Barcelona. Barcelona. Barcelona. I would move there in a heartbeat. Traveling internationally provides the opportunity to be surrounded by a different culture, a different language, different food, art, history, and much more. When Mr. HutchLife picked our anniversary trip destination I got excited because when I was in high school and college I took spanish classes and advanced spanish courses and used to dream in spanish. Then I stopped practicing and lost it but thought hey going to Spain I should be able to understand a lot of what they were saying. I’m still good at that LOL. Boy was I wrong about that!
Back to going to Barcelona. We were thinking about destinations for quite a few months and had Hawaii, Portugal, London, Paris, Italy and other European destinations but Mr. HutchLife wanted to go somewhere we both haven’t been. Barcelona it was. Barcelona had great weather, great food, had beaches, and tons of history, which was a plus for me. I love visiting old historic sites and reading about the history of it. Well, now that we had our destination we had to look at different travel sites to see pricing. We didn’t want to spend more than $6000 on this trip. That was our budget and it included everything – airfare, hotel, food, visiting another city. The question we always ask ourselves is, “Is the budget we’re setting reasonable, considering where we are going and what we want to do? Do we need to increase or decrease the budget based on location and activities.
Being the planner that I am, I always do my research on a location to get a good feel for what prices could be, both on the low end and the high end. When we went on our 11 day cruise of the Caribbean I did the research and got better deals for activities in St. Lucia, Antigua, Aruba and Bonaire than was offered through the cruise line. I knew I could do it for our trip to Barcelona. I checked Airline sites to see what they offered – Delta, United Airlines, American Airlines. Prices for traveling to Barcelona were not bad at all but didn’t provide everything I was looking for.
What did I want included in the price for the trip?
- A great hotel location close to downtown
- Hotel is extremely close to public transportation
- Free breakfast at the hotel
- Transportation to and from the Airport
- Trip can be refunded up to a certain point
- Close enough to other cities to do a one day visit
- Close to the beach
Yeah, I”m very particular HAHA! After reviewing the airline sites, TripAdvisor, just googling online, I remembered that we were Executive Members at Costco and Costco has a Travel site. So off I went to see what Costco offered and was I in for a surprise. Not only did they have a great site for travel via plane, but also via cruise line, guided tours and a whole lot more that I was unaware of. Costco also sells cars, insurance, homes, etc. What doesn’t Costco do! So we looked at the options Costco had and we loved them. Depending on your budget you could do from Simple to Extreme Luxury. Now, we hadn’t done any traveling once we started our Debt Free Journey and wanted to make sure we enjoyed this trip. We didn’t go Extreme Luxury but we wanted a really nice hotel. So we picked the option we liked best – The Fairmont Rey Juan Carlos. Based on the reviews on the Costco site, Trip Advisor and the Hotel website we were confident we’d enjoy the hotel.
Through Costco travel the total price included – hotel for 7 nights, transportation to and from the airport, free buffet breakfast, vouchers to the spa. The hotel was also extremely close to public transportation, downtown Barcelona and historic sites. Price tag – $4371.05. That left us ~$1700 for food, visiting some historic sites, doing a day trip and just having fun. Would we need $1700 for a week? Absolutely not, but it gave us breathing room in case we wanted to something extravagant. HA! And whatever was left over we would use when we traveled to Jamaica.
With the price in mind, we did what I mentioned in the previous article. We looked at the time frame from when we selected our destination to when we would be going. $6000 split over 4 months is $1500/month. That was extremely doable. We both were working at that time and our expenses are EXTREMELY low where we live. I’ll be sharing our monthly spend in a future post so you can see. Thanks to Costco Travel you didn’t have to pay the entire amount at one time so we paid $2021.83 and the balance was taken closer to the trip departure date. This allowed us to also allocate money for our trip to Jamaica in August so that we would travel without accumulating any debt. I’ll be sharing about that trip in the next post.
Having that money set aside for Barcelona allowed us to plan activities we’d want to do without stressing about the cost and how we would pay for the trip when we got home. That is a freeing feeling. As they say, A budget doesn’t take freedom away, it gives you freedom. I’m happy to say we stayed under budget for the trip and were able to do a day trip to Sitges – a beautiful beach town that really reminded us of Miami Beach, visited downtown Barcelona which is a beautiful but very long walk, Park Guell, The Gothic Quarter, La Sagrada Familia, and a number of other places. I would move to Barcelona in a heartbeat, even though I don’t speak Catalan, the official language there.
Why would I move there? The infrastructure of the city is top notch. Public transportation – segways, scooters, light rail, subway, bus station, all easily accessible and most things are within walking distance. We walked about 8 miles every single day while there and it was fantastic. Beaches are beautiful. Weather is great year round. School system fantastic. Farmer’s Markets plentiful with food from around the world. Healthcare – much better than the US. I still feel that way even now, 7 months later, who knows what the future holds right?
Saving for anything is important, but especially for vacations where money can “slip away” as you see fun things to do and want to do it, and just say, “ I’ll charge it and pay it off when I get back home.” Unless you’re disciplined you’ll keep charging for the fun things you want to do and the amount you spend will continue to grow because in your mind you say I’ll get my next few paychecks and pay it off over the next few months. Though that is ideal, it’s more common to keep charging even when you get back home and life happens. So each paycheck you get is going towards paying off your debt, rather than going towards your savings, investing, your future. Don’t be that person. Have patience, save, and enjoy your vacations without stressing about what to do when you come home. That stress, during our cruise in January 2016 is what led to us starting our Debt Free Journey. What will it take for you to start yours?
PS – All photos taken by me.
