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I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I needed a solid week to adjust from the jet-lag, and then life caught up with me. I’ve got things back under control now, and this afternoon I did some analysis of all of my credit card and bank statements going back to the beginning of the planning of this trip. I know it’s not always the most comfortable subject, but I think that it is important to talk about money and how much these sort of trips cost, so that those interested in planning their own version have a baseline to compare to.

When the idea really started to percolate this past March, I figured that I could do the entire trip for under $10,000. I wanted to do it for less than $8,000. The reality has turned out to be much better than either of those estimates. For the whole trip, including exchange rates and fees, I spent a total of $6,716.74.

Now, how does that break down between credit cards, cash, and fees? Credit card expenses totaled $3,885.92 (58% of total) with $17.90 in fees (0.5% of that). I withdrew $2,732.44  in cash (41% of total), with $80.48 in fees (3% of that).

For exchange rates, I averaged:

1.67 USD to the Pound Sterling
1.47 USD to the Euro
0.20 USD to the Egyptian Pound

    Note that although I was in Switzerland, I avoided paying for anything in Swiss Francs since I knew I would be there for such a short time, so I don’t have data for that currency.

    In terms of where that money went, I can only extrapolate from the credit card statements, since I didn’t keep track of what I spent the cash on. Here’s what it looks like:

    Entertainment/tourism/shopping: 5%
    Lodging: 19%
    Transportation: 71%
    Food and drink: 5%

    Transportatin is obviously the largest chunk, so let’s examine what that consists of:

    Planes: 70%
    Trains: 23%
    Ferries: 3%
    Buses: 4%

    The craziest part of this is the round trip flight from Minneapolis to London and back, which cost $785.35, accounting for 40% of what I spent on planes. That’s a definite outlier. The other large purchase was my Eurail pass (I got the 4 countries across 5 days version), which cost $386.60, and makes up 62% of the money for trains.

    So, what does this all mean? It may seem like an absurdly low number, and in fact, I’m surprised by it myself. Living in hostels and not going out to eat fancy dinners definitely kept my costs down. I also didn’t anticipate how splitting lodging, tourist attractions, food, and drinks up to three ways with my friends and not paying at all for my housing in Barcelona (thanks again AP!) would affect things. Buying a lot of the plane and train tickets in advance, when I knew prices would be low, also contributed to the relatively low cost of this trip

    Finally, the Chase Freedom credit card is amazing for travel, as they don’t charge any fees for international use. The only credit card fees I incurred were from the establishments themselves. Bank of America, on the other hand, charged a solid $5 fee for taking money out internationally, on top of the fee for the local bank.

    I was gone for a total of 50 days, and each day cost me an average of $134.33. Definitely worth it.