Saving for a Tour
Trip Start
May 04, 2008
1
5
18
Trip End
May 28, 2008
Dayton,
Ohio,
United States
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Depending on your situation you may be able to save a lot, or a little.
Here are a few tips I have found helpful when saving for my trip.
Budget:
If you ask anyone on the contiki message boards, they will tell you that
the recommended budget for a European trip is 100 euro/day. With
current exchange rates, that is at least $158 USD/day. This figure
includes all food, excursions, souvenirs, museums, and drinking if
you're into that. I researched my itinerary extensively and found the
relative cost of every place I wanted to see (tentative list posted in
itinerary, final costs posted upon return). I can say that this 100
euro/day budget is a good goal if you want to go all out, although
Europe can be done on 50 euro/day depending on how strict you want to
be.
For example my budget includes the following:
10 euro/day for lunch, 20 euro/day for dinner, $700 for excursions (after
referral discount), $300 for tips, transportation, and credit card
fees, $1000 on museums, sights, and additional hostel nights. On a
$3000 maximum budget, this leaves $600 for souvenirs. As you can tell,
this is pretty extravagant as I will probably not spend 30 euro/day on
food, and may not do all the excursions and museums I am budgeting for.
Even so, this is only 80 euro/day. So if you budget for 100 euro/day,
odds are you will come back with plenty.
When you combine this 3000 budget with the $2155 tour, $825 airfare, and $600 for pre-tour
purchases (I had no travel supplies), the final amount of money spent
becomes rather high.
Airfare:
If you have frequent flier miles, this is a great time to use them. But most people
don't. Instead of searching dozens of websites daily for the best
deals, use a search engine like kayak.com. It may still be beneficial
to search other engines, but I have found kayak.com to have the best
deals. Airfare fluctuates daily and international prices can fluctuate
by hundreds of dollars. I booked round-trip from Dayton, Ohio to
London, England returning from Paris, France to Dayton, Ohio for $825.
The month prior to booking the final date the price of air fluctuated
from $800 to $1100 on kayak.com. After watching the prices and talking
to family I decided that $800 would be a great deal. Within two weeks I
found the price I wanted and time I wanted, and booked it for $825.
Unfortunately a week later the prices dipped to $750, and a week after
that went up to $950. You may be able to contact the company and see
about getting the difference refunded for the price drop, although I
have not heard of that ever being successful. Even so, watching prices
can save you hundreds of dollars.
High Yield Savings Accounts:
I opened a high yield savings account with Capital One when I decided to
go to Europe. The thing I liked about their money market account is
that they had no limit and you could withdrawal at any time. This is
important so you can remove your cash for your tour without problem. At
the time they were paying 5% annually. Since the economy is worse now
than it was when I opened it, its down to 3%. But, even so, opening an
account and having $3000 in it can earn you $75 to $100 for free. A bit
of caution though, most of these accounts are not FDIC insured, so only
stick to companies that you know of and are comfortable giving your
money to.
Credit Cards:
I opened up a Chase BP credit card specifically because of this trip. The BP credit card
offers rewards on purchases: 5% cash back on gas at BP, 2% on travel
and entertainment, and 1% on practically everything else. The benefit
on this is the first two months of the card are DOUBLE points. So, I
opened my account the month I was going to pay off my trip in full, and
put it on the card. I received 4% on the airfare, and 2% on the tour.
Unfortunately the tour was considered 'travel agent' rather than
'travel' and they loop-hole you out of the other 2%. In either case, I
got $75 in gas cards and drove free for 2 1/2 months. A note on this:
If you cannot afford to pay your trip off in full, do not do this.
Interest rates on credit cards are insane, and it would only take 1
month of interest on a trip to undo anything you get from the gas
cards. I only carried the balance on the card for 2 days before it was
paid off, and I got $75, essentially free because of it. Of course,
that $75 I would've spent for gas is now going to the tour.
General:
There are many general tricks you can do to save money, and its all based on
personal preference. I stopped eating fast food frequently and skipped
seeing movies in the theater to help save some cash. I also recently
started a higher paying job for the summer and saved 90% of the money I
made as well. Again, this is all personal preference and should be done
based on your situation. The one thing I recommend is to put the money
aside and don't touch it! If you dip into it at all it wont help you at
all when coming to savings.
So from doing these tips I saved another $150 plus an additional $200 for booking my airfare at the right time.
In addition to these things, many big cities offer museum and
transportation passes that help reduce the cost of entry to museums and
let you avoid the lines. While these are not practical if youre there
for one day, if you stay longer on your tour London, Paris, and Rome
have great packages available. Also, contiki drivers have scheduled
days off. Before you book, check with a contiki agent to find out what
days these are. Some days you are provided with a free metro pass to
use (I believe it is in Rome on the Whirl). Knowing this is beneficial
before buying a pass beforehand and having a duplicate and wasting
money.
