Careful, after reading these tips you might just be ready to buy your flight and head over to Europe! I’m sick of hearing how “expensive” traveling Europe is. I truly believe that the world can be traveled on a teensy tiny budget, much less than you spend at home!
So here are 5 tips we follow that have made Europe travel soo much cheaper for us:
1. $10 for 2 people rule
Grocery shop for 2 meals – eat only 1 meal out per day. The meal that you eat out should only equal to about $10 USD to fully feed two people (you can adjust this according to how many people you have with you!)
This doesn’t mean that you should at ALL be skipping out on the local food. In fact, I feel like I am able to find better local food and enjoy it more when I travel this way.
Like this crepe place that we found in Paris where we could get paninis and crepes for the both of us for $10!
2. Grocery Shop
Just because you are on a trip doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t bring some of the ways you live at home with you!
Like I said earlier, you should most likely be eating breakfast and either lunch or dinner “at home” or from a grocery store.
We usually ate breakfast at our Airbnb and then would pack a lunch that was usually a baguette with cheese or jam or even just a plain ham and cheese sandwich like we ate in Lake Bled, Slovenia:
Plus, grocery shopping in a different country is one of the most fun parts of the trip. Every country has their own “normal” food and a different way of doing things and there’s no better place to see that than in a grocery store!
Try to find the cheapest one possible online before going. For example, in Asia, the cheapest ones are usually Big C or Tesco and in Europe, you could try LIDL, Tesco or Carrefour.
3. Have an Accommodation Budget in Mind
The way I have always done this is by calculating how much I spend every day on rent wherever I’m living at the moment. I want to get as close as possible to that number.
For example, living in Idaho we spent about $650 a month on our one-bedroom apartment. So our daily cost was about $21.
So when planning our trips, I try to stay as close to that number as possible. Obviously, if you have more people, that number is going to increase, but it does help to have an idea of what you’re looking for!
With Airbnb and Booking, this is definitely possible. In fact, our 3 month Europe trip only cost us $22.50 a night. We always made sure to have air conditioning, good reviews, etc.
It also helps if it has a kitchen to cook more meals at home!
4. Don’t Do EVERYTHING
When you start traveling cheaply and start to realize that travel isn’t all that expensive… you start to realize that it doesn’t need to be a race to the finish like everyone says it is.
You don’t need to get off the plane and run from one landmark to the next in order to “enjoy your trip” or “get the most out of a once-in-a-lifetime trip.”
You can start to learn what you actually like to do and just do those things. AND because you are seeing travel with new eyes, you realize that you can come back!
If flights can be found for half the price, and expensive mistakes like ours can be avoided, then you don’t need to be in a panic to hit everything on your list.
So if you don’t want to go to that expensive museum or maybe you just want a picture at that cafe but want to save your money to eat somewhere else: then do that!
You can always come back, and if you don’t choose to, you at least can know that you enjoyed your trip the way you wanted to!
Check out this post to see Neuschwanstein Castle tour packages.
5. Calculate Everything
Learn to love your CALCULATOR! But really, get it out for everything!
Should you get a week pass for the subway or do you think you’ll only get on the subway a few times a day? What is the cost difference between those two options?
At the grocery store, at the restaurants, museums, landmarks, everything! Compare prices just like you would at home and figure out what you can do without!
Even though this trip is going to be amazing, you don’t need to spend incredible amounts of money to make it that way.
Remember, more money left over at the end means more money for another dream trip to another awesome place!
If you’re looking for more budget tips for Europe, check out my ebook on how we traveled Europe for under $35 per person!
Plus, don’t miss these blog posts on how to save more money around Europe:
- Our $1000 Europe Mistake
- How to Save Thousands on Flights to Europe from the USA
- How to Find Cheap Flights: $250 Roundtrip to Paris
Don’t forget to pin this for later!
Dayna Brockbank is a travel and language-learning blogger who has lived around the world but has now settled in Nice, France. She speaks 3 languages at varying levels of fluency: Spanish, Italian, and French, and graduated with a Bachelor’s in Spanish Education. She and her husband focus on making travel part of life by living cheaply and traveling on a budget.