To be able to take time out of the standard 9-5 live to travel full time is something we will forever be grateful for. We wish that we had a never-ending money pot so that we could fit in all of the travels we want to do all across the world.
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Unfortunately, this isn’t the case, so we thought we’d do a breakdown of what we spent in our first month of full-time motorhome travels around Europe and the UK, to hopefully help give you an idea of the cost to travel Europe for 1-month full time.
Obviously, the cost will be different for everyone depending on your budget, the things you want to do and how you spend your money.
For us, we’re on a budget, so we try not to over-spend on anything and have been quite careful with how we have been spending our money, as we want our travels to last as long as possible.
Within our first month we travelled France and part of Italy. We travelled almost 2500 miles. We were travelling quite quickly as there was just so much, we wanted to see and do, of course if you plan to take your travels more slowly, then you will most likely spend even less.
Our travel breakdown is based specifically on van life travel, which is the way that we travel. If you are backpacking or travelling in a different way, then the cost may be completely different.
Cost to travel Europe for 1 Month Breakdown
| Monthly Expenses | Month 1 – £ |
| Phone | 59 |
| Wifi | 41 |
| Lottie Pet Insurance | 10.41 |
| Music Subscription (Spotify/Apple Music, Etc.) | 9.99 |
| Van Finance | 368 |
| Changing Expenses | |
| Fuel | 635.2 |
| Gas (LPG) | 21 |
| Campsites | 290 |
| Parking | 17 |
| Groceries | 699.35 |
| Eating Out | 93.45 |
| Laundry | 10 |
| Miscellaneous (park fees, gifts, etc) | 41 |
| Attractions | 28 |
| Tolls | 90 |
| Cash | 150 |
| Total: | 2563.4 |
Overall, our first month spending was roughly where we wanted it to be, which we’re really pleased about. We thought we might overspend as it was our first month, we didn’t know how much things were going to cost so it was unknown to us.
Now that we know more about the cost of things and we learn as we go on, we can use this to help us plan our future travels.
We have split our costs into monthly expenses and changing expenses. The monthly expenses are fixed items that will come out of our bank account and cost the same every month, so we know that these are standard costs.
The changing expenses are things that will change every month depending on where we are travelling and the cost of living in these places.
Fuel
Fuel is our biggest outgoing cost, especially at the moment due to the increased fuel prices following the Coronavirus pandemic, and also, at the time of writing this post (March 2022) Russia are invading Ukraine and that also has resulted in an increase in fuel prices.
The reason for this is that a massive proportion of the world’s fuel comes from Russia, especially in Italy as 45% of their fuel actually comes from Russia.
Gas
You will see we have spent a very small amount on gas so far. We have a Gaslow refillable gas system, which we have spoken about in our van tour YouTube video if you would like to find out more.
We have found this to be a lot more of a cost-effective option than swapping out gas bottles, and also a more widely accessible option.
We are travelling in off-season so, especially at the start of our travels, it was quite cold so we have used our gas for heating, cooking, our fridge and hot water, so you will see how little this has cost us.
Food
Food is our second biggest outgoing. We have actually only eaten out maybe twice in this month. If you look at the cost of eating out, £93.45, this is quite expensive, but this is because the places that we did eat out were expensive touristy spots, which brings inflated prices.
Our biggest food cost has been our supermarket shops. The cost of food also seems to have increased we feel since the coronavirus pandemic.
Campsites
We have spent more than we wanted to or expected to on campsites. We didn’t pay too much for campsites in France as there is an abundance of good, free places to park-up, but we have found this to be different in Italy.
It’s more difficult to find free places to park, and when you read the reviews of free spots, there does seem to be an increase in the crime rates, so we have found ourselves paying for campsites more often, just for the added security.
Tolls
Tolls is also something we have spent a lot more on since coming to Italy. We didn’t use any toll roads at all in France but have been using them a lot more often in Italy because for some journeys they save hours and hours of driving time.
When you are travelling and driving as much as we are, some days you just want to save hours where you can.
Also, the roads are not very good in Italy. They are full of potholes and not in good condition. This is another reason we have chosen to take toll roads as the motorways are the best roads.
The backroads can also be small and difficult to navigate in a large motorhome or campervan, which can make for stressful driving, so this is the reason we have spent quite a lot on toll roads since getting to Italy.
We would say our monthly cost increased a lot since we came to Italy, compared to France, due to the increase in paying for more campsites and toll roads.
There are also a few other outgoings such as the cost to get the Eurotunnel, our travel insurance and motorhome insurance, which we haven’t factored into these costs as we paid for these up-front before we started our travels, so it’s important to bear in mind extra costs like these.
Summary
We really hope this post has helped you to understand how much it may cost to travel Europe for 1 month and hope it has reassured you that it doesn’t have to be too expensive and that it is possible to do on a budget.
We will be doing this budget break down for each month of our travels, so that we can see how the cost compares when we travel to different countries.
If you have any questions at all, please do leave a comment on this post, we would be happy to help!
Keep up with our full-time van life travels over on our YouTube channel! If you enjoy our videos, please give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel 🙂 – Three As A Bird – Vanlife Travel – YouTube
You can take a look at some of our other van life posts which include lots and lots of hints and tips on all things van life here – Van Life – Travel Information, Hints, Tips and Advice (threeasabird.com)
If you’d like to follow more of our adventures or keep up to date with our travel hints and tips, please join our Facebook group, we’d love to connect with you all! –https://www.facebook.com/groups/309295536220437
I love everything about travel, from seeing new places, learning about new cultures and trying new foods! I believe that travel is one of the best forms of education you can get, I have learnt so much about myself and about the world from travelling all over. Travel is something I feel so passionately about, and I love the fact that we are now lucky enough to have this opportunity to do what we love as much as we can, it’s a dream come true.
Before we started travelling, I worked in local government in administration. I had been in this job for several years and had reached a complete brick wall where I was so fed up, but didn’t know what else to do. The only thing I knew that I wanted to do was to travel, and had wanted to do that for many years.
There were hundreds and hundreds of places on my wishlist that I wanted to go to, and I knew that going on a weeks holiday maybe twice a year if we were lucky wasn’t going to cut it.
After being in lockdown due to the Covid pandemic, and working from home staring at the same 4 walls every day, 2021 seemed like the perfect time for us to take the risk to finally do what we had dreamed of for so long.
It was a hard decision to completely change our lives, but so far it has been the best decision we have ever made!
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