Cost of our nomad living in Montreal

Montreal was the first stop of our new nomadic lifestyle. From weekend festivals, amazing food and plenty of sights to see, our 4 weeks zipped by! Let’s look into what we liked the most, what we recommend, as well as the details about our budget and how the two of us spent less than $2000 for our entire stay! Let’s go explore Montreal!

Where We Traveled Montreal, Quebec – Canada

Number of Days 4 weeks (from July 1, 2018 to July 28, 2018)

Type of Travel Married Couple, Slow Travel/Nomadic, Price Conscious

Total living cost $1978 USD (for 2 people) or $35 per person and per day or $1060 for person per month

Before getting into the nitty-gritty details of our budget, we will take a moment to go over what we did do during our trip with this budget.  If you came here just for the numbers, go check out our budget section below!

What did we do / see and eat?

If you go to Montreal, you should aim for the month of July, which seems to be where all the festivals take place and where the weather is the best! Here is a detailed breakdown of what we did:

Our Favorite Festivals:

• Montreal Jazz Festival (6/28-7/7) – We were really impressed by the quality of the performances in this festival that gathers 3000 artists from 30 countries performing in 650 concerts (2/3 being entirely free!).
• Montreal Complétement Cirque (7/5-7/15) – Stunning circus arts along venues, streets, and sidewalks that showcase colorful, high-flying performances from Montreal and around the world.
• Montreal Comedy Festival (7/11-7/29) – So many comedian to choose from! We were lucky to see the last performance of Nanette (from Hannah’s Gadsby) and loved it!
• L’International des Feux Loto-Québec (7/7-8/8) This blew us away with their 30 minutes long pyromusical shows twice a week! Did you know this is the most prestigious and largest fireworks festival in the world? Well, we quickly realized that after seeing our first performance!

Our Favorite Restaurants:

• Ma Poule Mouillé – Probably Montreal’s best (& generous) portion of Portuguese chicken. Be aware that people are lining up for this for up to an hour. It was worth the wait for us!
• L’Asie Resto Bar – By far the best AYCE (All You Can Eat) Sushi in Montreal and we can safely say that after trying a few of them! (Yeah, we are a bit of sushi fanatics!). This place has high quality fish and the plating of everything we ordered was wonderful. Try to go there for dinner. It’s a bit pricier but the selection is way better.
• LOV – We ran into this vegan and vegetarian restaurant after getting attracted by their outdoor seating. They know how to celebrate what Earth gives us. We also came back for more!

Our Favorite Grocery Stores:

• Atwater market – This is one of the 15 markets of Montreal. It has plenty of butcher shops, fruits & veggies stand.  The local farmers set up their stands both inside and around the Atwater building. We made this almost a regular stop during the weekends.
• Mega Vrac – We found this gem in our neighborhood. They promote zero waste with the goal of changing how people are doing their grocery shopping. They sell everything in bulk & offer storage alternatives for shoppers (glass jars, tissue bags, bottles). Something we are trying to do more of!
• Rachelle Berry (aka The Whole Foods of Montreal)
• Maxi (aka The Grocery Outlet of Montreal)

Our Favorite Sights/Activities:

• Mount Royal Park – Great views of the city from the top of this mountain that is one of the largest green spaces of Montreal. Keep in mind, that you need to hike all the way to the top as no public transportation will get your there. You can also drive but the walk is so much more rewarding!
• Park La Fontaine – A pretty large urban park in le Plateau that features two linked ponds with fountains + waterfalls along with some playing fields and tennis courts.
• Public Outdoor Swimming Pools – They are clean, free and were a great way to cool down after a hike or a long day exploring the city! You can find them pretty much all around the city.
• Insectarium – A fun museum for kids & adult we’ve been to as my family was in town. As an adult, I was personally really impressed by their ant farm.

Our Favorite Neighborhoods:

• Gay Village
• Le Plateau & Mont Royal
• Old Montreal (Downtown)

How much did we spend in Montreal?

TL;DR; $35 per person and per day as a couple, or about $1978 for our entire 28 days stay!

As we said, we managed to spend less than $2000 during the 4 weeks we spent exploring the city and its neighborhood, enjoying some great food and spending most of our weekends checking out the many festivals Montreal has to offer. How did we manage to stay under $2000 for the two of us? Well let’s look into each main budget categories in more details.

Note: Unless specified otherwise, prices are in USD and were converted from CAD to USD using a 0.76 USD to CAD ratio. (so 1 CAD = 0.76 USD).

Accommodation: $870 total

(Or ~$16 / person / day)

We stayed at an Airbnb apartment rental in the Vieux-Rosemont District of Montreal.

👉 You can check out our Airbnb rental listing here.

This is a safe and quiet neighborhood. Our apartment was on the top floor of a triplex on 4th Avenue. It was a very comfortable & sunny 3 bedrooms with 2 of them converted as offices, which was perfect to have individual space for each of us to work when needed. The apartment also has a good kitchen that we extensively use to cook. We also had a nice patio outside which was perfect to enjoy food on the warm summer days.
⇒ In total, for the length of our say, the 2 of us spent $870 on accommodation (or $16 per person per day).

Transportation: $165 total

(Or ~$3 / person / day)

Montreal has a solid Public Transportation system (STM, Société de Transport de Montréal) that provides buses & subways. You can buy passes for one trip (one way: $3.25 CAD, return: $6 CAD), the entire day ($10 CAD), the weekend ($13.75 CAD), the week ($26.25 CAD) or the entire calendar month ($85 CAD). (You can get the latest rates on the STM website).  If you are going to stay an entire month and not staying in central Montreal, we would recommend getting the monthly pass for the most value.
⇒ By using a mix of monthly (for me) and weekly (for her) passes to move around the city, we spent a total of $165 on transportation for the length of our stay (or $3 per person per day).

Groceries: $330 total

(Or ~$6 / person / day)

Montreal (& Quebec) have plenty of groceries stores, ranging from budget friendly (Maxi, IGA) to average (Metro) to specialty/higher end (Rachelle Berry)  which is usually selling organic/health conscious food. One of our favorite was Mega-Vrac, a zero waste store where you bring your own container and refill them with just what you need. There are also the great farmer’s markets. Another favorite was Atwater which is open daily and has really good & fresh produce.
⇒ In total, we spent $330 on groceries (or $6 per person per day) during the length of our stay. This covered 63/81 meals (breakfast, lunch & dinner) which is about $2.64 / meal!

Eating Out: $613 total

(Or ~$11 / person / day)

Montreal has so much good food! The main specialties are the poutine (french – or sweet potatoes – fries with a cheese gravy on top), the smoke meat sandwich and the maple taffy. We were also surprised by the amount (& quality of All You Can Eat Sushi or AYCE) the city has to offer! We definitely splurged a bit on that. The average AYCE Sushi Buffet for lunch is around 17.95 CAD when for dinner it’s around 29.95 CAD. The major difference is the selection of items, where usually sashimi is not present on the menu for most places during lunch. We also found a few places that can accommodate for people that have dairy/gluten or sugar restriction on their diet. This includes Green Panther, Lov Restaurant and the Kleine Shop Bakery.
⇒ In total, we spent $613 on restaurant (or $11 per person per day) during the length of our stay. This covered 18/81 meals (mostly lunch or dinner). The average cost of our meals in Montreal was $13.79 (including tax + tip) which is 4.3 times more expensive than eating at home (by doing the ratio between what a full day of eating out will cost vs a full day of eating at home as per our budget).

Activities: FREE!

If you go to Montreal in July you will have plenty of things to do the entire month. From Jazz festival, to fireworks to amazing street performance, we never really had a problem trying to figure out what to do!
⇒ In total, we spent nothing on activities since everything was pretty much free and of high quality! Note: We did go to the comedy festival to see Nanette (from Hannah’s Gadsby) which wasn’t free but we did not pay for it since it was a generous gift from a friend.

Our Slow Travelers Tips

Slow travels is part of our philosophy.  It gives us the opportunity to really connect with a place by not having to experience FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and getting unnecessary stressed for being on a schedule. With slow travel, we can see all those iconic sights, and have time to spare to find the more offbeat spots that most tourists miss. Most of the time, those are the absolute gems. And as this blog post explains, we spend much less by leveraging “local” pricing and being able to leverage long stay discounts.

Here are some tips for anyone that plan to stay in Montreal for 4 weeks or more!

• Shop like a local! If you plan to spend a lot of money on groceries, sign-up for the PC Optimum reward card that can be used in 2,500 locations! across the country (this included for us Maxi & Provigo mostly). It’s a cash reward program where you get $10 CAD for every 10,000 points you earn.
• Use AirBnB! AirBnB is a website that allows homeowners, in destinations all over the world, the ability to rent private spaces (or entire apartments) for a fee. As nomadic long term travelers, we like to call AirBnB our home as it has helped us save a lot of money and provided us with really great places managed by wonderful hosts! Pro tip: If you sign up for AirBnB using our referral link, you will get a 55 USD credit (or the equivalent in your local currency), which should give you a pretty nice discount on your first night!
  Use Turo! Turo is a website that allows car owners, in destinations all over the world, the ability to rent their car for a fee. Pro tip: If you sign up for Turo using our referral link, you will get a 25 USD credit that you can use towards your first reservation.

How did we save money for this trip?

• We used travel credit cards with sign-on bonuses to maximize free miles that we then apply towards our trip to travel for (almost) free.
• We walked when we felt like it 🙂 This helped us reduce our public transportation footprint while increasing our exercise activity. Double win!

So that’s it folks! Would you be interested in going to Montreal for a few weeks? Is it as affordable as you thought it was? Feel free to share your experience and ask questions by leaving a comment below.