The money talk
Saving for the trip was high on the list of things to do. While we try to always have a little tucked away for travel, this trip would require some rigorous saving, with some of the expenses paid for afterward (hello, credit!).
We had to have “the money talk.” How much were we willing to spend? Would we be able to take this trip in the next year? Were we crazy to spend this much on travel (short answer: no)? Where could we save?
We did a little math and realized that we’d be able to pay for a lot of the cruise if we dipped into savings and saved extra over the course of the year, but we’d have to put everything else on the credit card. Not ideal, but we were willing to float the funds a few months past the actual trip. It wouldn’t be the first time, and it definitely seemed worth it.
We had to prepare for:
Cruise (and any extras)
Plane travel
Hotels
Equipment and clothing
Insurance
Gratuities and specialty items.
Because we’d been to South America’s Patagonia region a few years before, we knew how difficult it was to get to/from it. Plus, we’d be traveling in February, which is winter in Chicago. We wanted to tack on a few extra days of travel in Argentina and Chile so that all the plane travel was worthwhile. And so we could have warmth and sun in February.
The cruise is about $11,000 per person, and we had to put a down payment on it to secure our date and cabin. Pique Travel Design walked us through all the details, helped us select a cabin and worked with Quark Expeditions to ensure we had the dates and details squared away. We got a $2,200 discount for booking early.
We pulled the $4,400 down payment out of savings and started prepping for the remaining expenses. Someone recommended Synchrony Bank for a high-interest savings account, so we opened an account and put away $1,800 per month. That would give us nearly $22,000 by the end of the year of saving.
We estimated the whole trip would cost closer to $30,000 by the time we’d checked off everything on the list. Flights were running slightly less than $2,000 per person to Argentina, so we had our general budget ready to roll.