We spent one year traveling to 20 different European countries for less than $1,000 a month...
without hitchhiking, staying in hostels or spending our entire time in super cheap countries.
Here's how we did it. And you can too.
Hey, we're Jana and Brett, Aplins in the Alps,
and we used to think that full time travel was impossible. But in 2016 we took the leap.
And since then we've been to more than 30 European countries.
Traveling Europe can be expensive,
but we had fallen in love with Europe on our honeymoon and just wanted to spend more time there.
But at the time, I worked as a nanny and I was a gymnastics coach,
A gymnastics coach y’all.
So we didn't have this pile of savings to travel off of, and we had literally just started working online.
Despite all of that, we found out how to spend a full year traveling Europe in 2016
for less than $1,000 a month. We know that was a few years ago
but we were right where you are not too long ago, full of dreams, that seemed downright impossible.
So we're going to share exactly what we spent.
Plus, 5 tips that helped us save nearly $30,000 along the way.
First up is lodging. We didn't stay in hostel dorm rooms. We didn't couch surf. And we didn't
sleep in airports. We stayed in our own bed in our own private room every single night of the year.
Our biggest tip to save money on lodging is house and pet sitting.
We used the Trusted House Sitters platform, which connected us with families who needed people to
care for their home and pets while they were away on vacation. We completed 9 house sits for a
total of 8 months of free lodging. We estimate that we saved well over $12,000 by house and pet
sitting, which brought our grand total cost for lodging for the year to just over $1500.
By the way, if you're interested in house and pet sitting, check out our referral link in the description below.
When it comes to transportation, most people suggest you hitchhike
or stay in the same country the whole time to save money. But we didn't do
either of those things. We took 11 flights, countless trains, busses,
Ubers and metro rides, and rented three cars while visiting 20 different countries.
Our biggest tip for saving money on transportation is to take advantage of
credit card points of miles. Seriously, we built up hundreds of thousands of points
that we used for free flights rental cars, train rides, you name it. And along the way,
we estimate that we saved way more than $7,000 just on transportation alone.
In total, our cost of transportation for the entire year was barely over $2,500.
If you want to see what's possible with points,
check out this video where we enjoy the Turkish Airlines business class experience for less than the cost of a flight in the US.
Most people suggest traveling on a budget by
living off of ramen or eating McDonald's all the time, which is not what we did.
We saved money on food by buying groceries and visiting cafes instead of restaurants.
Not all grocery stores are created equal. There are the luxury ones and the budget ones,
and we tend to go for the budget friendly option. Hint, hint: my favorite place is Aldi.
We also quickly discovered that lunch menus are cheaper than dinner menus, but more times than not,
we were just as happy to eat snacks and a drink in a cafe than even go out to a restaurant.
However, we did, of course, splurge on restaurants for like our birthdays and
anniversary and fun experiences like that. But usually you'll find us in a cafe.
Now, obviously there are more ways that you can save money, and I'm not going to explain all of them here,
but they are included in one of our articles: 70 ways that you can save money while traveling Europe.
So we'll link that in the description below. By grocery shopping and choosing cafes
We spent just over $5,000 on food and drinks.
When it comes to sightseeing and entertainment. We didn't spend
all of our time in cheap countries or avoided tourist hotspots, like most people suggest.
But we also didn't pay money to see things just because other people thought we should.
Often it was more than enough for us to enjoy amazing places from the outside, and there are
lots of affordable ways to enjoy the highlights. You could picnic by the Eiffel Tower, eat gelato
by the Colosseum. Visit a handful of Christmas markets. Or watch the sunset in Dubrovnik.
But we always choose to splurge for specific experiences we know that we will love, like taking a private
historical tour in Bosnia and visiting World War Two museums throughout Normandy and Germany.
The tip here: find free and local experiences you know you're going to like and skip the rest without guilt.
In total, during 2016, our sightseeing and entertainment spending was just over $600.
Most high level travel budgets only include the previous 4 categories we've covered
because frankly, that's where most of the spending comes from. But for the sake of transparency,
we wanted to be able to show you exactly what we spent for an entire year traveling Europe.
So we've included this final category, creatively titled Everything Else.
And for us, that included toiletries and personal care items such as shampoo, deodorant and sunscreen, because
I'm a pale redhead. But over 50% of our spending in this category was for travel insurance,
and that's because we didn't have any other health insurance at the time.
Now, there's really no great tip for this category.
Unless you just want to avoid taking showers, which we don't recommend. So the best we can
tell you is keep in mind that you're already going to be spending money on this every day
back home and you might look into travel insurance and find out whether or not you actually need it.
Altogether our total spending for 2016 in this category was just under $2,200.
Spending as little money as possible isn't necessarily a good travel goal.
You can spend nothing and see nothing, but that's not why you travel, right?
So before we share our grand total for the year remember this is not to say,
"Hey, travel like Jana and Brett," but to show you what's possible.
We conservatively saved at least $30,000, which is cheaper than our middle class life here in Tennessee.
So the grand total for traveling Europe for one year is $32.57 a day. $990.64 a month.
And for the entire year, a grand total of $11,887.64.
If you found this helpful. Be sure to check out this video where we explain the cost of one month traveling Switzerland in 2021.
And don't forget to check out the links in the description below.