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Travels To Spain – Vacation Spending

October 12, 2022 Buenos días! As we mentioned in last week’s blog post, we recently returned from a trip to Spain and wanted to delve a bit further into the subject of vacation planning and budgeting!For starters, the typical cost of a week-long trip to Spain for an individual fluctuates between $1,100-$2,257. For a couple, it appears to average between $1,900-$3,800. Our pre-determined budgets were between $1,500-$2,000 per person, seeing as we were both going for more than a week, had never been to Spain, and were planning to travel to many areas of the country, as well as a quick stop to France. Let’s see how we did and share some insight!Duration. Alisa was traveling to Spain (Madrid) for a week of work and had the option to extend the trip to a vacation before and/or after, as well as have Krystal join her for any amount of the work portion. Thus, Alisa had one week of work, and 9 days of travel; Krystal had 10 days of travel.Airfare. As with many elements of a trip, this can often be a tricky one because prices tend to fluctuate. Tickets can often range between $550-$1,300, depending on the time of booking. Luckily for Alisa, her work covered the cost of her round-trip ticket, thus Alisa’s cost involved was $0. Being able to book the ticket from her carrier of choice, Alisa was able to apply the ticket to her miles and points accruals, bringing her one trip away from obtaining her next ‘status’ level with her preferred carrier. Registering for a rewards or miles-based accrual program can end up presenting several money-saving options and/or free upgrades in the future. For example, with the number of miles Krystal had accrued from her carrier of choice, she was able to spend $0 on her initial round-trip ticket and paid a total of $65 for an upgrade! With accrued status, Krystal was able to check two bags for free, which allowed us to stock up on souvenirs for us and holiday gifts for family and friends! Alisa had to pay for one luggage at $99. Thus, our total was $164.Transportation & Tolls. The majority of transportation costs during the first week were used by Alisa and covered by her work as she ventured out with coworkers/work friends to enjoy late-night dinners. One of the cost-saving measures used during this time was to share a cab with a coworker. Another method used was to download the popular ride-share app for that area called Cabify. The use of this app, paired with an initial discount code, allowed Alisa to save a percentage with the first few rides, as well as find reduced cab fares.During vacation, we rented a car. Car rentals in Spain greatly vary, depending on factors such as rental location (we rented from the Madrid airport) demand (demand was higher than normal), season (off-peak), additional driver fees, travel protection, fees paid for crossing into another country (Portugal would be free but they’d make you pay for France), and more. As such, rental prices can vary between $200-$400 a week. With a one-week rental, unlimited miles, return the gas tank ‘as is’, add an additional driver, travel protection, and the additional fee paid for crossing over to France, we paid $416 total. Tolls were pretty low, considering how we cruised about the Spanish countryside, a few wine regions, and even visited Biarritz, France. All in all, we paid about $36 in tolls. It should also be worth mentioning that an International Driving Permit is needed but was easily obtainable prior to leaving the US. One of these permits can be secured by visiting a local AAA branch, showing your valid driver’s license, filling out paperwork, and taking a passport-style photo, as well as paying a small fee. However, if you are a AAA member or become a AAA member, the cost of your photos is waived! Recently, T-Mobile offered a year of free AAA through their T-Mobile Tuesday app and Alisa signed us up for it! This leads to a combined total of $500.Dining/Drinks/Entertainment Out. All in all, we spent a combined total of $562 for all dining out, drinks, tours, and entertainment. That comes out to about $40/day per person. That’s pretty decent considering the average for food alone is between $15-$30 per person. We did find that prices for meals did fluctuate depending on where we were, what type of area we were staying in, and/or were any special events going on where we were at the time, or what was open at the time of our search. For example, on Sundays, there were far fewer options to choose from, as were options quite sparse during siesta time. Some of the cost-saving measures we used here were opting to purchase tapas (shared plates), street food, dining and drinking in local eateries outside of major cities, and stopping for fresh fruit & veggies or a fresh baguette with local meat and cheese at local gas stations and rest stops (yes, they sell better quality to-go items).Groceries, Souvenirs and Gifts. We spent a total of $533 on all of these, combined. We knew in advance that this area would be a bit high because this included two pieces of luggage we’d later use as checked bags, groceries for during the duration of the trip, some bottles of wine to bring home, items we will later give as holiday/birthday gifts to family and friends, thank you gifts for those watching our house and dog while we were away, a few toiletries and replacement pieces of clothing, and some unique snacks to take home with us. Some of the cost-saving measures we used here were to go to local grocery stores and purchase non-traditional souvenirs versus those tailored to tourists.Accommodations. This ended up costing us nearly $800. Prices were not as cheap as we had anticipated originally nor read about online and those that were super cheap were often either sold out or had restrictions (for example: for pensioners only). There were several main events happening throughout our areas of travel, from an international bicycle race and congresses to the San Mateo Festival and the Annual Wine Harvest Festival, signaling the beginning of the annual wine harvest. However, the total still evens out to around $114/day for 7 days out of pocket. The rest of the days were covered by Alisa’s work. Some of the cost-saving measures we used here were to look for a mix of hotel stays, making sure that some were ‘off the beaten path’ when possible. Another method was to use resources like hotels.com. With a free account, you can accrue points/stamps with each stay and apply those to earn free hotel stays. Lastly, I’ve always heard that the breakfast or buffet offered by a hotel is typically not a cost-saving offering. However, we noticed that the price of the buffets/breakfast averaged around $10 and included a plethora of fresh local and authentic cuisine, fresh fruits and vegetables, drinks, fresh breads/pastries, and much more. They were well worth the price while offering a healthy balanced meal, a chance to enjoy local and traditional Spanish breakfast, and a pastry and fruit for the road!Miscellaneous. This category captured remaining expenses like transaction fees, items that didn’t fit in the above categories, and items we couldn’t recall, determine or translate exactly what they were for but were on our statement. All in all, this category accounted for $301.Final Results. Remember, how I shared that the typical cost of a week-long trip to Spain for an individual fluctuates between $1,100-$2,257; for a couple, it appears to average between $1,900-$3,800; and how we each budgeted between $1,500-$2,000 per person?So, the big question was how much did we spend? The grand total as a couple was $2,860! We came in under budget and that was with 2+ weeks of Spain for Alisa and 1+ weeks for Krystal. Awesome! We felt great not only sticking to our budget but having some additional money left over to allocate elsewhere! Thanks for following along! Here are a few photos from our trip! You might also be interested in Whew and wow! This has been quite a challenging and eye-opening process! It has been very hard to do this project as part of a couple when both of us appear... During the week of November 23, we wrote about how we were going to look into options for cost-saving measures. One of those measures was to analyze any... 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