[Real question: is ~$5k+ way too much for a couple to spend for one week in Maui?]
TLDR: How do you choose how much to budget for a trip? How much is too much, and how do you decide when it's okay to splurge? If you don't want to read further, general discussion about how to decide on a budget and manage vacation expenses would be great! I welcome any and all feedback regarding my personal situation as posted below.
My spouse and I (DINKs) recently started making decent money and we've never had a real vacation, and we've had no vacation at all in the past 5 years. We are taking our first trip this fall and he chose Maui. It's to celebrate his 30th birthday and my grad school loans being paid off. Actually it's a trip to commemorate a backlog of celebration-worthy things that we've put on the back burner for a long time.
Obviously that is my attempt to justify the expenses of this trip. I grew up very frugal and the thought of spending this kind of money in one week makes me nervous and guilty. (He's totally comfortable with it, I'm the reluctant one.) We can afford it, it just feels so extravagant and indulgent.
We plan to do mostly hiking, driving, some beach time, and we wanted to do a couple of excursions which are really driving up the price. We are trying to save money with relatively modest lodging, but even modest lodging in Hawaii is pretty pricey. I could trim about $400 off by foregoing one of the excursions. The only money we've actually spent so far is on airfare.
- Airfare - $1400
- Lodging - Airbnb or VRBO - estimated $1500
- Rental car - estimated $600 (maybe this is high?)
- Excursions - $800 (5 hour snorkel tour, 45 min helicopter tour)
- Tentative total so far: $4300
That's before food and other on-island purchases (we aren't big shoppers), and supplies needed for the trip (reef-safe sunscreen, water shoes, a couple UPF shirts, etc). Not sure how much to budget for those things.
We wanted to take another trip to Spain next spring (our first international trip, 10 days), and I'm told that Spain is pretty affordable as far as Europe goes, so maybe that one will cost less than this one? Honestly I have no idea and it scares me. Being a travel novice is super intimidating for a multitude of reasons.
Submitted April 16, 2021 at 08:52PM by reluctantrunningman https://ift.tt/3tDDsbb
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