Wintering In Spain … The Cost

*UPDATE – So, it’s 2023, how much has the cost of wintering in Spain gone up since this original analysis was written in 2019 you ask? Good question. I think the whole matter deserves a total rewrite sometime soon. There is much secondary information, above and beyond the numbers contained in the original article, that is still totally relevant, so you probably should give this piece a total read while you wait for the update.

After reading my article “The Case for Wintering in Spain” your first thought may well have been, how much does all this cost? It certainly would have been mine. Well, this year’s getaway is complete, and I have detailed records of our spending to share. I’m hoping that my numbers surprise you.

Let’s begin with a little logistical information about this year’s winter getaway. We left for the Costa del Sol in Spain during the last week of January and returned home to Canada during the first week of April. The trip lasted a total of 65 days, or ~ 9 weeks … the Love-goddess will only be away from home for a maximum of 9 weeks. 🙂

We spent approximately one week combined in Madrid on the way to the Costa, and on the way home. Travel between Madrid and Malaga, the transportation hub on the Costa, was done by high-speed train. Our accommodation for the months of February and March was a three-bedroom beach-front apartment, in the city of Fuengirola. A number of side trips to other towns and cities were made. We had several friends come and stay with us for varying lengths of time.

The Damage, the Big Picture

The grand total of money we spent on this trip was $13,353.81. This includes every penny paid out from the moment we started purchasing our flights and ultimately walked out of our front door and got in a cab to go to the airport, until the time we arrived home and closed the door behind us. That said, our “Net” winter getaway cost was $9,304.84. Allow me to explain.

Our Net cost was calculated by subtracting from the grand total the amount of money we spent while in Spain on items that we would normally be purchasing at home, Food, Booze, and ”Other” sundries. On this trip this amounted to $4,048.97.

The table below, “Spain 2019 – Winter Getaway Expenditures”, shows our total expenditures in several broad categories. In the table, these are further broken down by: cost per day over the 65-day time period, percent of the total amount spent, and for some categories, the total number of dollars we would normally spend during a similar 65-day period at home. The latter is based on actual expenditures in 2018.

Spain 2019 – Winter Getaway Expenditures Over 65 Days

Categories Explained

A brief explanation of what items are covered under each of our trip categories is in order. This will include the first five items, which are what we consider to be our true winter getaway costs, and the “Normal Spending …” categories, which are the expenses we don’t include in our trip cost. Again, they are not included because they are the same regular day-to-day living outlays that we would have at home.

Transportation – Air Fares
For this trip we booked return flights between Toronto and Madrid on Air Canada. The $1855.28 total, or $927.64 per person cost includes; the flights, all taxes and fees, and checked luggage and seat selection costs.

Transportation – Internal Travel
This category includes cab fares to and from the Toronto airport, high speed train trips between Madrid and Malaga, numerous trips on the local train line in the Costa del Sol, long distance bus fares to other towns and cities, one car rental, and local bus and taxi charges.

Accommodation – Condo
Our condo cost includes the €3000 rent for two months, charges to transfer the rental amount between our bank and our host’s Spanish bank, and cleaning fees.

Accommodation – Other
Five nights were spent in hotels in Madrid, and four other nights were spent in hotels in the Spanish towns Rhonda, Nerja, and Granada. The total cost of $1261.12 works out to about $140 per night. This may seem neither terribly expensive nor inexpensive to you. Although we do need to know what we are paying for things in Canadian dollars, sometimes it’s best just to do your price comparisons in the local currency, in this case Euros. For the nine nights of hotel stays this past winter we paid €812.30 total. This works out to an average of €90.25 per night. That is extremely good value.

Tourist “Stuff”
These items include things that you would typically only do when you are visiting another city, province, or country. Things like paying for walking tours, touristy bus tours, museums, galleries, or culturally specific things like touring a bullring or attending a Flamenco show. Most of the things cited here, other than museums and galleries, we would not normally be laying out money for at home. They are usually specific to travel.

That said, much of what we do and purchase during our winter getaways is exactly what we would be doing or spending money on if we were at home. We continue to track this “Normal Spending”, just like we do at home, but we don’t really see it as being an additional cost related to our getaway. As such, we deduct it from our total cost for the trip.

Usual Spending-Food
Just as you would expect, this category includes groceries, restaurant meals, and take-out food. While away, we eat in restaurants much more frequently than we do at home. When in Rome … We enjoy the local cuisine, and our frequent guests typically want to try it out as well. We don’t find groceries to be more expensive or less expensive than at home, other than fresh fruit and vegetables, which are much less expensive. The Costa is a major year-round producer of both.

Usual Spending-Booze
Booze is booze. I suppose the only thing that should be mentioned here is that this category only includes the actual purchase of beer or wine for home consumption, and drinks purchased in a bar. It does not include anything consumed with meals in restaurants. No, that’s not all. The other detail that needs to be mentioned is that beer and wine are very inexpensive in Spain, even when converting to Canadian dollars … woo-hoo!

Usual Spending-Other
This is ongoing discretionary spending, including things like: clothing, gifts, healthcare and hygiene products, healthcare services, cleaning products, our individual spending money, books, home and outside entertainment, hairstyling and spa visits, newspapers and magazines, etc. The bottom line here is that we spend way more when we are at home than what we do when we are in Spain for a couple of months.

Are There Other Cost Savings to Be Had?

In a word, yes. If you want to drill down further into the numbers, for us at least, there are other economies to consider when trying to work out a true Net cost for the trip. Net cost in this instance also meaning how much money we spent on top of what we normally would have spent if we just stayed home.

Suspension of Services
One area where we save money is by suspending some of our services for the time that we are away. I am sure that those of you who winter away on a regular basis know this already. Some service providers don’t go out of their way to let you know that they provide this opportunity, but most do. Many, if not all of them, charge a monthly administrative fee – to keep your account active, I suppose. This is usually a small amount relative to what the monthly charge would be and what you will save.

Here is a list of the services that we suspend each winter when we go away, and specifically what we saved during this most recent trip. I’ll provide a brief description of what services we have and who our service provider is.

1) Cable, Internet, Home phone, – Saved $334.28
Rogers is our service provider. They typically require you to suspend services for a minimum of 60 days. We have done this several times and have had no issues with the process. All of our services have become active again on the date we requested, and we have never had to chase them. Usually the reactivation date is the day we return home.

2) Cell, Phones ($243 – $124.05 = $118.95) – Saved $118.95
Until very recently we used a pay-as-you-go service with Bell. This didn’t really require contacting Bell to suspend our service; we simply did not leave any money in our account and took our Bell Sims out of our phones when we got to Europe and replaced them with local ones.

Upon returning home this month, we signed on for a shared two-year plan with Rogers. They advised us that we would be able to temporarily suspend this service as well after we have been with them for at least six months.

As soon as we arrived at our final destination in Spain, we picked up a European service provider. This year it was Orange. If you have never done this, it is incredibly easy, and compared to what we pay here, inexpensive. It is even easier now because Canadian service providers are no longer allowed to lock phones to their company. We paid €20 each per month on a pay-as-you-go plan. The plan provided 10GB of data, and 80 minutes of calling throughout Spain per month. Our total cost was $124.05 in Canadian funds. Subtracting that from the $243 we would typically be paying for two months of service, our net savings was $118.95.

3) Newspapers – Saved $119.23
Most of the cost savings here came from suspending our local newspaper. We also subscribe to the Globe and Mail. When you suspend service with the Globe for more than 28 days they continue to deduct your regular charge for the first 28 days with the promise that “Your subscription will be extended for the portion of your suspension over 28 days”. Whatever all that means … other than I’m required to continue paying them. Time to give them a call for clarification.

The upside of continuing to pay allows us to read the Globe and Mail online while we travel and still have access to its excellent financial tools. So it’s not a terrible thing … I guess.

4) Health club membership – Saved $278.39
We are both members at the MOVATI chain. They allow you just suspend services with them if you have been a member for a year.

The bottom line is that by suspending services, or switching our cell phones service provider, we saved an additional $850.85.

This further reduces our Net cost to $9,304.84 – $850.85 = $8,453.99  

I Should Have Deducted More
You may have noticed in the table above that I have put in a value of $940.27 for “Transportation – Internal Travel” in the Normal-65 column, as I did for the “Usual Spending” categories. This would be for the average amount we would have been spending at home on travel needs in a 65-day period; gas for cars, parking fees, public transit, taxi fares, etc. By rights, I should be deducting our European internal transportation expenses from the total costs as well. I don’t know why I don’t do this. Perhaps it is because we are primarily using public transportation in Spain rather than automobiles, and that difference provides a psychological hurdle for me. Regardless, it is another area where a cost in Europe is simply offsetting a normal expense at home.

Indeed, if you look at all of our normal-65 day expenditures they add up to considerably more than what I am deducting for our Spanish “normal spending” costs and could easily be considered as additional savings. We certainly consider them as such. If we we deduct the difference between our normal 65-day spending of $6,954.86 , and our getaway 65-day disbursements of $4,048.97 while in Spain, it could be argued that we saved an additional $2,905.89 that should be deducted to arrive at a revised Net cost for the trip. At the risk of repeating myself, we spend way more when we are at home than what we do when we are in Spain.  If we were to do so that would make our Net cost $8,453.99 – $2,905.89 = $5,548.10. Not. Too. Shabby.

You might already be thinking that there are other costs that would be reduced if you went away for 2+ months. I know our costs for utilities are much lower when we are away. Our water is completely turned off, the temperature level in the house is lowered, and minimal electricity is being consumed. I could have drilled down into these numbers, but I know intuitively that we are saving money in many areas while away that I don’t deduct. All this really means is that the net cost for our Spanish winter getaway is significantly lower than the total amount we shelled out.

What I Don’t Deduct
For the record, there is ongoing spending we would normally have at home that I don’t deduct from our trip. This would typically include things like larger ticket items, such as furniture, vehicle repairs, home maintenance, etc. that are not happening on a regular basis, but, that we will still spend money on when we return home.

Could We have Spent Less?

Absolutely! Even though I like to think I have demonstrated that our true Net cost for the trip was a very reasonable amount, we certainly could have saved even more on by being a little bit more frugal. As you may have deduced, we pay very close attention to our costs, but we don’t nickel and dime every facet of our travels. Here are a few areas where we easily could have pared our costs down further.

1) Traveling to and from the airport
We live about an hour’s drive from the Toronto airport. For this recent trip we took a cab there, and then just grabbed a cab home when we arrived back in Toronto from Spain. This resulted in total cab fares of $285 including a tip. If we had arranged for someone to drop us off and pick us up we may have been able to save that full amount.

Interestingly, the $285 cost to cab it back-and-forth was not much more than the posted cost for two people to travel in and out by our local airport shuttle services with a bunch of other people ($256 plus tip). And, taking taxis is way more convenient.

2) Flights
We always try to book direct flights; never looking to save a few dollars by booking a cheaper flight that may require making a secondary connection in another city on the way. The only time we book a connection in another city is when we want to stop there for a few days and hang out. That adds costs rather than reducing them. Additionally, we always pay to check bags and select our seats. This year we spent $200 booking preferred seats on the flights to and from Spain. That said we don’t ever book until we get notification of a seat sale from one of the airlines we get regular email communications from. In this case, Air Canada.

In future, we will probably try to travel with just carry-on suitcases and a small backpack, saving the luggage booking fee, but we will probably continue to pay for seat selection. For those of you who don’t really care where you sit on the airplane you can save that cost as well.

3) Train
We did save money on our train trips between Madrid and Malaga by buying the Spanish senior travel card the Tarjeta Dorado (http://www.renfe.com/EN/viajeros/tarifas/tarjeta_dorada.html), but we could have saved even more in a couple of ways. We could have travelled on days that provide the deepest discount, and we could have saved more money by choosing to travel exclusively in second class. We chose to travel in first class from Malaga back to Madrid. In this instance, first class included a meal and an adult beverage. Nice! 🙂

4) Accommodation
The amount we paid for our apartment this winter, €1500 per month, still seems incredibly inexpensive to us. Before we started wintering in Spain we spent US$4000 per month for a place in Florida. Yikes!

That said, if you don’t need a three-bedroom apartment right on the beach, you will be easily able to find a much less expensive place. Need an example? Here is a link to the site through which we rented in 2018. It links to their selection of current “winter” rentals in the Nerja area (https://www.teamstarholidayrentals.com/long-term-rental/holidays-rentals-rentals-d0/). As you will see, there are many places available from between €650 and €800 per month.

Another thing to keep in mind when booking a place online for the winter is that the posted cost on any rental site you visit should not be what you end up paying. Always, always, always contact the host and ask them directly what the rate is for an extended stay, rather than simply booking at the posted price. This also holds when using a realty company like Team Star Holiday Rentals. We got our property through them by writing and saying “this is what we are looking for”. The unit we ended up with didn’t even appear in the listings.

As I write this, a couple of weeks after returning home, the apartment we rented for €1500 a month is currently listed for €750 per week; i.e. €3000 per month. Remember, you are in the driver’s seat when renting on the Costa Del Sol in the winter. Supply greatly outstrips demand.

5) Hotels
I suppose we could have saved some money by using even less expensive hotels than what we booked. There is ALWAYS a cheaper hotel to be found. However, an average of €90.25 per night is an amount that we feel is reasonable … for us, so we choose not to go cheaper.

That’s a Wrap!

I suppose my goal here was to demonstrate that wintering in a very nice European location with great weather isn’t as expensive as you might think. And, in fact, it is probably cheaper than going to many areas in Florida or other parts of the United States. I hope you are beginning to see it as a potential alternative.

We do consider the $5548.10 I arrived at to be our true Net cost. Our spending is greatly reduced when we are away from home for two months. Even if you don’t agree with my additional whittling down of our number, the original $9,304.84 stands up very nicely compared to the cost of spending a couple of months wintering in Florida.

I might have missed addressing something that you were interested in reading about. If so, feel free to ask your question(s) in the Comments section below, or send me an email. I will be very happy to answer questions.

*Addendum

Nope! Not quite a wrap. As I was getting set to post this article I received some important comparative information in an email from friends. They go to a place in Georgia each winter, and I was interested in knowing what their costs were to travel down and back. I’ll have to admit I was surprised at the numbers, but they certainly make sense. Here they are:

Gas – $232.oo USD
Meals – $135.98 USD
Hotels – $462.51 USD (2 nights each way)

Total – $830.49 USD (currently $1,119.29 CAD)

I suspect that the total cost to travel to Florida from Southern Ontario, where we all live, would be slightly higher because of the extra gas and perhaps a bit more food. As I expected, our $1855.28 to get to and from Spain compares very favourably to their $1119.29. I should be including our train costs to get to our final destination for a true comparison, but flying to Madrid, rather than directly to Malaga, was a choice we made. Air Transat flies directly to Malaga from Toronto and Montreal. Other airlines offer flights, but they connect through other European cities. Friends who came to visit us, and booked much later than we did, paid $2,336.00 to route through Paris. Their’s too included costs for luggage and seat selection. If you are planning in advance there are usually seat sales to be had.

Additionally, the monthly cost for their lovely townhouse accommodation, all in, was $3,032.40 USD; currently $4,086.92 CAD. Our $2,388.39 CAD per month average cost compares very favourably with their monthly rental. The one mitigating condition that needs to be thrown in to the mix here is that golf is very inexpensive where they go, and expensive in the Costa del Sol – a major winter golfing destination for Europeans.