Welcome to Tally the Trip!
I will be sharing all the details (and COSTS) of our 6 week USA & Europe family holiday.
We live in New Zealand, so I have all the costs in NZ$, but I will use an estimated conversion from the time to show both US Dollars and Euros. We travelled from the 1st of December 2024 to the 19th of January 2025. So all costs are from within that time period.
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| Home - Auckland (Air New Zealand de Havilland Q300) |
We are a family of four. Mum, Dad and two teenagers. You might find costs will be a little less if you have younger children. You can take advantage of cheaper flights, family passes and they eat a little less than the teenagers!
The Flights
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| Auckland - Los Angeles - Houston - Amsterdam - Los Angeles - Auckland |
Our trip - three main sections
I will be splitting our trip into the three sections above. Once I have written the first post for the section, I will add the link above. I will be adding them in chronological order as I write them, so please bear with me!
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| Auckland - Los Angeles (Delta A350-900) |
The Total Cost
This is the big one! The total cost of the entire 6 week trip for a family of four. When I was planning our trip I looked everywhere online and only found a few relevant articles. So, I thought surely I am not the only one looking. This encouraged me to track our spending for the trip to be able to share with everyone.
Here is what you came for...how much did it actually all cost?
| Expense | NZ$ | US$ (0.58) | Euro (0.54) |
| Flights | $16,279.72 | $9,442.24 | €8,791.05 |
| Accommodation | $8,110.26 | $4,703.95 | €4,379.54 |
| Travel Insurance | $2,535.00 | $1,470.30 | €1,368.90 |
| Rental Car USA | $2,125.31 | $1,232.68 | €1,147.67 |
| Rental Car Europe | $2,893.69 | $1,678.34 | €1,562.59 |
| Food, Fuel & Fun | $12,174.34 | $7,061.12 | €6,574.14 |
| Total | NZ$44,118.32 | US$25,588.63 | €23,823.89 |
We budgeted on NZ$200 (US$116 / €108.00) per night for accommodation and NZ$310 (US179.80 / €167.40) per day spending money. The other items we had prepaid before leaving home. We are not big spenders, did not stay in luxury hotels or eat out for every meal. We were also visiting family in Houston and were able to stay with them. I will break down the costs for each section above in future posts.
Cost of Flights
The total cost of the flights from Auckland - Los Angeles - Houston - Amsterdam - Los Angeles - Auckland was NZ$14,328.20 (US$8,310.36 / €7,737.23). I have not included our flight to get from home to Auckland as this is more variable for New Zealanders depending on where in the country you live.
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| Houston - Amsterdam (KLM A330-300) Economy Comfort - Legroom!!! |
We chose to pay extra to upgrade our seats on our two KLM long haul flights Houston - Amsterdam and Amsterdam - Los Angeles. This cost an additional NZ$1,951.52 (US$1,131.88 / €1,053.82). We upgraded from regular economy tickets to Economy Comfort. This gave extra legroom, in seat power and extra recline. Since we booked early we were able to choose the front seats to have the most legroom and two windows! Yes, it was expensive but I would do it again!
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| Amsterdam - Los Angeles (KLM - Economy Comfort) |
I tried to do the same for our Delta flights but was only able to select from standard economy seats. I realized much too late that you can download the partner airlines app and use your original booking code to choose seats directly with them, giving you much more options.
Tip: If you have booked your ticket through a single airline or agent but are flying on a partner airline you can still down load that airline's app and see more options for seat selections.
Another important thing to note, we went in WINTER TIME. This is the off season so accommodation was cheaper and readily available. More details coming soon!
I hope this was helpful!
