Bohemiana

This is a reprint from my travel blog:
Here's what we expected vs. actual costs (daily average costs for TWO people):
Country (#of days) Budgeted / Actual
Fiji (8) $157 / $135 (3 nights free on SPG)

New Zealand (21) $100 / $100 (not including the rental car--3 weeks $600)

Australia (15) $133 / $125 (not incl. 7 day car rental $175. 3 nights SPG cash & points)

Malaysia (15) $65 / $72 (7 nights SPG cash & points)

Vietnam (14) $65 / $66

Thailand (3, Bangkok) $65 / $75

Bahrain (1, layover) $100 / $100

Jordan (10) $70 / $107 (does not 3-day Petra pass. 6 nights SPG cash & points)

Israel (5) $100 / $98 (1 night in the airport because of Sabbath)

Greece (10) $75 / $77

Spain (29) $75 / $72 (includes one week of free hotel & food)

Portugal (5) $75 / $100

NYC (4) $100 / $125 (free hotel w/SPG)


The above did not include airfare--only land transport of buses, trains and ferries. Our total airfare--no free flights--was 18 flights in 5 continents for US$2,240/pp. We took this trip before I got into the points game--now it would be FREE airfares almost everywhere!!

5 months was long. Actually we planned and budgeted for 12 months and got tired, although the moment we got back home we were sorry we cut the trip short. We have done other 1-3 month trips that were easier.

It's easy to travel cheap, but with miles & points it can be ridiculously cheap.

pnoeric

WOW, very cool, really nice job wringing all the value out of that trip. Thanks for sharing your numbers. How did you get a week free hotel & food in Spain?!

2RETIREDTRAVELERS

I don't see the word cardinal here, What do I win?

captaincool

you need to email him haha

CFFrost

One of the main reasons I have gotten into this is because after seeing the benefits of one card (SPG) and some free nights on a trip last summer, I realized that my (now) fiancé and I could have a pretty great destination wedding and honeymoon in +/- 2 yrs time.

That said, it would be an even better trip if I could convince some family members to also join the game and the entire family could join us for the destination wedding, without having to complain about their cost for airfare. But, like everyone else has said, the chance of convincing an entire family to go along with that is slim. I don't want to think about the faces I would see explaining this to everyone. I won't even start to consider what would happen if I tried to tell different people to join different programs to avoid diluting the awards pool so we can all get there for less . . .

DHAST

I think it's one thing to critique someone's budget on Food/Beverage/Entertainment and miscellaneous transportation expenses, but it's another when you throw in occasional paid lodging. Lodging is always a separate category when I budget, as are major transportation expenses. (Cabs and subways come out of the per diem budget.) I usually come up with a total, and then workout whatever I can to stay within that.

My wife and I went to SE Asia for 5 weeks over Xmas/NY 2010-11, and our daily budget for F/B/E was $100. Honestly, we did quite well with that. However, this time around, we're going to bump it up $30/day. (We're talking about Bali and Thailand.)

When I budget, I play around with the length of the trip and $/day to get to a total that I can afford and a quality that I can live with. For instance, we're budgeting a ton for HKG, because I want to actually enjoy ourselves and get out on the town a bit.

The longest we've been gone has been 38 days. We're doing 35 this time around. After about 3 weeks, I feel like I've had my vacation from work. The other two weeks are two see places we want to see, and because we've traveled so far, we may as well. Having done this, I have no desire to plan some 3-6 month around the world trip on the budget of a backpacker. Give me 3-4 weeks at relatively nice hotels and enough $ to go out and eat some good food and have a few drinks every now and then and I'm happy

CFFrost

I agree with both of these sentiments. I always try to plan most of our trip modestly, and throw a few days in the middle where we can spend some extra money. That might be going out, but it might also be staying at the hotel, drinking expensive drinks by the pool and getting a massage. You need balance. The opportunity to ENJOY your time is really important, and how much can you really enjoy it if you are stressing about every penny? I'd rather have a shorter trip that is lived a little bit fuller - and maybe by the end of the trip we have a few extra dollars to go shopping or bring back some souvenirs.

That said, I don't fault people for their own travel styles. I know people who travel very frugally and are very satisfied with it. And I have to admit, there are times that I envy the number of places they have gone or the amount of time they have been able to get away.

rtraveler

To each his own.

I like to maximize use of points and miles and spend the money saved on food, drinks and activities on the trip. We usually have an inexpensive breakfast and lunch and then go out for a nice dinner because it can get pricy eating out all day.

youreadyfreddie

Thanks for this clarification. Considering the source was ADK I thought it might be The College of Cardinals

Happy

I ALWAYS include the paid lodging in my cash outlay calculation - after all, this is cash out of my pocket. It is not like if I separate it to a different category, then I do not need to pay for such.

That is why I say EVERYTHING and I mean that - everything that is out of pocket, outside the award flights and award hotel stays - that you would incur. In our case the foods and beverage costs tend to be a lot lower than the transportation which often includes a few LCC flights, some ferries that ain't cheap (think Greek Isles or intra-Europe ferries), and trains - especially train trips that are not able to buy way ahead to get heavily discounted prices (the advance purchase Italian high speed actually would be CHEAPER than the local trains that one may take for daytripper as an example.)

I tend to do an Annual Budget for travel and try to keep the total under a ball park figure, plus/minus a few Ks. When divided the actual total CASH outlay by the total number of days out of home on trips, I have found consistently if I can keep ti at $150 a day it would be a good year, with some locales would bring us to $200 a day in some years.

SE Asia especially Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam are dirt cheap. That cannot be used to generalize the more "normal" priced locales.

You will have a sticker shock in HKG when you compare it to SE Asia. Even you try to be frugal and eat where the locals eat, it would still be more expensive than if you only eat Fast Foods in this country. To get out on town? hmmm, I dont know how much you are prepared... and where you want to go for your "outings".

Aside from lodging, both dining and transportation ain't cheap in HK. Take this from me who has spent 3 months in HKG earlier this year and who is almost a "local".

In our distant past we did a very long driving trip in almost the whole Western Europe and ventured into southern part of Scandinavia - camping all the way and cooked our own meals because we were on very tight budget. It was a very fond memory but not something we would repeat especially given the world had since changed a lot.

I always plan some nicer stays towards the end of a trip - if I can help it I would not want to end a trip with dumpy lodging - I want at least mid-range lodging for the last few days of a long trip so the trip ends with a good note overall.

We also get our "pampering" on cruises which we tend to do 1 to 3 a year - the Spring Transatlantic to Europe has been a stable for the past 4 years. Right now I am looking at the Oct - Dec Transatlantic sailings coming back from Europe. If I could find a way to roll all my UA vouchers without flying, we could do the Fall sailing. If not, then we would be forced to do the domestic trips so to burn the vouchers.

Happy

If you are in Europe, lunch at a nice restaurant usually is a very good bargain while dinner is often with much inflated price.

DHAST

True, but I usually equate the F/B/E cost per day as reasonably correlated with my enjoyment factor. I try to research the destination, figure out what kind of $/day makes sense, and then balance out the rest with my total budget. If my $/day*days+lodging+transportation exceeds my budget, something has to give.

I haven't been doing this long enough to have developed a metric like that that makes sense. Is your number per person or for the whole group?

I know Next year we are doing Western Europe, and yeah, I'm budgeting a bit more than we did for Asia. I can only describe the trip as NOT CHEAP

I know. I spend a lot of time looking at restaurant menus and prices to figure out what I'm going to spend, although I have to say I don't have a real clue what a hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop would charge. I'm quite aware that "out on the town" drink prices are going to rival those of NYC, circa USD $15 per drink at some places.

Ok, any good local places to recommend? My HKG budget is around $250/day for two. Figure we'll end up spending real cash here and pinching a few pennies on the cheaper parts of the trip. Mind you, some days will be cheaper local places, with minimal time "on the town" and other days will eat everything up and then some.

I wish I had your travel budget. We plan for one "real" trip per year and make it count. My wife and I haven't been married all that long. 2010 was 5 weeks through Thailand and Bali, this year we're doing more of the same + HKG, and next year we're doing western Europe plus a 12 day Italy cruise out of BCN. Parts of me can't imagine traveling any more when we've already planned one 4-5 week trip in a year.

2RETIREDTRAVELERS

Sent PM, Replied with no mention of prize.

Tiki

At least in the USA people are aware of large credit card bonuses. In Australia, they aren't nearly as generous and certainly no annual bonus. The best card we have is Amex PLT with Membership Rewards and they are devaluing the earning from 1.5 pts per $ to 1 point per $. The majority of Aussies who manage to build up large accounts of miles and points are usually doing it the hard way-BIS and BOM (body on mattress). So even having the miles, people do think I must have a very well paying job-which I don't. I'm getting USA based credit cards and USA based promos because I have a SSN and Mom's address in California.

When you budget for food on the trip, depending on where you travel to and your eating style (fast food or fancy restaurant) your travel food budget could be less than your eat at home budget with groceries priced for Americans, Canadians, Australians, etc with those wages in mind. I also try to book hotels on points that have free breakfast buffets, if you stuff yourself in the morning, you won't be hungry until 3 or 4pm, then you just need one more meal, you won't be hungry by the usual dinner time so you get by for less. I also avoid taxis and use public transport whenever possible or self-drive cars rather than organized tours.

Where I do splurge is eco-lodges for birders-Tambopata Research Centre, Cristalino, etc but even then the high price includes all your meals and excursions.

sent

We recently did 6 days/6 nights with 2 nights in Naples, 3 nights in Sorrento and 1 night in Zurich. Total spent was $1370 for food + drinks, local transportation, entertainment (admission fees to stuff), and hotel incidentals (a round of drinks at 1 hotel and taxes/fees not covered by points at the others). That's about $230/day for 2 people. Souvenirs were a separate expense. The ferry rides to Capri and Ischia were the most expensive part of local travel, about $23 each way per person. We took only 2 cab rides (one was because the hotel forgot to give us a wakeup call). Hotels and airfare were covered with miles and points - probably paid about $300 in taxes for the airline award tickets.

This was the cheapest we've ever done in Europe. It was my most enjoyable trip as well, probably because this trip cost so much less than past trips. You would think that those past trips where we paid for airfare, primo hotel views, and drank wine with every meal while paying no attention to spending would've been so much better, but they weren't. I would come home and get upset at how much we had spent and could never get my husband to agree on a budget. This time, he was so enchanted with hiking up and down the Amalfi cliffs that he didn't have time to blow Euros. All that hiking kept his appetite curbed so our meals weren't the usually voracious appetizer + dinner/lunch + dessert + rounds of drinks. The exchange rate definitely helped. This part of Italy felt cheaper as well compared to the northern part of the country and other parts of Europe. Can't say the same about Zurich - everything felt really expensive there right down to paying almost $20 for 2 bottles of water.