Causeway Coast in N. Ireland (Over yonder way be Scotland)
For the 4 months from mid-April to mid-August 2016, we explored a healthy portion of Western Europe.
We started our journey in spring in the South and worked our way North as summer arrived. Our plans were very loose… we had only booked flights from Asia to Portugal (via Amsterdam) and from Iceland to the US. Everything in between we made up as we went along.
Our main goal for the trip was simply to enjoy some fine European cuisine. If we happened to discover a place that we could later happily spend months or even years, that would be a nice bonus. We definitely accomplished the former, and perhaps even the latter.
Roughly speaking, we spent a month each in Spain, Italy, and the UK / Ireland, and a week or less in the Netherlands, Portugal, Czech, Germany, Denmark, and Iceland; 10 countries in total.
Flights, Trains, & Rental Cars – Our European Trip
Not surprisingly, this cost a bit more than our excursions through Latin America and SE Asia. Here is the full cost breakdown:
Total Expenses
| Apr-Aug 2016 (1.13 EUR/USD) (1.30 GBP/USD) (23.8 CZK/USD) (6.68 DKR/USD) (120 ISK/USD) | Total Expense (4 Months) | Daily Expense | % of total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Housing | $9,572 | $83 | 33% |
| Food & Alcohol | $9,931 | $86 | 34% |
| Transport | $5,770 | $50 | 20% |
| Misc | $2,071 | $18 | 7% |
| Entertainment | $ 968 | $8 | 3% |
| Insurance & Healthcare | $ 756 | $7 | 3% |
| Total | $29,067 | $250 | 100% |
Housing
With a total cost of ~$83/day, housing comprised 1/3 of our total outlay.
In total, we stayed 115 nights. 77 of these were spent in Airbnb apartments (more detail here) and 14 in paid hotels. A total of 24 nights were completely free, 16 in hotels booked with rewards points and 8 with friends (all friends we met after we started a life of full time travel!)
Our Airbnb on the river in Girona, Spain
The cost of housing varies widely between different countries. Paid nights ranged from a low average of ~$67/night in Portugal to ~$175/night in the UK.
Nightly cost in other countries: Ireland ($81), Czech ($95), Spain ($102), Italy ($113), Iceland ($122), Denmark ($147.)
We used hotel points in Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, which saved us ~$225/night.
Food & Alcohol
Total spending on Dining Out, Groceries, and Alcohol was ~$86/day, more than we spent on housing. At least it is clear where our priorities lie.
As is our custom, most of our meals were eaten in restaurants. On average we spent $69/day dining out. I wouldn’t be shocked to find that most of this was spent on gelato, cappucinos, and croissants.
If we did dine at home, it was usually for breakfast. In addition we would always have fruit and vegetables handy for snacking and for Jr, for a grocery bill of ~$12.50/day.
Our alcohol expense was roughly $4.50/day. The majority of this was in regions where it is customary to have wine or beer with meals. For example, throughout Spain prie fixe menus include a glass of wine.
Pork Knee and Beer, Prague, Czech
Prix Fixe Lunch, Girona, Spain
Produce Market, Florence, Italy
Like housing, food prices are significantly different between countries and even regions. While not a perfect apples-apples comparison, our daily total food expenditures were: Czech ($61), Portugal ($61), Denmark ($66), Iceland ($78), Italy ($84), Spain ($90), Ireland ($93), UK ($97), and Germany ($99.)
Transportation
One of our main priorities for housing is location. Ideally we are in the city center and near public transit. We like to explore a city on foot and I’m sure we walked 10 km or more on most days.
Of the ~$50/day spent on transportation, more than 90% (~$46/day) was spent on flights, trains, and rental cars (in Ireland & Iceland) and associated transit to get to an airport or train station. The remaining $4/day was for intracity buses, subway, or taxis.
Our flight to Europe was paid with airline miles, but all other transportation was paid in full.
Strawberry Moon as seen from a Vaporetto (Water Bus), Venice, Italy
Our fuel efficient Rental Car in Iceland (No, not really)
Miscellaneous
At ~$18/day or 7% of our total spending it probably isn’t fair to call it “miscellanous” any longer.
26% of this ($4.5/day) are child related expenses, including diapers, formula, clothes, and toys, but also Jr’s sweet race-car car seat ($88) that we ordered before staring our UK road trip.
21% ($3.6/day) are for clothes, shoes, lotion, and jewelry for Winnie. As the weather became cooler/warmer, we added clothes to our belongings.
10% is for a new suitcase. When a wheel fell off our old beast of a suitcase in Germany, we picked up a new lightweight one.
10% is for new camera gear (light filters, screen protector.) This is primarily a business expense (see Instagram.)
6% is for gifts. We routinely gave simple gifts to our favorite Airbnb hosts, and of course left nicer gifts for our friends who were kind enough to host us.
5% ($0.75/day) is for SIM cards so we had data access as we moved from country to country.
5% is for clothes for me. This includes 2 hats that I promptly lost. I’m a bit sad about that, especially the Guinness hat with a bottle opener built into the brim.
4% is for Traveling Mailbox to express ship me a new driver’s license (95% of this cost is UPS for express international delivery.)
The remainder is for truly miscellaneous and random stuff.
Entertainment
We spent ~$8/day on entertainment. This was primarily in the form of admission to historical sites, plus a couple bicycle rentals. We also enjoyed climbing big hills, playing in parks, walking around new cities, and spending time in nature.
St Peter’s Square as seen from the top of the Basilica, Vatican (8€/person)
Amalfi Coast, Positano, Italy (Chair rental 10€)
Stonehenge, United Kingdom (£15.5/person)
A Field in Southern England. Cost = Free.
“It’s hot in here!” Blue Lagoon, Iceland (60€+/person)
Insurance & Healthcare
Winnie & Jr are covered by Taiwan’s National Health System while we are in Taiwan. I self insure.
To provide coverage while traveling abroad we all purchased travel insurance, Winnie & Jr through a Taiwan insurance company (4 months, $309) and me through World Nomads (4 months, $238.) Insurance accounts for 75% of our total health expenses.
In Porto, Portugal, Winnie paid a visit to the Emergency Room. She was discharge a couple hours later with a bill of 90.5 Euros (~$102.) A couple months later she saw a Doctor in Florence, Italy, and she was given a prescription. The bill was 50 Euro for the Doctor and 10 Euro for the scrip (~$68 total.) We are in the process of applying for reimbursement for these two bills.
Maybe one day the US will have similar medical costs.
Big Picture
Some of you are probably thinking, “WTH!? $250/day!?”
We had discussed just renting a place in Barcelona, Spain or Florence, Italy for 3 months. It would have been nice, more relaxing, and significantly less expensive… probably even half price. But we wanted to roam a little wider.
A nice place – Our Private Terrace in Florence, Italy
In the big picture this uptick in spending is not a big deal. Sure, it is more than the $75/day we were spending in Chiang Mai, Thailand, but when it is averaged out our total cost of living for our first 4 years of early retirement is only ~$137/day, which could be supported by a $1.25 million portfolio based on the 4% Rule.
Time spent in lower cost of living countries balances time spent in more expensive parts of the world. Geographic arbitrage works.
Points & Credit Cards
I was recently asked how much Credit Card rewards points impact our total expenses.
On this trip we booked business class flights to Europe at a cost savings of $5,200. We also had 16 free nights in hotels for a savings of $3,600, based on room pricing at the time of booking (average $225/night.)
The ~$29,000 spent on this trip generated an additional 47,000 rewards points (80% of total spent on credit cards, 2x points for hotels, airbnb, and dining out.) I could exchange these for $470 cash immediately, or trade them for ~$800 of future travel.
This is approximately $9,600 or 25% off the total trip.
25% off just for paying with some credit cards? Yes, please!
Summary
We traveled across a large swatch of Western Europe for 4 months at a total cost of ~$250/day. We could probably cut that in half if we were to stay in one place, something we are considering for future travels.
In total we explored 10 countries, bringing our lifetime total above 40 and Jr’s to 17.
Thank you Europe! We had a great time.
(See Instagram for more photos.)
We’re currently touring Europe (I tweeted you about French bread once), but with a Motorhome, our costs are greatly reduced. However, we’ve partaken in a lot of festivals so our alcohol rate is much higher than yours (we’re English too which doesn’t help on that front). Having our 3 kids with us has also upped the entertainment budget (toboggan rides in Austria, horse rides in France, etc, etc).
Really enjoyed reading about you travels.
Sounds like a rough life you are leading, Paul ;) It is pretty awesome that your whole family has the travel bug.
If you are interested in sharing your costs, feel free to post a link here.
Currently enjoying playing tourist in England! It can be expensive if you let it be. I’m spending $ on once in a lifetime experiences and cheating out on the rest. Example: buying a $180 ticket to the Harry Potter play but only spending £10 a night by crashing on the floor of my sister’s flat. I’ll keep you posted on my expenses when I’m done!
Your sister charges you £10/night to sleep on her floor?! I like her.
Yeah, for real, I need an answer on this. Are you paying cash money to sleep on the floor of a first-degree blood relative?!
Thanks for the detailed cost accounting. That’s a great benchmark for when we try our European vacation, probably 2018.
Ouch, the U.K. is expensive. And I presume this was already after the Brexit vote because you use a GBP=1.30 USD, right? We will probably plan to replace the U.K. with some cheaper countries (Croatia, Poland, the Baltics, more days in the Czech Republic). I never cared much for the weather in the U.K. Or the food. Or the beer.
We went to the UK just after the Brexit vote. It was like everything was 10% off.
The UK is one of the places that we would enjoy spending a lot more time. Southern England is really beautiful, with great Indian food, cask conditioned ales, and incredible ciders.
We had originally planned to go to Croatia after Italy, but friends in Denmark and London were going to have some time off so we rerouted.
Your family is truly an inspiration for what can be done when you’re smart with your money. In my opinion, too many people spend carelessly on cars, dinners, and shoes and then later find out that those items that they “deserved” actually cost them their freedom. I’m more of homebody and opportunistic traveler; my early retirement life will look much different yours, but I still can’t wait to get there. Congrats on a life lived well and the creation of such wonderful experiences for your son.
Mrs. Mad Money Monster
I agree with you completely. We only have the dollars and time today because we didn’t have cars, dinners, and shoes back in the day.
Thank you!
Were you in the Shengen Zone for the full 90 day’s worth allowed? And was anyone counting that carefully as you entered and left the Zone?
I think we spent 91 days in Schengen… Oops. But nobody at borders seemed to pay attention or care.
Jeremy, sounds like an awesome trip! We went with the stay in one place choice for an older kid as we’ve learned travelling to multiple spots after 3 years old just got really hard. Our month in Spain came out to less than $65 a day using points and miles for a lot of flights/lodging. Thanks for the info about international health insurance. We’ll look into that next time we’re on the road for longer.
Great piece!
$65/day is awesome! Very nice.
Spain, Portugal, & Southern Italy can all be really inexpensive from what we’ve seen.
Now I need a pork knuckle with some beer! You guys are living well, and that looks like an awesome loop. Nice job on the travel hacking.
We are thinking of some slow travel in Europe for next year since we got a bunch of free travel vouchers while traveling Colorado this summer. You mentioned looking for some places you would consider staying for months or years. I’m curious what spots you thought you might enjoy slow traveling next time?
We really liked Girona Spain, Florence Italy, Berlin, and Southern England. And both Lisbon and Porto in Portugal.
Girona Spain is great because the cost of living is low, it is a Ryanair hub for easy access to the rest of Europe, and the surrounding countryside is great for biking (a lot of Tour de France riders train there.)
Any hints on where you would consider an extended stay? I love the cost posts. Thanks for sharing!
+1, where and why?
Top of our list is probably Girona, Spain. The cost of living is low, it is a Ryanair hub for easy access to the rest of Europe, and the surrounding countryside is great for biking (a lot of Tour de France riders train there.)
If you visited Vatican City, that counts as another country! +1 to all of your country totals!
Oh yeah, make that 11 countries on this trip!
I have this included in our country totals but didn’t think of it for total countries visited on this trip. Thanks!
I like the fact that you spend the first years in areas with lower cost of living to even out traveling to other areas such as Europe. I also hope that the insane health care costs decrease in the US but unfortunately some other countries, as they become modern, are starting to copy the US and raising cost by having outrageous hospital fees.
Thanks for sharing these. This is very useful to us as we plan to travel for long periods of time when we retire.
Which countries are you thinking of with rising / outrageous hospital fees? Portugal and Italy are pretty modern.
Another bonus to starting travel / retirement in lower cost of living countries is that it eases the psychological transition from super saving to spending.
Wow, look at those pictures! My fav one is the Amalfi Coast.
And you’re right, I WAS thinking ““WTH!? $250/day!?” How did you convince Winnie to let you get away with that? ;P
But yeah, I’m sure it’ll average out to be less than $150 once you spend the rest of your year in Asia. One thing I missed the most in Europe was Asian food (reasonably priced, good Asian food is hard to find in Europe), so we stuffed our faces like crazy when we got to Singapore.
Glad you had fun on your trip! And how awesome is it that Julian’s been to 17 countries and he’s not even 2 yet!
We had really good Asian food in Madrid & Berlin, Indian in the UK, Thai in Ireland… it is definitely less prevalent than in the US or, well, Asia.
We may hit up Vietnam, Cambodia, Lao in the near future, so Julian might get to 20 countries by 20 months.
I’m learning so much reading about your travels. I can hardly wait to get started on retirement in a couple years. Your posts give me confidence that we can afford similar experiences.
You’d mentioned having to get travel visas for Mexico and some of the Asian and South American countries in previous posts. Were any travel visas needed for Europe? Older friends traveling to Italy and France had warned us to keep all money strapped to us in money bags and not carry a purse or wallet because there are so many pick pockets. Do you think crime is really that prevalent in Europe?
Spent 3 weeks in Italy 2 summers ago and I felt the pickpocket thing was overblown. I never carried a money belt and just put my wallet and iPhone in my front pocket when in a really crowded bus or metro and my hand in that pocket. Read all about the scams before you go and you can see them developing right before your eyes. In addition my wife and were partners in that if I was busy figuring out a metro schedule she watched my back since I was distracted. My wife carried a small purse that went over her head and across her body. Good to be concerned but not to worry, millions live there and go about there normal business.
At least those were our experiences. Can’t wait to go back – it was a blast, super nice people, with great world class places to visit.
Thanks so much for sharing your Europen experiences, Mark. It’s good to know that the pickpocket warnings are somewhat overblown. Our older friends are worried about making sure we know the risks since we haven’t travelled much yet. I think they’re trying to protect us. I’ll definitely make sure I watch our surroundings while my husband’s navigating the maps but it’s good to know we don’t have to be extremely worried! We want to be able to enjoy ourselves too and to not be paranoid on our journeys.
Crossbody bag for women works well and just standard precautions like in any city. We have noticed some “characters” around but we implemented that one partner must be alert at all times. We actually avoided an incident in Brussels because of this. My husband was looking for his camera or something and I was on watch but looked away briefly when a guy bumped my husbands backpack. Likely intending to steal something but we both looked at the guy straight in the eye. He backed off.
Thanks Charlotte,
I’ll definitely use a crossbody bag. I’m having my husband read these replys too. It helps to know in advance to work as a team and watch over the other if they’re distracted with a task. Thank you so much for the good advice!
Pickpockets are still around. I was in Europe this summer also. I had no problem with pickpockets in Rome or Florence, but in Athens,Greece a team of professional pickpockets were about a second away from getting my money and credit cards before I realized what was going on.
I wrote about here:
http://maximizefreedom.com/2016/07/23/how-a-team-of-thieves-in-athens-greece-almost-ruined-my-trip/
We didn’t need Visas for Europe, we just got a standard Schengen Visa on arrival.
Honestly I never worry about pickpockets. We don’t carry much cash and don’t have much worth stealing, really.
I think it is possible that my iPhone was stolen near Naples, Italy (which I guess is notorious for pickpockets.) I either dropped it or left it on top of our stroller while I was getting some gelato. But if it was stolen I feel bad for them… it was a 3 year old iPhone 5S that had a cracked case and constantly had out of memory errors. Sucks to be you Signore Clepto!
Ha! I think my husband is hoping someone steals his 4 yr old iPhone that is in the same condition! We won’t replace it until it completely dies, so until then a little bit of thievery sounds rather convenient.
Winnie dropped her iPhone face first onto concrete just before Christmas. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an accident ;)
I’m with you on the no valuables travel. We were just concerned about losing our passports and really even 20 euros would be a lot to lose for us at that time.
That Blue Lagoon picture is amazing (that little smile is certainly precious too!) We have friends that just visited Iceland two weeks ago. They said the Northern lights were amazing – and their pics of waterfalls were just incredible too. I think it’s great that you share so many details and explain how geographic arbitrage works for you. You certainly could have spent less, but what would you not have experienced then? You are researching as you travel too – (and sharing all of that with the rest of us) so we all benefit from your experiences as well. Looking forward to hearing about your next adventures!
Iceland is an amazing place. Gullfoss is the most incredible waterfall I’ve ever seen. We didn’t get to see the Aurora though as we were there in August.
We definitely could have spent less but we don’t really budget or pay attention anymore beyond writing down what we are spending. I didn’t really know how much we were spending until this past week when I started crunching the numbers. I think if we had paid attention more that we would have naturally spent less on food though.
Thanks for sharing. We’re about to book tickets to Europe so this price breakdown is wonderful. I figure we can do 2 months for about what you’re spending per month ($7500) since we’re also getting free round trip tickets using United miles. And the way we optimize and economize (more groceries/cooking at home; less restaurants; booking 1-3 months out at advance purchase prices) we might be able to do it for $5000 per month.
I added up your stops along the way and got around 30 stops or so in 120 days. That’s about 4 days per stop. Did you feel that was about the right pace? Did it feel hectic or hurried? I think that’s about the pace I want to take on our trip – some 2-3 night stays coupled with some longer stays of 5-7 nights (so we can “do nothing” for a couple of days during the longer stays).
Our average stay went down because we did road trips in the UK & Ireland where we were only staying one night. That is faster than we like.
5-7 nights per place is enough to get a good feel for a place. 5 nights is great with SPG points (5th night free) and 7 nights is great with Airbnb for weekly discounts. Faster starts to feel like too much.
It would be impressive if you did it for $3750/month, but possible. $5k would definitely be doable.
I meant we could easily come in at $7500/month without too much effort, and could probably get it below $5000/month since we cook at “home” more in the rental apartment. Not sure we can get below $3750/month for the five of us (and not sure we want to try… :) )
Any good SPG redemptions for 5 nights that you found? Seems like Europe was on the expensive side for redemption options for SPG. Haven’t checked out Marriott now that we can transfer points back and forth freely, but I noticed Marriott has excellent redemption options here in the US (in Florida for example).
Also keen to snag those weekly discounts on airbnb.
We finally booked our major air tickets this week. 300,000 United pts plus $350 taxes for 5x round trip to Europe (into Lisbon – only 7.5 hours flight time from Washington DC!!; returning out of Amsterdam, also a short flight). That redemption included a short non-stop from Lisbon to Malaga. Then I booked a ryanair nonstop Seville to Milan for $190 for 5 tickets. So far we’re crushing it on the budget travel front.
In terms of stays, we’re doing:
5 nights Lisbon
9 nights between Malaga, Granada and Seviile
7 weeks in Italy, Austria, Slovenia, Budapest, Czech, Germany, and Amsterdam (probably just 2-3 nights in AMS) – planning on trains or buses for this 7 week segment.
Drop us a line if you want to come over when in/near Amsterdam!
We’ll try to. Only planning on 2-3 days in AMS so might be a whirlwind tour then get on a plane.
Wow, just awesome. We spent a couple weeks in Germany and Czech this summer and I’m sure we spend much more than that per day. Look absolutely epic. I’m jealous and happy for you at the same time :)
Thank you kindly THP. Who wouldn’t be happy in Germany and Czech though… some amazing beer!
The beer was fantastic.
4 months in Europe and the cost seems very reasonable. Looks like an epic trip. Think our family will do some thing very similar in the near future. We have a slight advantage as wife has some relatives in different parts of Europe, so maybe that’ll save a cost a bit.
I’m a bit surprised that the food cost per day is not that hight for Denmark compared to Italy and Germany. What’s the trick?
Yeah, this is why I mentioned that it isn’t a great apples to apples comparison
Food is really expensive in Denmark, and also isn’t very good (imho.) Even a simple cup of coffee can cost $10. So we bought more groceries and made more meals at home. Also the paper island street food market is a nice place to eat that doesn’t cost a crazy amount.
In Germany we only stayed in hotels with Starwood points so we had no kitchen. Since we didn’t prepare any meals our average cost went up. I think we also had a fairly expensive dinner where we treated some friends.
I’m hopeful to afford that daily spend one day. My daily average was about $40 through Europe but I hit more of the eastern part and didn’t have a kid.
If we left the kid with Grandma and stayed in hostels I’m still doubtful we could hit $40/day/person. Nicely done.
I was a bit surprised at how expensive this was. The first thing I did was calculate how much $250/day equates to over a year… whoa!
But while this was slightly slower travel than most, as you say, it could be done at a much slower pace for a lot less. We want to spend time in Europe in retirement, hopefully we can afford to do so without using up all the retirement funds!
Thanks for the great info!
Yeah $250/day is a relatively big number ($90k/year), but projecting it over a whole year would be perhaps like buying a ton of expensive Christmas presents in December and then assuming you would spend the same amount for the next 11 months. If we were to spend a whole year in Europe it would look much different, as you note.
It can definitely be done for much less.
Great post GCC. This will be useful when we finally decide to ‘do’ Europe. I was expecting Europe to be more expensive, and that is indeed the case ($7,250 per month).
By my math, using the 4% rule, that works out to be a portfolio of $2.175 million if this was annualized. If a person is more conservative (like me) and use the 3% rule that’s a portfolio of $2.9 million.
Those are some pretty big financial chops. Might be a few years before I can afford it !;)
I think a better number to use is the $137/day average over 4 years. It would be a bit masochistic to travel through Europe like this for more than a few months.
GCC, great posts explaining how to travel on the cheap. Just got back from Europe with extended family, we were not as successful as you keeping the expenses down. :( but still had a wonderful time/experiences.
Mr. Tako, please don’t forget that this is “travel” and unless you have zero attachments to your home base, there will be costs to maintain your home while away, (home insurance, car insurance, base rates for utilities, taxes, rent/mortgage, phone, Amazon prime) these don’t stop. We often think of taxes and insurance as yearly line items because that’s how they are billed, but really they accrue daily.
Way to live it up, Jeremy & Winnie! I don’t think you realize how badly you’re disappointing the legions of deniers who think early retirees will be forced to live off rice and beans.
The budget does reaffirm my decision to pad the nest egg a bit more before signing off to a less certain future. Your 4-month outlay was more than some early retirees (cough, cough MMM) spend in an entire year.
I’ve only been “across the pond” twice, but for 7 weeks as a medical student, and 3 weeks as a real doc. Our paths have crossed, albeit at different times in Reykjavik (including the Blue Lagoon), London, Dublin, and the Amalfi coast. I have similar pictures from Positano.
Thank you for tracking and sharing all the details. I can’t wait to see where you go next.
Cheers!
-PoF
I dunno PoF, MMM just bought a new car… maybe he’ll spend more than we do this year ;)
Hi,
I assume you are using your credit card from USA in Europe. How was the experience? Don’t you get weird charges from credit card such as 1$ extra service fee on some transactions or outrageous currency conversion charges?
Secondly, do you have of any credit card that Europeans can sign up to and use to accrue points. I live in Denmark.
Thanks,
Saad
Hi Saad,
I’m not familiar with European credit cards, although I hear they aren’t as generous with sign up bonus as the American cards.
We only use credit cards that charge no Foreign Transaction fees, so there are no weird charges. The currency conversion rates are also the best you can get anywhere.
Cheers
Jeremy
Thank you for very fast answer.
May I ask which particular card you use (I’m sorry if you already put it somewhere on the site). so I can read it up to understand the system a bit better. I never used any such credit card so currently educating myself on the topic :)
I have about 12 different credit cards right now, and will choose which cards to apply for based on our travel goals.
I’ll look for the best airline to reach our target destination, and then use a credit card for that airline along with a card that allows point transfers to that same airline.
You can see more about how we prepared for our trip to Europe.
Thanks Jeremy!
I think I recognize that pork knee from Prague. So glad you guys were able to visit that restaurant! We’ll be visiting Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Iceland & Scotland next year, and will have to pick your brain on where to eat!
As always, I appreciate a travel post that isn’t so bare bones & travel hacky. It comforts my heart to see people in FI still able to have the occasional spendy budget without worrying about destroying the portfolio.
Looking forward to hearing of your experiences at FinCon. It’s ‘on my list’, but probably not before FIRE.
Thanks for the detailed cost figures and the wonderful pictures GCC. With three little ones in school right now I’m anchored to terra firma in the US until at least next summer, so the pics provide a nice bit of vicarious travel thrill. The travel logistics detail and cost data have me thinking about next summer ….
Thank you for sharing this. I’m sure there are a lot more details you could write about but this is a good summary. Like you said it is not really apples to apples anyway. We did 4.5 months in 19 countries about 10 years ago, also at a cost of $30K. We were not with the “program” yet on travel hacking so we missed out on that. The euro was 1.25/USD so let’s just say we spent 10% more than today. We planned our trip around the 3-month EURAIL unlimited pass. We stayed extra in England before getting on the EURAIL and 3 weeks in Greece after the pass expired. Costs in reality was higher because we were still maintaining our US home at that time.
We have a 2-yr old girl now but at that time it was just the two of us. Currently we are on our 2nd mini-retirement but with travel only as a minor goal. We have chosen to go to school and be stay at home parents for a couple of years.
As always, I enjoy reading about your adventures. Have fun on your next destination!
Iceland is one of the most spectacular countries I have ever seen. I did not go the the Blue lagoon though, it seemed overpriced. I recommend to explore it deeper next time, it’s worth it.
It is beautiful. I think if we visit again it will be when Jr is able to do some hiking and we’ll take a camper van and circumnavigate the island.
Any chance you will do a meetup in Taiwan for readers?
Sure! We had a meetup in Taipei about 6 months ago and maybe 50 people came; it was a lot of fun.
We will be in Taiwan for a few months and will be sure to schedule something before we leave.
“Stonehenge, United Kingdom (£15.5/person)” [Child (5-15) £9.30, Students/Seniors £13.90]: £0 for multiple viewings of multiple 4K Ultra HD videos. Otherwise UKofGB&NI is generally poor value and crowded. Halving the £ exchange rate might correct the difference.
Some people are predicting 1:1 £ / $. I remember being in the UK when it was more than 2:1!
OUCH!!
Grew up in the U.K. (Been living in Canada for 30 years)
I remember visiting Stonehenge as a kid, parents driving down a country lane, parking the car at the side of a farmers field and sitting on the stones having a picnic.
Totally free back in either late sixties or early 70’s ..
Sounds like you had a great trip! I would really like to have an extended visit to Portugal and Spain. It looks amazing.
Next time you’re in Europe I highly recommend you spend some time in Switzerland. It is a little expensive, and dealing with their unique currency is annoying, but it is unbelievably beautiful. Every time you turn around you see another breathtaking vista.
I recently wrote a post about saving money on a European vacation. You guys probably know most of my tricks, but some of your readers might be able to benefit from it. Check it out here: http://www.fiscallyfree.com/2016/09/how-to-save-money-on-fabulous-european.html
How do you manage currency exchange? Meaning do you exchange all upfront before leaving? at the airport / banks? what’s the best / way to do this to minimize exchange costs.
We use credit cards always / whenever possible, and just get cash from the ATM if/when needed. Avoiding currency exchange services is best, as they always offer the worst exchange rates.
See more in this post:
https://gocurrycracker.com/free-money-a-guide-to-international-money-management/
I want to go to Iceland so bad. Your trip looked amazing. How did you decide how long to stay in each place?
We had 90 days in the Schengen Region so that was an upper bound.
Airbnb usually has weekly rates. Starwood hotels booked with points have the 5th night free. So 5-7 days is a good minimum target per location.
60 Euros for Blue Lagoon????? What’s up with that? Sounds expensive
I just wanted to say that it made me happy to see that you spent more on dining than on stay (even if just by a bit). That is my kind of spending : )
My sister is based in Europe and we typically do a trip a year using her home in Amsterdam as a base and visiting one or two more countries from there. Toddler BITA has been on a couple of these trips with us now, and has seen Belgium, Germany and Spain. She is 2.5 years old and her country count is 7. I can’t wait to hit our FIRE date and be able to spend more than 3 weeks at a time exploring Europe.
And hats. Don’t even get me started on fucking hats (should that be f-ing? I don’t know what the rules are on your blog, so apologies if that amounts to inappropriate behaviour in your living room). The only purpose of hats is to sneak off if you take your eyes off them for more than forty seconds. I’ve never met a loyal hat.
While the cost of the trip may have been reduced by $9,600 by using credit card rewards, saying that you got 25% off seems to paint an unrealistic picture that does not acknowledge the cost of acquiring all those rewards points. Sign up bonuses and other tactics can sometimes provide a substantial ROI, but the usual payout is around 2% or less. To understand the real cost and the real ROI, how much was spent to accumulate the points for the $5,200 tickets and the 16 free nights?
The ROI was about 1000 times greater than 2%.
I outlined the points used in this post.
You may be particularly interested in this comment.
Yes – the clarification in the comment that you spent “about $23,500 across 9 different credit cards… to receive $10k in travel for a return of ~2,100%” certainly helps. Perhaps the biggest shift is realizing its all about the bonuses rather than the regular points earned by normal spending. Thanks!
Yes, it is all about the bonuses. Otherwise at best you can get 4.5-6% ROI.
Just wondering what do you do in case of jury duty calls? Have you got any summons for it, and how do you respond if you’re out?
Sorry, I don’t understand the context of your question.
If I’m in the US, it sounds like an interesting way to fulfill my civic duty.
But if you were out and you get summons in the mail, do you friends (who get your mail) take care of it? How do you tell them you’re not in town?
No idea
Well, when you get the letter, you cannot say “no idea” to the govt. You have to respond.
So just checking if you have experienced this yet.
Looks like you haven’t.
This is one of the great number of minor things of which I am completely ignorant.
Qld, Au:
http://www.courts.qld.gov.au/information-for-jurors/excusal#What happens if the addressee is overseas?
Jeremy, Just curious, do you vote while you’re traveling outside the U.S.? My wife and I are hoping to get absentee ballots forwarded to us by a family member while we’re traveling abroad. It seems like that shouldn’t be a problem. Just curious if you’ve done it?
RE: @FB2020’s questions, above, about jury duty: It’s possible your not receiving summonses for jury duty is related to your voting status. In some areas, they use voting rolls to decide who to call up for jury duty. If you’re not registered to vote, then that may be why you’ve never gotten a jury duty summons. If you are registered to vote and you’ve still never received a letter requesting that you show up for jury duty, then I’m not sure why.
FYI, a friend who once worked in the County Clerk’s Office stressed to me how important it was to take jury duty summonses VERY seriously. She said that the judge she worked for routinely issued arrest warrants for people who had ignored letters requesting that they appear for jury duty. If you’re in the U.S. and you ignore a summons to appear for jury duty, guys with guns will appear at your door, arrest you and take you away. Obviously, the King County Sheriffs wouldn’t be able to get their hands on you as long as you stayed out of the country, but it would suck to get arrested at the airport when you arrived back home for a visit with family and friends…
Thanks for the detailed expense breakdown on your European travels. Based mostly on your posts about your recent Europe trip, my family and I have decided to put off our plans to travel in Europe in 2017 in favor of hanging out in Asia for the next couple of years instead. There are tons of places we still want to explore all around Asia, and a bonus is that we can live there much, much more cheaply than in Europe. Our modified plan is to head to Europe around spring, 2019.
Meh. The time to take it seriously is if/when you get a summons. Then spend 5 minutes with Google and go from there.
There are literally thousands of things like this that you could waste time figuring out in advance.
“Hey Jeremy, you said you wanted to travel the world. It’s 30 years later and you are still in the US, what happened?”
Well, I was worried about what might happen if I got called in for jury duty.
Yes, I vote.
I’m not worried, and besides the comment I wrote to your post, haven’t spent any time thinking about what might happen if and when I got a summons for jury duty.
As you said, it’ll be a simple thing to deal with if it ever happens. I’ve just always been really careful to make sure I responded to those letters when I got them, because of what my friend told me about what happens if you just blow the off.
Thanks again for your site, Jeremy! Happy travels.
I know, you always seem pretty level headed.
Worst case, a night in jail might make a good blog post someday. ;)
Pretty sweet trip and nice comprehensive financial overview. Glad to read and see that your guys enjoyed yourselves. When we were in Iceland, we skipped the Blue Lagoon (we did walk in the surrounding area), a bit too expensive for our taste.
Thanks for sharing this, and providing so much detail. Predicting travel costs was one of my biggest worries in planning early retirement. We just got back from our first post-retirement trip as a couple aged 50 and 52) – two months in Iceland and central Europe. Here are our costs for comparison. I budget separately for air fare, so I’m excluding that, and I don’t use points for hotels, so these are just daily living costs.
Iceland: I budgeted US$300/day for 14 nights, and we spent $270/day. In a couple of places, our guest houses were not great, so I wish I had spent a little more. This cost was for driving the ring road and the western fjords in an Opel Corsa (a subcompact like a Nissan Versa or Honda Fit/Jazz) with every insurance they offered, guesthouses with shared bath, dinner in a restaurant each night usually without alcohol (typical main dish was $22). This the best part of the trip by far. What were you thinking only doing Reykjavík and the Golden Circle? ;-) The Blue Lagoon was outrageously expensive and worth every kroner in my opinion.
Poland: I budgeted US$225/day and spent $160/day for 14 nights. We used Airbnbs and some hotels, but ate in restaurants every night because they were cheap and good – $22 for two with one beer and one soft drink. Poland was a great experience – I don’t know why North Americans haven’t discovered it yet.
Eastern Germany: I budgeted US$225/day and spent $145/day for 10 days. We spent one week in an Airbnb in Berlin eating salad every night after overeating in Poland, so that kept costs down.
Czech Republic: I budgeted US$225/day and spent $120/day for nine nights – Airbnb for a week of that. We ate and drank pretty well, and ate in a few nights. I should have spent more on a hotel one night, but otherwise it was good.
Austria: Our costs were clearly higher than in PL, D or CZ, but I lost track of our spending because on Day Six I broke my ankle and a spent a week in hospital before being flown home. This is the first time I have bought travel medical insurance, and am I ever glad: the costs will be about US$7500 for the hospital stay and operation, and $7000 for business class flights home. We also lost some deposits for the last nine nights of our planned trip, which should also be covered by insurance.
I would characterize our spending as “modest”. It is clearly possible to travel for less in central Europe if you eat out less, use more Airbnb and cheaper hotels or hostels, skip the afternoon caffe latte. We did not skimp on admissions to museums and churches. For Iceland, you’d have to look at camping, and that looked pretty miserable to us in early September.
BTW, I got a notice about jury duty from the Attorney-General of my province, so I googled and found instructions saying that I should respond within five days of returning to Canada, which is reasonable, so no sweat.
In central Europe, we took trains, so no car rental expense.
Thanks for this article! Very informative. On my side, I just did a 2.5 month Euro Trip last autumn, and spent 4500 Euros in total. You may check this link if you’re interested to visit my blog as well:
https://mishajohanna.com/2017/02/13/backpacking-europe-in-2-5-months-itinerary-budget-and-expenses-solo-female-traveller-from-indonesia/
Cheers,
Misha