How we did Paris for less than $1,500
I have had a few people ask me how we could afford a trip to Paris. We live in one of the most expensive cities in the country and Greg is a grad student. We are really fortunate that Greg's tuition is waived through his program so we don't have any student loans for his school and that he gets a stipend from the school for the research he does now and the teaching/TAing he will do in the future. Even with his stipend and my salary, we are sitting below the median income for Boston. So that makes a lot of people wonder how we could afford a trip to Paris. Since I had a few people ask me directly, and a few people ask me not so directly, I thought I'd write about what we paid and how we saved for the trip and encourage other people to travel if they want to!
We knew we wanted to go somewhere for Greg's spring break back in November. So in November we started pricing a few trips out and set a budget for $1,700 because we'd be able to pay for plane tickets, hotels, etc. in full up front and still have time to set aside money for spending on our trip. We were thinking about Disney World and Harry Potter World and then we almost got a Black Friday deal for an Ireland trip. The Ireland deal ended up selling out but we had Europe on the brain so I started pricing out some other cities in Europe to see if we could make something work. Spain was the first thought I had because Greg loves Spain and we've wanted to go back to his mission for a long time. Given that we want to spend 6-7 days in Spain, it was going to be too expensive for this time around. I priced out places in the UK and Paris and fortunately for me, Paris ended up being the cheapest! I've wanted to see Paris my whole life as I've mentioned so I was thrilled. I checked lots of different dates for flights during the week of spring break to find the cheapest flights. Since Sunday night to Paris and Thursday morning from Paris was the cheapest, that's when we planned our trip for.
We bought our plane tickets through Wow Air. They have super cheap flights to Europe but I was glad I did a lot of research before our flight. They don't have any food or drinks on the plane for free, everything is at a charge. You also only get one small carry on for free. Any additional bags, even a purse, will cost you a baggage fee. So we packed lots of snacks and brought big empty water bottles to fill up in the airport so we wouldn't go hungry or thirsty or have to pay a lot for something on the plane. And we bought small backpacks for less than $20 on Amazon to pack in. This way we wouldn't have to pay for baggage, could use the backpacks while in the city, and could use them for future trips. Our tickets were $946. Less than $1,000 for 2 people to go to Europe with all taxes and fees! I was thrilled! One of the things that made this trip more doable though was our rewards from our travel rewards credit card. We use our credit card for almost every purchase we make and then pay it off right away so we have never paid interest on our credit card, and we never buy something we can't afford, but then we get rewards for traveling! So when we bought our plane tickets we had about $300 in rewards that we applied to our plane tickets so it ended up being $646 for our plane tickets which was even better!
Whenever we travel, I always check the prices of hotels vs Airbnbs to see which will be cheapest. Ultimately Airbnb ended up being the cheapest in Paris. Our Airbnb was $279 with all taxes and fees. We booked the Airbnb and flights back in November so our two most expensive parts were already out of the way!
While we were in Paris we decided we wanted to walk a lot for two reasons: to save money on transportation and so we could see more of the city. We took trains when we had to and to get to Versailles so total we spent $72.46 on transportation in the city. Our feet were exhausted from all the walking, but we got to see so much of the city from walking. The trains in Paris are super easy to figure out fortunately so it wasn't too bad when we had to use them. We also decided that to really experience French food, we didn't want to eat much at restaurants. We wanted to eat bread and pastries and street food. Which ended up being delicious and cheap! We spent $143.28 on food. We ate all we wanted to eat. Pastries every day, huge breakfasts, food for the plane ride home, some candy and chocolate to bring home, everything! We spent $221 on activities. This included going to the top of the Eiffel Tower, seeing Versailles, and going to the Louvre. We didn't want to worry about money while we were in Paris because we just wanted to enjoy and do everything we wanted to. But because we wanted to eat cheaper food and walk a lot, it really helped keep us under our $1,700 goal. When everything was done and some souvenirs were purchased, we spent $1,404 on our trip.
Greg and I love to travel and we've made it a goal our whole marriage to make traveling a priority. We've been able to go on lots of amazing trips together. I think everyone should travel if they can. You get to experience new foods, new cultures, new food and your mind is opened to new perspectives and new ways of thinking. Because we've always wanted to travel, we sacrifice other things so we can save for trips. We try to eat out only a couple times a month. We don't go to movies a lot. I make almost everything from scratch to save money on our food budget. We keep our clothes spending to a minimum. We never buy something we can't afford. And we always make sure we have a few months savings set aside in our emergency fund. We put a certain percentage aside into savings each month and anything over that can be used for traveling. Traveling is possible even on tight budgets. Plan, save, make it happen!
If you want some more specifics, I broke down into percentages how much we spend in different categories.
Rent: 35% (because we live in Boston)
Transportation: 10%
Tithing: 10%
Food: 6-8% depending how much we eat out that month
Utilities, cell phones, shopping, etc: 15%
Savings: 15%
That leaves about 7% of our income to put towards traveling each month. We also almost never spend the whole 10% in transportation or whole 15% in our catch all category so we almost always have more to put into savings/travel fund. But just with the 7% for traveling, that gives us enough for one weekend trip a month. Anything extra we put into savings and we can use it for a future longer trip as long as we don't dip into our savings.
We knew we wanted to go somewhere for Greg's spring break back in November. So in November we started pricing a few trips out and set a budget for $1,700 because we'd be able to pay for plane tickets, hotels, etc. in full up front and still have time to set aside money for spending on our trip. We were thinking about Disney World and Harry Potter World and then we almost got a Black Friday deal for an Ireland trip. The Ireland deal ended up selling out but we had Europe on the brain so I started pricing out some other cities in Europe to see if we could make something work. Spain was the first thought I had because Greg loves Spain and we've wanted to go back to his mission for a long time. Given that we want to spend 6-7 days in Spain, it was going to be too expensive for this time around. I priced out places in the UK and Paris and fortunately for me, Paris ended up being the cheapest! I've wanted to see Paris my whole life as I've mentioned so I was thrilled. I checked lots of different dates for flights during the week of spring break to find the cheapest flights. Since Sunday night to Paris and Thursday morning from Paris was the cheapest, that's when we planned our trip for.
We bought our plane tickets through Wow Air. They have super cheap flights to Europe but I was glad I did a lot of research before our flight. They don't have any food or drinks on the plane for free, everything is at a charge. You also only get one small carry on for free. Any additional bags, even a purse, will cost you a baggage fee. So we packed lots of snacks and brought big empty water bottles to fill up in the airport so we wouldn't go hungry or thirsty or have to pay a lot for something on the plane. And we bought small backpacks for less than $20 on Amazon to pack in. This way we wouldn't have to pay for baggage, could use the backpacks while in the city, and could use them for future trips. Our tickets were $946. Less than $1,000 for 2 people to go to Europe with all taxes and fees! I was thrilled! One of the things that made this trip more doable though was our rewards from our travel rewards credit card. We use our credit card for almost every purchase we make and then pay it off right away so we have never paid interest on our credit card, and we never buy something we can't afford, but then we get rewards for traveling! So when we bought our plane tickets we had about $300 in rewards that we applied to our plane tickets so it ended up being $646 for our plane tickets which was even better!
Whenever we travel, I always check the prices of hotels vs Airbnbs to see which will be cheapest. Ultimately Airbnb ended up being the cheapest in Paris. Our Airbnb was $279 with all taxes and fees. We booked the Airbnb and flights back in November so our two most expensive parts were already out of the way!
While we were in Paris we decided we wanted to walk a lot for two reasons: to save money on transportation and so we could see more of the city. We took trains when we had to and to get to Versailles so total we spent $72.46 on transportation in the city. Our feet were exhausted from all the walking, but we got to see so much of the city from walking. The trains in Paris are super easy to figure out fortunately so it wasn't too bad when we had to use them. We also decided that to really experience French food, we didn't want to eat much at restaurants. We wanted to eat bread and pastries and street food. Which ended up being delicious and cheap! We spent $143.28 on food. We ate all we wanted to eat. Pastries every day, huge breakfasts, food for the plane ride home, some candy and chocolate to bring home, everything! We spent $221 on activities. This included going to the top of the Eiffel Tower, seeing Versailles, and going to the Louvre. We didn't want to worry about money while we were in Paris because we just wanted to enjoy and do everything we wanted to. But because we wanted to eat cheaper food and walk a lot, it really helped keep us under our $1,700 goal. When everything was done and some souvenirs were purchased, we spent $1,404 on our trip.
Greg and I love to travel and we've made it a goal our whole marriage to make traveling a priority. We've been able to go on lots of amazing trips together. I think everyone should travel if they can. You get to experience new foods, new cultures, new food and your mind is opened to new perspectives and new ways of thinking. Because we've always wanted to travel, we sacrifice other things so we can save for trips. We try to eat out only a couple times a month. We don't go to movies a lot. I make almost everything from scratch to save money on our food budget. We keep our clothes spending to a minimum. We never buy something we can't afford. And we always make sure we have a few months savings set aside in our emergency fund. We put a certain percentage aside into savings each month and anything over that can be used for traveling. Traveling is possible even on tight budgets. Plan, save, make it happen!
If you want some more specifics, I broke down into percentages how much we spend in different categories.
Rent: 35% (because we live in Boston)
Transportation: 10%
Tithing: 10%
Food: 6-8% depending how much we eat out that month
Utilities, cell phones, shopping, etc: 15%
Savings: 15%
That leaves about 7% of our income to put towards traveling each month. We also almost never spend the whole 10% in transportation or whole 15% in our catch all category so we almost always have more to put into savings/travel fund. But just with the 7% for traveling, that gives us enough for one weekend trip a month. Anything extra we put into savings and we can use it for a future longer trip as long as we don't dip into our savings.
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