How Much I Spent Travelling the USA for 3 Months

After years and years of dreaming about travelling the USA, I finally went and did it!! I just spent almost three months following housesits across the country and pretending to live in a bunch of different cities. It was amazing!!

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Where did I go, you ask?

Whilst in the planning phase for this trip, I made the decision to follow wherever the housesits took me. This meant I would get free accommodation for most of the trip but it didn’t leave me a lot of freedom in terms of which locations I would be travelling to. However, it worked out pretty well and I stayed in some wonderful places.

Enough of my rambling, here is where I spent my almost three months travelling the USA…

NYC – 2 nights

Chicago – 8 nights

Portland – 10 nights

Steilacoom, WA – 11 nights

Seattle – 32 nights (all at one housesit)

DC – 2 nights

Philly – 1 night

Salem – 10 nights

Boston – 1 night

Ok, so now you know where I spent my time, let’s break down how much I spent. Without further ado here are (in order of most to least) the 14 spending categories that make up every penny I spent travelling the USA for past three months…

TRANSPORTATION BETWEEN STOPS = £617.76

Still annoyed at myself for procrastinating on buying my train ticket from Chicago to Portland so much that it doubled in price 🙄 That one ticket made up nearly 50% of my total “transportation between stops” total. Oh well, lesson learnt!! I hope 😂

Over the 83 days I did 10 “stops” across the US and travelled between them in almost every way possible! I’ve spent a combined 76 hours sitting in an Amtrak coach seat, about 6 hours on a bus and one very restless night flying across country. All for a combined total of £617.76.

EATING OUT = £393.08

A little bit unbelievable that I spent more on eating out than I did on accommodation but here we are 😂 I cannot get over how expensive eating out in the US is!! Like I went out for a pub meal with a friend and it was over $85 for two burgers, one portion of fries and four drinks 🤯 Safe to say I rarely ate out and if I did it was a chain restaurant (kinda made it a mission to try as many of the chains we don’t have in the UK as possible!).

ACCOMMODATION = £318.77

I was travelling the USA for a total of 83 nights and I only paid for 8 of those nights! How amazing is that!! How, I hear you asking? Housesitting!! I stayed in strangers houses for free by looking after their pets whilst they were on holiday.

I housesat for a total of 68 nights during my time in the states and this was the main reason I decided to spend so long there because I knew there were tonnes and tonnes of housesits and I could get away with paying minimal for accommodation.

But Jess, 63 plus 8 isn’t 83!?!? Good maths! On top of the 8 nights in hostels that I paid for, the 68 nights housesitting that I didn’t, I also spent 4 nights sleeping on trains, 1 on a bus and 2 on flights. Bringing my total accommodation spend to only £318.77 for the 83 nights I spent travelling the USA!!! Which is an average nightly rate of £3.84 🤯

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FLIGHTS TO AND FROM THE US = £278.14

I thought I’d won the travel hacking game with my £145 flight from London to NYC but I paid less than this for my flight back to London from Boston without having to use any points. My return flight came in just under £134 after all the fees and baggage had been accounted for. Absolute steal!!

GROCERIES = £131.35

Coming in at an average of £10.94 per week which considering the price of groceries in the US is actually crazy!!! Huge shoutout to the random bits of food my hosts would leave for me 😘 Also I kinda already miss going to Trader Joes – I swear the shit they sell does not exist anywhere else!!

DAY-TO-DAY TRANSPORT = £121.76

This is the total for all bus, metros, subways, links – you name it – I took whilst I was out and about exploring.

INSURANCE = £101.90

Adulting is an absolute budget-mood killer 😂 But I am the girl that falls over fresh air so I would rather be £100 worse off than stuck with a US hospital bill that would more than likely bankrupt me!

DRINKS = £92.43

My favourite way of exploring a new place is through its coffee shops! I love a big comfy armchair in a window where I can sit tinkering away with an oat hot chocolate 😍

SNACKS = £73.13

Actually a little embarrassed that I almost spent the same on groceries as I did on running out for snacks 😅 My little crisp habit is getting out of hand! Maybe it’s time to do the crisp tax challenge again 😂

PERSONAL = £30.18

This category includes all the random personal bits (skincare, period stuff, haircare etc.) that I had to pick up along the way.

ENTERTAINMENT = £28.30

I only made two purchases that would class as “entertainment” during my mini US tour, a book and a ticket for a play that ended up being cancelled. I still have the price of the ticket in voucher form so I’ve kept the cost in. The rest of my entertainment came from free activities and using my hosts access to streaming services 😎

MISC. = £25.50

This category includes all the random bits I bought that don’t fit in any of the other categories. Like the bag of chocolates I bought for one of my hosts son, a new sieve I had to buy when I ruined one (all the pasta sauces’ fault!) and a few postcards I sent back home.

VISA = £19.74

Another adult purchase that was kinda essential if I actually wanted to be able to enter the country 😂

SIGHTSEEING = £12.02

Most of the sightseeing I did was free (e.g. all the museums in DC) but I did have to pay a couple of online booking fees to secure a time slot.

So my grand total was (drumroll please)…..

TOTAL = £2244.06

Two thousand two hundred and forty-four pounds and six pence for 83 nights travelling the USA coast to coast!! Not gonna lie, I’ve spent a little (read hundreds) more than I wanted too BUT I never said no to myself and enjoyed every single day I spent there. So it was worth it!!

AVERAGE PER DAY = £27.04

Considering the US is not the most budget friendly of places, I don’t think I did too badly! All the research I did prior to going out there suggested a budget of around £50 per day but that factored in paying for accommodation so I think this is pretty spot on!

AVERAGE FOR DAILY SPENDS = £10.93

£77.75 over my £10 per day budget is not bad when you consider my mini budget breakdown when I first saw the prices in an American supermarket 😅 I should add that I went to the US with a balance of £150 that I’d built up from my daily budget in the two months before going so it evened itself out!

So that’s it!! Every penny I spent travelling across the US for three months 🤩 What do you think? Did I do okay?