How much is your 2025 vacation going to cost you?

[QueenIsabella]

If you cruise into Reykjavik hopefully you get a few days to explore outside of the city!

We ended up getting groceries to eat some meals in the car / at our hotel and they were significantly cheaper than eating out. We also brought most of our hiking fuel from home so that helped us save a lot.

I kid you not. For two people to have lobster soup and a beer each, $68. Fish and chips? $90. At least everything we ate out was fantastic. Seafood was fresh and delicious all around.

There are some great restaurants, but I'm glad we checked the prices beforehand so we weren't shocked when the bill came.

The cruise would be in/out of Reykjavik. ( https://www.tauck.com/tours/fire-and-ice-cruise-around-iceland , if you're curious). We would add on a couple days to explore Reykjavik, and to go to Silfra to snorkel between the tectonic plates. This is a bucket list item for my younger DD, who unfortunately is afraid of snorkeling. She has to conquer that fear before I'll book. My older DD and her soon-to-be-husband might do a land version and meet up with us places--older DD doesn't like cruises. What can I say--I have a family of neurotics!

Mu apologies if I'm repeating myself--I know I've mentioned the potential Iceland trip before on these boards.

Good to know about food prices, especially with our sized group.

 

[cjlong88]

The cruise would be in/out of Reykjavik. ( https://www.tauck.com/tours/fire-and-ice-cruise-around-iceland , if you're curious). We would add on a couple days to explore Reykjavik, and to go to Silfra to snorkel between the tectonic plates. This is a bucket list item for my younger DD, who unfortunately is afraid of snorkeling. She has to conquer that fear before I'll book. My older DD and her soon-to-be-husband might do a land version and meet up with us places--older DD doesn't like cruises. What can I say--I have a family of neurotics!

Mu apologies if I'm repeating myself--I know I've mentioned the potential Iceland trip before on these boards.

Good to know about food prices, especially with our sized group.

The water at Silfra was some of the clearest water I've ever seen. We agreed we would snorkel it the next time we visit. But honestly, just to see where those two major tectonic plates meet is really cool. And it's in a beautiful area on the Golden Circle / Thingvelir area.

We did most of our hiking and sightseeing in the middle of the night since it was perpetual twilight, and had most of our hikes and waterfall / glacier / mountain photos with zero people around. It felt like we had the entire island to ourselves. Seriously, a beautiful place to visit. The only thing that could have possibly made it better is if we could have seen some lava flowing out of a mountain. Tons of dried up lava fields (and still impressive), but nothing was active during our visit.

Enjoy booking and planning your cruise / trip!

 

[HHMcG]

14 days in California for family of 5 - $12,000 (before food, souvenirs and excursions)

flights - $1400 (opened AA credit card and used points for one way)
Car rental - $1200
9 nights of hotels/airbnb at National Parks - $4400
America the Beautiful NP Pass - $80
4 nights at Pixar Place w/ 3 day PH w.multipass - $4630

 

[TDK44]

A really quick estimate is to just double the dues. Most dues are $8 to $10 per point. I took my buy-in price, applied a conservative TVM (time value of money, like 4%) and then averaged that cost over years in contract… most end up in the ballpark of yearly dues.

There are many ways to do this math but I found this easiest for estimating our expense.

Loosely, my points with $1500 annual dues cost us about $3k total to use them each year.

My methodology is a little different -- I take my buy in price and average it out over the total number of points remaining on the contract. Then amortize the number of points used each year off of the purchase amount and apply the TVM factor to the remaining amount.

For example, I bought my contract 2 years ago for $105pp all-in and there were 9,720 total points remaining on it when I bought it, which comes out to $2.93pp. After the first year, I would have used 2.77% of my remaining points, so I reduce my purchase amount by that much, but then increase that balance by ~4% for TVM. So on and so forth.

Essentially gets me to my allocated purchase cost per point of ~$3.17 for current use year points, and will grow to ~$11.13pp by the end of the contract, but that is like 1/3 of dues for me.

The water at Silfra was some of the clearest water I've ever seen. We agreed we would snorkel it the next time we visit. But honestly, just to see where those two major tectonic plates meet is really cool. And it's in a beautiful area on the Golden Circle / Thingvelir area.

For any scuba divers, highly recommend getting dry suit certified for this -- truly a bucket list dive!