Now that I’ve been back from my cruise for a few days and all the expenses have posted on my credit card I’ll share a breakdown of the total cost of my cruise vacation. This post will just be about the cost of the cruise vacation, I’ll share my thoughts about the cruise in a later post.
I think we did a pretty good job of keeping the total cost of the trip down. It would have been difficult to cut the level of expenses without impacting our enjoyment of the vacation. With the benefit of hindsight I might have spent some money differently and if I ever do go on a cruise again I’ll make sure to plan the port excursion days a little better. The total cost of the trip would have been a lot less if we lived near a cruise port. One of the many drawbacks of living in the middle of the country is that you are a long way from the ocean.
I’ve broken down the cruise vacation expenses as follows:
Cruise Tickets – $572.94
Air Tickets – $541.40
Travel Ins. – $56.00
Shuttle – $76.00
Parking -$29.00
Cruise tips -$115.00
Other tips -$14.00
Taxi -$22
Progreso – $58
Cozumel -$42
Souvenirs/gifts -$46.85
Drinks -$14
Total -$1587.19
Since we are splitting the cost of the vacation the cost per person we will each end up paying a little under $800 for the trip. That isn’t bad for a 5 night, 6 day vacation. It is a lot less than the trip would have cost us if we had gone during Christmas week.
Some of the expenses have already been paid since they were cash expenses. I tried to put most of the expenses on my credit card since it has a 0% interest rate until May of next year. Since my credit card is a travel rewards card I can also redeem my rewards to pay for some of the travel. Not all of the expenses were categorized as travel expenses so I’ll just have to pay those expenses. It doesn’t really matter that not all of the expenses were categorized as travel expenses since I won’t be able to earn enough rewards to pay off all the expenses that were categorized as travel expenses. My credit card allows me 90 days to redeem my rewards for travel credit. The cruise tickets and airline tickets are already a month old so I only have 60 days to redeem my rewards to pay them. Even if I do some manufactured spend I’m not going to earn anywhere near $1000 in rewards the next 60 days. The on board cruise expenses just posted though so I have 90 days to pay them off with rewards. Even though I won’t be able to pay off all the cruise expenses with travel rewards I should be able to pay off a few hundred dollars worth of the expenses. That will make a fairly cheap vacation even cheaper.
How do you think we did on keeping the cost of the cruise reasonable?
Surprised you took travel insurance. I don’t know all the details about what it covers – when my best friend died last December (day before sailing), I had to cancel our cruise. I don’t think insurance covers something like that. Did you stay away from the casino or did you get lucky?
What travel insurance covers vary by policy. It most likely wouldn’t have covered you cancelling due to the death of your best friend. I think some cover cancelling due to the death of an immediate family member. I probably won’t bother with getting the travel insurance again. I was just a little paranoid about this trip.
I only gambled one night. I wanted to try out their electronic poker table. It was an interesting experience, but not a profitable one. I currently leave gambling off my income and expense tracking.
I think you did a great job! Do you think you received enough value fo rthe money?
Thanks, I think the cruise was a pretty good value for the money. Next time I would want to go somewhere I haven’t visited before. I’d also like to cut the cost of getting to the cruise way down, I don’t think the airfare was a good value.
Great job, i totally agree with you that next time you should plan in advance so as to distinguish which expenses are covered by insurance and which ones are not.