Destination Report: Costa Brava (Spain) – Part Two: Cost of Nomad Living

Last week we shared everything we did, ate, and saw in Costa Brava in the first part of this destination report. In this week’s blog post, we are now taking a deep dive into our budget and how the two of us spent about $2,600 USD for a 4-week stay in Costa Brava, Spain in May of 2022. We picked Costa Brava for the food, the hiking and the proximity to the beach and we had a blast! This is definitely on the higher end of our usual spend but for such a beautiful and popular European holiday destination, it was not bad at all. Are you ready to see our numbers and find out what surprised us the most in Costa Brava?

We stayed in Costa Brava for 29 days and the two of us spent $45.62 per person per day or $2,645 in total.

Where We Traveled Costa Brava, Spain

What did we do, see, eat? Check out our destination guide of Costa Brava

Number of Days 29 days (from May 1, 2022, to May 29, 2022)

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

Total living cost $2,645 (for 2 people) or $33,290 per year (for 2 people) or $2,774 per month (for 2 people) or $45.62 per person and per day

Note: Unless specified otherwise, prices are in USD and were converted from the local currency (EUR or Euro) to USD with the following exchange rate: 1 EUR = 1.052 USD.   

With our previous trips to Montreal, Quebec City, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico City, Oaxaca City, San Miguel de Allende, Aruba, Porto, Lisbon, Kotor, Chiang Mai, Koh Lanta and Penang our average monthly spend per person was around $35 / person/day (Excluding the cost of getting in & out). Costa Brava is definitely well above this average with a daily budget of $45.60 / person/day. This makes Costa Brava a destination above our current average. 

Here is a breakdown of our living expenses for this trip:

Are you wondering where this nice data is coming from? Well we created an app for that: Nomad Purse. Nomad Purse is the ultimate budget tracking app for slow/fast or long-term travelers like us! Tired of spending countless hours managing spreadsheets to track expenses? We felt the same way, which is why we created a solution to make budget tracking effortless. With Nomad Purse, you can easily keep track of your expenses and stay within budget, all in one convenient place. Say goodbye to the headache of manual budget tracking and hello to a stress-free travel experience. Learn more and start streamlining your budget today by visiting https://www.nomadpurse.com.

Our accommodation topped our budget category (representing 42.97% of our living expenses), followed by our local transportation (representing 26.51% of our living expenses), groceries (representing 20.59% of our living expenses), our dining out (representing 6.12% of our living expenses) and then our entertainment (representing 2.39% of our living expenses).  

For this budget, we ate amazing meals at home since the produce in this region of Spain are some of the best we had access to (apples, plums, cherries, watermelon, salads, beets, saucissons, pate, paella, seafood, you name it!). We also had the perfect balcony with a terrace that was facing the mediterranean sea and made for the perfect spot to enjoy food. We also did a ton of hiking and got to visit many lovely towns as we got a car for an entire month. We also celebrated our wedding anniversary and spent a week with my parents in this region. We definitely made a lot of great memories during this month! 

What did we exactly spend on this budget? Well, let’s look into each main budget category in more detail. 

(For more details about what to do, eat, see & avoid, please check out Part I of our destination guide about Costa Brava)

How much did we spend? 

Note: If you are curious about how we generally decide to spend our money, check out this article where we explain our decision-making process.

Accommodation: $19.60 / person / day (OR $596 / person / month).

Accommodation in Costa Brava can be affordable in low season but can be pricey in high-season. We spent $1137 USD for 28 nights. This was definitely a bargain for the area and apartments can easily be double this. For this price, we stayed in a 3 BR 2 BA apartment by the beach. The apartment was huge with two big balconies and a swimming pool shared with 3 others units. The wifi was great and the location was really good. It is a 5 minute walk to the beach that we could see from our balcony. We were a 15 minute drive to Palafrugel, which has our favorite farmers market and grocery stores. Note: you might need to get closer to a major town if you do not plan on renting a car as public transportation is not as developed. 

You can check out our AirBnB rental listing here.
If you want to know how we score great deals with AirBnB, check out our own AirBnb tips.

⇒ In total, for the length of our say, the 2 of us spent $1137 on this apartment for a total of 28 nights 

Local Transportation: $12.09 / person / day (OR $368 / person / month)

Public transportation is quite limited in this area so we decided to rent a car. We booked prior to the conflict in Ukraine and got extremely lucky that the cheapest car at that time was an electric car which ended up being a blessing in the sky since we pay anywhere between $0 to $10 to refill a tank of gas. Hiking trails are everywhere, so you could probably start hiking for most places you are staying, as long as you are close to the coast but don’t rely on that to do your grocery shopping 🙂 

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $701.46 on local transportation.

Groceries: $9.39 / person / day (OR $76 / person / month)

We went grocery shopping in Palafrugell (which was a 15 minutes drive from our apartment). This place has both groceries stores as well as a lovely farmers market on the weekend. No need to bargain and in the summer everything is really really fresh and tastes amazing!

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $544.85 on groceries. This covered 68/71 meals (lunch, snack & dinner – we don’t eat breakfast) which is about $4.00 / meal / person.
Note that we had my parents visiting us for about a week during this trip, which brought the total number of meals during that stay to (28 * 2) + (5 * 3) = 71 (my parents don’t skip breakfast :D)

Eating Out: $3.25 / person / day (OR $99 / person / month)

With so many wonderful farmers markets , amazing selection of food in grocery stores and a perfect view to enjoy our meal, we did not really go out to eat. We did however splurge on our wedding anniversary and try a couple of restaurants that were recommended to us. We were actually more excited to spend on ice cream and a few local churros during this stay, especially after long hikes 🙂

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $151.79 on restaurants + $36.93 on snacks for a total of $188.72. Our restaurant budget covered 3/71 meals (lunch or dinner). The average cost of our meals was $25.29 /meal / person which is about 6 times more expensive than eating at home (by doing the ratio between what a full day of eating out would cost vs a full day of eating at home as per our budget). 

Activities: $1.09 / person / day (OR $33 / person / month)

Besides hiking (which is free), countless home made food and a couple of restaurants we only splurged on a day spa during our stay for a total of $63.31.

⇒ In total, for the length of our stay, the 2 of us spent $63.31 on activities. 

Our Money Savings Tips

How did we save money for this trip?

• Use travel credit cards with sign-on bonuses to maximize free miles that you can apply towards your trip so you can travel for (almost) free. 
• Use this amazing debit card to avoid hefty ATM fees especially when you need to get cash to pay for things.
• Use AirBnB (if staying one month or less). 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 provides us with really great places managed by wonderful hosts! 

We were amazed by the amount of hiking, plentiful and scenic beaches and wonderful produce we had access to in Costa Brava that we got to enjoy for 4 weeks for about $2,600 for the two of us. We definitely feel that Costa Brava would be a place we would like to spend more time exploring but also staying longer periods of time and we would be really comfortable spending this budget there which would be under $32,000 yearly from a strict cost of living standpoint. 

So that’s it folks! What did you think about our budget in Costa Brava? Is it as affordable as you thought it was? Feel free to share your experience and ask questions by leaving a comment below.