If you've been here for more than a sec, you know we are strict about our budgets. We plan and save for vacations years in advance. We always have an itemized budget in place before we travel and we keep running totals of our actual expenses while we are traveling to make sure we don't go over budget. We tend to over-estimate in our planning so, in the end, we come in under budget (which is always a great feeling, even if we've come to expect it).
As I mentioned in our previous post, "Can We Do 10 Days in Iceland on Our Budget?," when one trip comes in under budget, we roll that money forward, putting extra savings towards trips in our milestone anniversary years. So, we originally had a (slightly-less-modest-than-usual) budget of $5,500 for the two of us to make the most of a trip to Iceland for our 15th Wedding Anniversary in 2020.
Then, the pandemic hit.
One of the silver linings of needing to postpone our trip was that we were able to continue saving for travel even though we weren't traveling. This allowed us to increase our budget to $6,500, as I explained in "Iceland Re-Booked & Re-Budgeted."
We've just returned from that trip and when I took a poll in my Instagram Stories asking what people were most interested in hearing about, the overwhelming majority said they wanted to know more about our budget.
So, let's dive in!
(FYI: All prices I mention are in USD. Also, keep in mind that the exchange rates fluctuate daily.)
Airfare
As a splurge, thanks to that budget increase, we decided to treat ourselves to Iceland Air's Saga Class on the flight to Iceland. After not traveling for so long, giving ourselves the most comfortable start felt worth it in hopes of getting some rest and not starting off the trip too jet-lagged. And it was! The flight there was fantastic. (We stuck with Economy Class on the return flight.. which I would live to regret. But that is for another post.) The splurge upgrade cost us an extra $324 on top of the roundtrip cost of $1,470. So, obviously, you can save a few hundred dollars by sticking with Economy roundtrip. You could also save some money on airfare by being flexible with your travel dates and watching for sales, by using points rewards, or possibly even by having connecting flights instead of direct (we always try to avoid connections; for us, it's not worth the extra stress).
Accommodations / Local Transportation
Back in 2019, we determined the only way we could afford the type of Iceland trip we wanted (driving around the whole country) was to rent a campervan to serve as both our accommodations and our transportation. We researched several companies and types of campervans and decided to reserve through CampEasy. When the pandemic hit, they were wonderful to work with through the uncertainty. We asked them to just hold our reservation and deposit until we could reschedule. They were happy to do so and even gave us a few perks for not requesting a refund. They were just as wonderful to work with through the rescheduling and our actual visit. We have zero complaints about CampEasy and highly recommend them! (I don't think they offer any referral perks but feel free to tell them John & Elizabeth Joyce sent you if you are looking into renting a campervan.) Our 4x4 Easy Clever campervan rental for 10 days plus add-ons (insurance, extra driver, WiFi, extra camp stove canisters, a table & 2 chairs, and hiking poles) ended up costing $2,329 after all the discounts. Keep in mind, they honored our 2019 booking price and gave us some perks for holding our reservation, so I'm not sure what the prices are like for booking now. There are a lot of campervan rental companies to choose from, so you could do some comparison shopping to maybe save a few bucks here. But, again, we had a fabulous experience with CampEasy.
We also had to budget for gas and campsite fees. We set aside $500 for each. Our total cost for gas (diesel) to cover just over 1,600 miles ended up at $439. Campsites ended up costing $225, averaging out to about $25 per night. One of the reasons this was under budget (besides over-estimating) was that we decided not to stay at any campgrounds that charged extra fees for showers or toilets and we avoided some of the more expensive sites.
Food / Misc.
One of the other ways we sought to keep our costs down was to not eat at restaurants. Our plan was to buy groceries for simple foods we could prepare in the campervan. Even with that, our research didn't tell us much about how much groceries would cost other than repeated mentions of how expensive everything is in Iceland. So, we budgeted $550 (for 2 people for 11 days (the campervan rental was 10 days but we were actually traveling for 11 days, home-to-home)). I was quite relieved to find the groceries were not as outrageously expensive as we feared. Our grand total for food for the whole trip was $192. I'll do a separate post to itemize the grocery costs and our meal plan very soon. I know I would have liked to have found something like that while we were planning.
Another splurge when we increased our budget was to book a whale watching tour with Láki Tours out of Ólafsvík which came in at $167 with that day's exchange rate.
And we also added $200 for car service to-and-from the airport and home. This was one area we went over budget as we were notified days before our travel that there were new (COVID-related) surcharges. So, that total was actually $220. But, since we only concern ourselves with the overall budget, small overages on line items are not a stressor.
We also always have a "Flex" line item in our budget which is usually just the amount leftover to round to the nearest hundred after we've estimated all the other costs. It is our extra wiggle room for overages in any category or for random purchases. We like round numbers and it gives us extra peace of mind. In this case, the "Flex" was $80 left in the budget to bring us to the total of $6,500. Luckily, we came well under on a few lines because we actually went over here, as well. Not in random purchases but because we forgot to account for the cost of our COVID testing in Iceland. Our tests before we left the US were covered by our insurance but it looks like our tests to return to the US will not be. That cost $110. We did also make some random purchases (small souvenirs for the kids, a toll, and some parking fees) which came to $74.
At a Glance