have a total monthly budget of roughly $1,373 USD, with a little flexibility if I want to splurge on something. (Compare to last year’s $1,500/month budget.) I managed to stay under my budget by a whopping $172.42! This is great news because I actually went way over my budget in May by nearly $500, so I was hoping to get things back under control again.

As for what I spent it on: mostly food and accommodation. I didn’t do ANY sightseeing except for some quick trips out to a few parks; I literally was busy working the whole time. On the one hand, I got a lot done! On the other hand: not many fun tourism activities.

I AM planning on doing some at some fun places while making my way up to George Town, so hopefully I’ll have something fun to write about next time I do one of these posts. 😉

All prices are in USD.

Total: $1,200.58 or $40.02/day

Accommodation: $723 or $24.10/day

I booked an AirBNB apartment, a one bedroom in a modern apartment complex outside of the popular expat neighborhoods. The location (Chan Sow Lin) wasn’t all that magical but the apartment itself was really nice, with aircon in the living room AND bedroom, a decent couch, big table/desk, a TV, nice shower and a pretty good kitchen. Plus a washer/dryer all to myself!

Downsides were some noise issues. There’s construction at the bottom of the apartment complex and the sounds they make flew upwards into my apartment despite being on the 50th floor. The first few days were horrible but eventually I got used to it.

Construction viewed from my window/balcony area.

Food/eating out: $68

I have an addiction to ordering Grab Food delivery, but this time I set myself a budget and managed to keep myself from going too hard on the shawarma sandwiches!

Favorite deliveries:

Restoran Shawarma / Reto Sandwich: very good sandwiches, I ordered here maybe 6 times
Krispy Kreme: not sure what they’re doing to their donuts but they’re about 5x better than the ones in SoCal
John Satay: good chicken skewers with excellent sauce
Old Town White Coffee: surprisingly good BBQ chicken dry noodles

Groceries: $244

Another benefit to this location: Grab Mart deliveries!

I ordered all my groceries from Jaya Grocer and they came ferried to me by scooter. I did a ton of cooking and saved oodles of money. Bonus: Malaysia has really good selection of foods I’d been missing in Japan, like big potatoes and imported brussels sprouts and decent peanut butter!

Shopping: $0

I did way too much last minute shopping in Japan in May, so I told myself NO purchases in June.

And it worked!

Well, I didn’t need to buy anything, really. My clothes are still good, I have enough art supplies and the extra kitchen stuff I needed to buy was actually purchased at the end of May.

Any other nomads find themselves buying random things like kitchen towels all the time? I’m determined to pack the ones I bought here in KL and take them with me to Vietnam because I’m assuming I’ll need them over there, too. It DOES take up some room in my suitcase, though, room I might need for other stuff. Hm…

Tourism: $0

This month was about working and not sightseeing, so I didn’t buy a single ticket to anything. Ha! Well, and I saw most of the major tourist things here in KL the other three times I came, anyway. Here’s a photo of a monkey at Batu Caves to prove it.

Transit: $7

A few Grab rides to and from the dentist, because…

Medical: $158

The dentist was close by, so the Grab ride cost maybe $3 USD or less.

I had to get a filling fixed! That whole saga is detailed in this post here.

Also in this cost is my monthly SafetyWing premium, which once again wasn’t used because a filling isn’t a medical emergency, apparently…

Other: $0

Free laundry this time, and the eSIM I bought and used was from May, technically, so it’s not on this month’s total.

Final Thoughts

Well, not the most exciting month for sightseeing BUT I was very comfortable in my little apartment and I did what I wanted to do, which was work on this website as much as possible. Overall, I really like Kuala Lumpur and I think it’s a great destination for digital nomads– if you like big cities, of course.

I’m not sure if I’ll come back to this neighborhood or try somewhere else next time. I liked the apartment complex but there’s really nothing to do within walking distance and even getting to the LRT station was a bit of a pain. It might be worth staying further out of the main part of town and potentially closer to parks and other outdoor activities.

Where would you stay in Kuala Lumpur? Any suggestions?