Our costs in France

We have spent less than we budgeted for in France!

Our costs in France were € 1,392 and our budgeted costs were €1,701. This means that we have spent €309 less than we had budgeted for.

We are also glad to see that, as we predicted, our costs in France have been lower than in the UK.

Here are the our costs for the twenty four days we have been travelling around France:

The good;

Camping costs are lower than expected due to the amount of aires available in France. In the UK, there are no that many facilities available for motorhomes. Free camping is rare, so often we ended up sleeping in campsites. Campsites offer a wide range of facilities, from hot showers to toilets, washing up and even launderettes and, of course, you pay for everything even if you don’t use them.

Motorhomes costs were lower than we budgeted. Luckily, we didn’t need to spend much for Dora’s repairs and maintenance.

Food has been generally much cheaper in France. We have been faithfully continued to do our shopping in Lidl which has allowed us to save quite a bit of money . The cost of going out has also come under budget as we haven’t eaten out s many times as expected. One thing we regret.

The bad: 

Travel costs are higher than expected primarily due to fuel costs, like in the UK. Although diesel prices are cheaper in France (average €1.25 against €1.65 in the UK), we have spent more money on diesel in France because we have driven longer distances. France is a much bigger country. Nonetheless, overall it seems like we have underestimated our budget for fuel.

Other costs have been higher than budgeted for two reasons: one, we have bought new kit in Decathlon to do snorkelling and fishing (Gary is to blame for this); two, we have done more sightseeing in France as we have visited more towns and cities. Wine tasting has also encouraged us to buy more French wines. This has been mainly the reason why our souvenir budget has gone through the roof. I hope people will appreciate it.

The Ugly: 

I would like to point out that the fishing kit cost €23 as opposed to Susana’s snorkelling kit which cost €60. Note the disinformation of the accountant! GDR

Here is the comparison of costs per day between France and the UK. To compare like with like, we have used a currency translation of £1:€1.25.

We think that our costs in Spain will be similar to France, except that our social budget may be higher (Perhaps Susana’s brother may treat us to keep these costs in check. GDR). See how right we are.

SM