Hey girl! As the internet will tell it, it is officially “How did they afford that trip to Europe?” season. As someone who for years thought that an overseas vacation was 100% out of reach, I’ve asked myself this over and over again.
Researching Prices
I tend to overthink… until I don’t. I become more overwhelmed with the more information I consume, so I did not spend a lot of time searching and comparing “average vacation costs”. However, I did look at flight trends & hotel costs for the dates I intended to travel. In November, flights from SC to London averaged at about $700-$800 RT for basic economy. Also around that time hotels for both London & Paris were averaging around $200-$250/night.
Comparing that to what I found on the internet, it looked like averages were a little on the low side. Prices were shown to range (for a solo traveler) $1058-$2036 for a week vacation in Europe. The biggest variations in pricing were: accommodations, airfare, & miscellaneous spending.
My Expenses
Flight Delta Comfort + & Virgin Atlantic RT: $1080.48
Hotel Accommodations: $750
Eurostar Train London – Paris RT: $231
Trains/Uber: $30-$40
Interactive Cocktail Experience (London): $55
Wizard’s Tea (London): $55
Seine River Cruise (Paris): $24
Louvre Tickets (Paris): $22
Custom Perfume Making AirBNB Experience (Paris): $95
International Data Pass (T-Mobile): $35.00
European Plug Converter: $17.49
Dining: $276
Shopping: $621
Grand Total: $3301.49
Take Aways
Unfortunately, I haven’t quite mastered tagging each expense in my banking app. Therefore, some of the estimates of the spending I did during the trip may be just a little off. The vast majority of the expenses were paid waaaay in advance so that I had more time to budget for everything we wanted to do.
If you have any questions about budgeting or more details on my experience, let me know in the comments!