June BUDGET: COST FOR A MONTH IN FRANCE & IRELAND FOR A FAMILY OF FOUR
In June, we divided our time between Provence, France and southern Ireland (outside of Cashel). While we only had one short haul Ryanair flight this month from Marseille to Dublin, it was low cost and did not overly impact our spending. Based on the locations of both of our Airbnbs this month, we did need to rent cars for this entire period ($820 USD total for both of our rentals during June), which nudged up our transportation spend, but the freedom of having our own wheels to explore the region for the whole time was well worth the price. And a friendly shout out to the Europcar location in the Dublin Airport that rejected our credit card insurance (despite our “Global Coverage” being confirmed in writing) and tried to force us purchase their insurance at a cost of around $1500 USD for the full month. Avoid at all costs.
While we spent most of this month in Provence, which is not known for its affordability, we did still manage to do fairly well on our spending. We tried to make most of our meals at home and patronize the local grocers, boulangeries, and butcher for most of our food. We did still have a number of meals out, but we patronized more local spots that were not overly expensive. We also had accommodation outside of the major tourist centres which helped keep the prices reasonable, while not sacrificing anything in terms of the quality of our accommodations. Overall, we are pretty happy with our spending in June.
Now, on to our costs breakdown:
MEALS, GOODS, AND SERVICES COSTS
In June, we did quite well with cooking most of our meals at home, which helped keep our food expenses at a reasonable level, although we definitely noticed an increase in grocery prices in France when compared to our recent stops in Spain and Portugal. Notwithstanding this, our total expenses of 1,185 USD for meals, goods, and services in June were very comparable to our expenses for May. This figure includes a few gourmet pizza takeaway meals and a meal out at a creperie, but fewer restaurant meals than in May.
ACCOMMODATION COSTS
This month, we stayed at two different Airbnbs (in Cashel, Ireland and Bellegarde, France). Overall, we did quite well on accommodations this month, spending only 2,323 USD in total, thanks in a large part to relatively inexpensive Airbnbs in both locations. Notably, we once again we took advantage of monthly Airbnb rental discounts in both locations.
Like always, our Airbnbs were very comfortable with very high ratings (this is important). In Bellegarde we had a modern loft-style place with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths in the centre of town, which allowed us to host Grandma Worldsmith, and in our Cashel Airbnb we had 2 bedrooms in a comfortable more rustic and cozy cottage with outdoor space all to ourselves with views of rural Ireland, which we shared with the neighbouring farm’s horses.
TRANSPORTATION COSTS
Spending in the transportation category continued to be very reasonable this month (especially when compared with May), with only one short-haul flight within Europe, with the remainder of our transportation costs being associated with our rental cars (parking, tolls, petrol, etc.). Overall, we spent 1,298 USD on transportation in June.
SUMMARY
Overall, we spent a total of 4,806 USD in June of 2024, which is comparable to what we spent in May. This remains less than our normal monthly expenses back home in Toronto, Canada. Our only ongoing fixed expense back home is for storage of our things, which costs us 140 USD per month and is excluded from our total costs. We also maintain a Netflix subscription, which costs us around 18 USD per month.
If you’re interested in seeing how this month’s spending compares to that of previous months, you can check out previous monthly budgets here.
So far, our total expenses for our travels as a family of four since the start of September 2023 have been approximately 58,969 USD.