We’ve all seen social media influencers visiting Paris, Mykonos, and the Amalfi Coast. How are we supposed to live our best European summer without the Kardashian sized wallets? This is how my wife, brother-in-law, and I traveled to Europe for one month. Our flights and stay for as affordable as $588 a person.
We found roundtrip flights for a 3 1/2 week trip in June for $400/person on Google Flights (purchased on Black Friday). Check out more ways to find cheap flights HERE.
This is when Gabe introduced us to credit cards and travel points. Both of us already had college credit cards with very small limits. We had used them to help us build good credit. We started with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card. More information on credit card hacks and our favorite ways to use points to pay for trips coming soon!
The stipulation for this card was the following:
spend $4,000 over the course of three months using that card. Figure out if your monthly expenses x 3 = at least 4,000 to see if this is doable for you! We used it for: rent, insurance, tuition, gas, utilities, eating out, etc. We loaded that bad boy up so by the end of the three months we had a whopping 60,000 points. Next, Cosette referred me and received an additional 25,000 points. That’s when I applied and got the same card. Repeating the same process, we got another 60,000 points.
By the time of our trip we had around $2000 in credit card points. $1,450 from the credit card bonuses combined and $500 from additional cash back from additional daily life purchases! Which means we had already paid off our flights. Subtract the cost of flights from our total and we had $900 left to pay for. With Gabe traveling with us, this helped cut down the cost of stay even more!
We visited a few places across Europe, linked are the Airbnbs we used!
Mykonos hotel not included. Paris (3 days), Lagos (7 days), Marseille (5 days), Mykonos (1 night), Naxos (7 days), and finally Cyprus (3 days) = 26 nights
The cost of Airbnb’s and flights (1 round trip to Europe and 6 one-ways) came to a grand total of $1,496/per person and $2,993/as a couple.
Subtract that from our credit card points and we officially paid out of pocket at $588/person. For a 26 day trip, that’s $57/day for flights and accommodations/per person. Sticking to a couple places will undoubtedly save you even more time and money. The longer you stay in one spot, typically the lower the nightly rate is.
We did have a hiccup forcing us to buy additional flights and two extra nights in Greece (an extra $500). Always be ready for extra expenses to pop up when traveling.
Trips to Europe can be expensive. If you’re willing to play around with different flights and travel with friends, you can cut down on a lot of the major expenses. Make the trip work for your budget! What other travel tips and tricks do you want to hear about?
Happy traveling,
David & Cosette
