Last week you paid rent in Thai baht, coffee in euros, and got paid in US dollars. If you have ever tried to answer "how much did I actually spend this month?" you know the pain. Here is the playbook for budgeting across three or more currencies without losing your mind.

The three pains of nomad money

First, your income currency rarely matches your spending currency. A Lisbon-based freelancer paid in USD earns roughly $3,800 a month but spends roughly €3,000, and the FX drift between paydays can swing the real-world amount by 4-6%. Second, credit card conversion margins eat 1-3% silently. Third, most budget apps were built in San Francisco by people who have never lived abroad, so you get one base currency and an afterthought.

Fixed vs floating rates, and why it matters

Two strategies exist for multi-currency budgeting:

  • Fixed rate ("pin and forget"): pick a rate on January 1st and use it all year. Simpler mental model, but your "budget" drifts from reality as rates move.
  • Floating rate ("always live"): every transaction converts at today's mid-market rate. Real accounting, but your monthly totals shift after the fact.

The right answer is a hybrid: monthly rebase. Pin the rate on the 1st for in-month reporting, then recompute the year-to-date at every month end. That gives you stable monthly numbers and accurate annual ones. Plan! does exactly this automatically.

Setting up nomad Plan!

Plan! supports 40+ currencies, each goal can have its own currency, and the Net Worth dashboard converts everything to your home currency using a live daily feed. You do not have to remember the math.

  1. Pick your home currency in Plan! settings (the one you care about net worth in, usually USD, EUR or GBP).
  2. Create one Savings goal per foreign account. A THB goal for Bangkok, an EUR goal for your European bank, a USD goal for Wise.
  3. Log each transaction in the local currency. Plan! stores the original and the conversion.
  4. Open the Net Worth dashboard for the home-currency total. Rates auto-refresh daily.
  5. Use the Forecast engine to project next month in your home currency.
A 3% card conversion margin on $4,000 monthly spend costs $1,440 a year. A Wise card plus Plan! at mid-market rates saves every cent.

The Wise + Plan! stack

The typical 2026 nomad runs Wise (or Revolut) for multi-currency balances, a local card for ATM withdrawals in expensive countries, and Plan! as the dashboard that ties it together. Wise shows balances per currency. Plan! shows the total in your home currency plus budget status per category. Together they handle both the movement and the meaning of money.

One trap to avoid

Do not budget per-country. You will move in six weeks. Budget per-category (rent, food, transport, work, fun) with a realistic global cap. The cost of rent is different in Lisbon vs Tbilisi, but "rent" as a category is always "rent". Plan!'s category-first model handles this natively; spreadsheet-style per-country tabs fall apart within a month.

Checklist

  1. Set home currency in Plan! settings.
  2. Create one Savings goal per foreign account.
  3. Set category Expense goals in your home currency.
  4. Turn on daily rate refresh.
  5. Review Net Worth dashboard on the 1st of every month.

Three countries, one dashboard, zero mental math. Plan! is built for the passport-stamp crowd.