We are now in our 8th month and it’s time to provide you an overview/summary of our Budget in Spain and our actual spend this Quarter. This post happens to cover months five, six and seven or Quarter 1 of 2013.

Our Budget in Spain for a family of 4 is $100/day.

Yep, that is not a typo. This includes our planned travel and our daily expenses. Yes, I have done all of the math and have some crazy spreadsheets to keep track of everything for our needs in great detail. For you, I am providing the general buckets and how we are tracking to goal. Sometimes when we are over budget, it is just a bit and averages out because we were under in another area. We are getting good with that juggle now. We have this all figured out now, but will likely go out of whack over the summer when we are more mobile.

Reminder here is our Budget in Spain & Reality for our first 4 months

Summary of our Actual Spend for Quarter 1, 2013.
Our Budget for a family of 4 is just $100/day.

January was a bit above budget, but that was known going in. Below are some explanations of where we deviated from budget and why.

Housing

This should stay pretty steady through our time in Spain. Our lease is good through September. Most of our utilities are included in rent (Water, Electric, Garbage).

Food

Food gets us every time. Perhaps we were a bit too tight on this budget? In February and March we were slightly over on the budget. We did travel a bit more, as we had my Mom visiting for 6 1/2 weeks, thus we ate out a little more. Mom rented her own place, so she covered her own groceries. We also met up with some fellow travelers/readers/friends and that was a fun eat out day too. It wasn’t too far over budget, so it was easy to make up the difference in other areas.

Communications

Our cell phones and internet are pretty consistent and we meet or slightly go under budget.

Auto

We have been either spot on budget with our fuel and auto expenses or a bit under each month. With gas at nearly $8 per gallon or €1.41 per litre, we made this budget a bit generous. We find on a daily basis, we aren’t driving around as much. The first few months we explored locally, but now we know where every little road goes and have just settled in. We took a few road trips, but still had plenty for fuel.
This fund is also covering our bottles of butane for “gas” in the home. We purchase the butane from the service station and it is just easier to lump into this budget. While it is technically a “utility” for the home, we factor it in here. It is about €18 for a bottle. This is what we use to heat water in our tank less heater. In the winter it is also what we use for the portable “estufa” to heat the house. There is no central air or heat, so we have this little portable guy to heat our family room. We did get use out of that this quarter, but not likely to need it for next 6 months or so.

Miscellaneous

Okay, this is the big ding to the budget for January. We needed to extend out travel insurance. While we knew it was coming, we were slightly over budget for January. With the kids out of school for Christmas Break, we decided to do a bit more traveling and much of that fell into the Miscellaneous budget because we used cash. You see, when we use cash it goes to Miscellaneous.
In February we purchased an inexpensive “pay as you go” cell phone. We knew we had about 10 1/2 weeks of guests coming and thought it would be good for them to have a local phone. Mom (she is so funny) must have thought the phone needed to be cleaned as she threw it in the wash with her clothes, so we bought another one. These were very inexpensive and we paid cash, so it didn’t impact our communication fund.

In retrospect, I think we did GREAT! I can’t believe we are living in Spain on this budget. To top it all off, we have been able to explore! We have been to Gibraltar, Porto, Nerja Caves, Frigiliana, Granada, Otivar and much more.

I hope I am not forgetting anything. You need to keep us honest and let us know if you feel something has been left out. I am not sure if you want more or less detail, so don’t be afraid to ask. Feel free to ask questions and I can either reply via comments, update the post or email you privately about our budget for living abroad. I just want to be sure this information is of use to you.

If you are interested in a Career Break, just ask your questions or read our post.