May 2018 Budget Recap

It’s hard to believe that our first month of travel has just come to a close!

For the month of May, we were right on target to our budget. Here are our actuals vs. budget for May 2018:

And showing our expenses over time for May 2018:

Click the above chart for a link to an interactive version

Lessons Learned and Takeaways:

• Cruise: A transatlantic relocation cruise can be a very affordable way, if you have the time, to get from the US to Europe in style.
  • Our total cruise cost was $1026 per person for 14 nights. This includes all taxes, fees, gratuities, but does not include the added cost of excursions. The full price we paid up-front (minus gratuities) was $816 per person, including all taxes and fees. Gratuities run $15/day/person, so don’t forget to budget for these when planning a vacation.
  • We got this incredible deal by booking right at the 90-day point (90-days before the cruise). It depends on the cruise route, time of year, and cruise line, but this is typically the point when people have to cancel by if they want refunds, so there is usually a spike in cancellations and then subsequent offering of “Guarantee” room rates, where you get the best deal (if you don’t care exactly where on the boat your room is)
  • We did not get a drink package, and had $150 in on-board credit, so we did have a few glasses of wine throughout the cruise
  • Since there is not technically a separation between food/lodging/transport for the single cruise price, we allocated the total cruise cost among those categories in a fashion that made sense, and were still able to be within budget
  • Excursions were included in our overall budget (just not in the above cruise prices in the first bullet), and accounted for us going above the cumulative budget (red line) towards the middle of the month. However, we were able to come back under budget once we arrived in Italy.
• Discretionary expenses for the month were primarily alcohol (bottles/glasses of wine), and then $50 towards a $300 massage on the cruise, since Alyssa won a $250 voucher to the spa that we decided to use on a couple’s massage!
• Airbnb savings: we were able to save 10-15% on all our Airbnb bookings in Rome and Florence. Stay tuned for a blog post soon about how you can use a combination of gift cards, cash back portals, and credit card rewards to get an additional 10-15% off any Airbnb booking on your next vacation!
  • Assuming we booked only Airbnb houses for the entire year at $80/night (way over our budget, but closer to the typical vacation Airbnb), we could save an average of roughly $3500 a year! ($80/night*365*.12 Airbnb savings = $3504)
  • Even for the typical vacationer for two weeks at $100/night for an Airbnb, that’s $168 in savings off housing!
• Cell Phone: our first month using Google’s Project Fi has been incredible. Free texts anywhere in the world, cheap calls (which we don’t need, since we’ll just use data/WiFi for free calls over Skype/Facebook Messenger), and only $10/month for each 1GB of data. While the bill this month was for last month’s service, as of 5/31 we are still under 3GB of data for both of us, so the assumption that we’d even need 4GB of data ($40/month) seems high.
  • If you’re interested in signing up for Google Fi, use our referral link to get $20 off!

Notes:

• All monthly expenses are totals for two people
• Euro to USD Exchange Rate: the average exchange rate over this month was €1 to $1.183 USD
  • We were very fortunate that the US Dollar has been very strong lately, saving us an extra 4-5% compared with the previous months of 2018! The Euro to USD exchange rate in 2018 thus far has been:
    • Jan 1.218579
    • Feb 1.235481
    • Mar 1.232932
    • Apr 1.228177
    • May 1.183199

Overall, the first month was a huge success, and we were pleasantly surprised how close we were able to come to our budget. This even included splurging on many excursions on the cruise (e.g. all-access cruise tours, lava tubes, fancy wine tastings, and more!), as well as eating out at restaurants at least 10 times this month in San Juan and Rome for various dinners and lunches. Not to mention we’re suckers for wine and have accompanied the majority of our Italian dinners thus far with a bottle of wine 🙂

It has demonstrated thus far that our assumptions about being able to still have the full experience of travel without sacrificing for cost is valid! Come back next month to see how we do in June.