How much did we spend?

We have monitored all our spending during the past 12 months to enable us to budget. We used a notebook for daily spending, transferring this in to an Excel spreadsheet each week under different headings.

Of course, our spending priorities will be different from anyone else. Also, the time of year we have visited a country affects the cost and the length of time you are away from home. However, taking these matters into account the amount we spent is a useful guide for others planning a trip. You may wish to take the following in to account:

• We ate out about once a month, but visited a cafe most days, for coffee, maybe cakes, maybe lunch
• We rented houses for four weeks of our trip - 1 week in Italy, 2.5 weeks in Spain and 0.5 weeks in Portugal
• We replaced front and back tyres on the van while we were away and had to pay £100 for the damaged window on the van
• We always use camp sites
• We travelled approximately 13,000 miles over the 12 months

Our total spending for the trip was 21,650 Euro or £19,900; the rate of exchange over the year has varied from around 1.06 to 1.20, we've averaged this out to 1.1 Euros to the £.

This breaks down in to the following categories (all prices are in euros and some costs have been rounded up or down):

Campsites - Total spending 6,200 and average spending each week 124 Euro

Supermarket and food shopping - Total spending 4,900 and average spending each week 100 Euro

Diesel - Total spending 1,900 and average spending each week 36 Euro

Cafes, restaurants, icecreams - Total spending 3,350 and average spending each week 67 Euro

Maps, clothing and equipment (including tyres) - Total spending 2,400 and average spending each week 44 Euro

Entrance fees and cable cars - Total spending 1,050 and average spending each week 21 Euro

Public transport - Total spending 722 and average spending each week 15 Euro

Internet access - Total spending 820 and average spending each week 5 Euro

Laundry - Total spending 225 Euro

Tolls, vignettes and parking - Total spending 150 Euro

Stamps, telephone cards and postcards - Total spending 139 Euro

Miscellaneous - Total spending 880

There is some variety regarding how much we spent in each country we visited and we have carried out some analysis of this spending.

Average spending by country

Italy

Average weekly spending 421 Euro per week. Italy seemed to be cheap for supermarket and food spending, we averaged 88 Euro per week on this category while we were there.

Slovenia

Average weekly spending 458 Euro per week. We spent an average of 177 Euro per week on camp sites here - it was July. We spent nothing on wi-fi in Slovenia, it was either free or not available.

Austria

Average weekly spending 469 Euro per week. Coffee in cafes was expensive in Austria and we had to reduce our visits. However, we still spent an average of 66 Euro per week in this category while we were there. 78 Euro of our public transport spending was spent in the four weeks we were in Austria. Austria is a beautiful and wealthy country and the cost of living is high.

France

Average weekly spending 383 Euro per week. Campsite spending in France averaged 120 Euro per week. Supermarket and food spending was higher in France at an average of 105 Euro per week.

Spain

Average weekly spending 398 Euro per week. Our average spending on wi-fi in Spain was 8 Euro per week. Other costs in Spain were fairly average.

Portugal

Average weekly spending 357 Euro per week; Portugal was the cheapest country for us. 28 Euro was spent on internet access during the 6 weeks we were in Portugal. Campsites were cheapest in Portugal at an average of 101 Euro per week. Supermarkets and food was more expensive in Portugal than you might expect, at an average of 103 Euro per week.

Housing and other costs

In addition, we had a flat in England we continued to run and there were costs associated with this, as well as insurance for the van and additional health insurance for ourselves.