Ten days into our Baltic adventure, and all I have so far is a post about how much money this whole thing costs.

So far the trip has been pretty great. We’ve made it into Latvia, and have plenty to catch up on. Traveling through the Baltics hasn’t been too difficult, and our only regrets so far is not having enough time to see everything.

My partner Scott and I spend plenty of time together, but not since last September/October when we bopped around Barcelona and Ukraine for two weeks have we had this much “us time.” And on this go-around, we’re stuck with each other for three weeks. I think both of us are looking forward to seeing if/when we crack.

Before I dive into specifics of how things are going/all the quirky things we’re learning about Estonia, I wanted to give you an overview of how we planned and budgeted for this trip.

To start off, we ended up picking the Baltic States because we found fairly cheap tickets over. Through Momondo, we found roundtrip flights to Tallinn/from Vilnius for $700 through the Delta/KLM/Air France Skyteam, and booked them back in January. For me, I ended up changing my flight back so I could attend my friend Chris’s wedding in France, and ended up getting a flight for $740 instead. This miraculously worked out because one of my connecting flights was canceled in the first booking and set my trip back by an entire day, which is grounds to cancel a flight without any repercussions. So I canceled my flight and bought an entirely new one, only paying $40 more. I got pretty lucky.

Scott and I slowly booked our mix of Airbnbs and hostels over the course of several months, the last being a couple of days ago as we adjusted our schedule. We’re Couchsurfing one night, and spending three nights with a former CS host of mine who lives in Riga, though I stayed with her in Split, Croatia in April of 2016. Total, we’re spending about $250 each on accommodation, which comes out to about $15.65 per night, not including those freebie nights (if those were included, it’d be $12.50 a night.)This is definitely more than I was used to spending as a solo traveler, as I usually Couchsurfed, but is a lot cheaper than booking accommodation alone.

We haven’t spent a lot on transportation on the front end, except for our rental car for two days ($70), and maybe another later ($40). By using Rome2Rio and deciding ahead of time whether to take a bus or train to each new destination, I’ve estimated that our transportation costs will be about $150 apiece, not including rental cars, so that will come out to about $205 each.

Foodwise, I used budgetyourtrip.com to estimate meal prices for each city, and added more or less based on the occasion (for example, Scott’s birthday is August 15th and we’ll probably buy a fancier meal). I have this, along with transportation, all laid out in a handy spreadsheet, so we know roughly how much we’re spending each day. Total, we’re estimating we’ll spend about $320 on groceries and meals throughout the trip

I added in flat rates for booze ($25 per country), tourism ($50 per country), and chucked in an extra 100 euros ($118) for miscellaneous expenses, like SIM cards or souvenirs. This comes out to about $350.

Other pre-trip expenses included travel insurance from AIG/Travel Guard (it was $100 for me, because I picked the second cheapest plan and am staying for 35 days, whereas Scott is only staying 3 weeks, so he got the $50 plan), the Lonely Planet Guide book on the Baltics ($15), random food and supplies (around $50).

My last two weeks in Belarus, Poland, and France will cost an estimated $400. I’m planning to Couchsurf most of the time, and Belarus and Poland are extremely affordable to travel in. My intercontinental flights (Vilnius -> Minsk, Minsk -> Warsaw, Krakow -> Lyon)  on top of that cost about $200 total.

So I’m looking at:

RT overseas flight: $740

Intercontinental flights: $200

Baltic accommodation: $250

Baltic transportation: $205

Baltic meals/groceries: $320

Baltic booze/tourism/miscellaneous: $350

Two weeks solo/France: $400

Pre-trip expenses: $165

TOTAL: $2,630

So, it does seem like a lot of money, but comparatively, I feel as though it’s pretty cheap compared to some of the tour packages out there. For example, a 13-day Baltic tour from Student Universe costs upwards of $1,999, not including the flight.

Most of the cost of this trip is covered by my Instacart shopping I took on this summer, but the rest was built in over the last several months, and by not eating out or buying things I didn’t necessarily need this spring or summer. Besides, I feel pretty good to be spending money on experiences, and something I’ll be able to look back on in years to come. I also feel pretty fortunate with timing, as I start school in September and had some flexibility with my summer.

So, that’s it in a nutshell! More on Estonia very soon.