Portugal, Spain, Azores—30 Days for $4.5K! (Oct. 2023 Update)

Continuing from last month, our big trip to Iberia occupied most of our month! We continued our way through mainland Portugal, a dip into northwest Spain, and back to Portugal for a trip to the Azorean island of São Miguel. We wrapped the trip up by October 19, which brought us to an even 30-day trip. Check out our trip analysis below to see what we found worth spending our time and money on.

Besides traveling, we continued our tradition of donating to one of three nonprofits, this time helping others have a holiday season. You can read more about them and vote for your favorite in the poll below!

Each month, we track our income, spending, and savings to stay on our FIRE path and share it with you. Please keep reading to see our monthly updates, tips, and charity reviews.

Budget Update

If you’d like a more detailed description of our typical monthly cash flow (like our jobs or housing situation), check out our previous budget updates.

In the Sankey diagram below, the income on the left matches our expenses on the right.

We’ll run through the income and expense sources for the month and remark on any interesting items.

Income Summary

October’s income fell off a cliff. In fact, we had to suck over $4K out of checking just to cover our spending shortfall! Let’s dive into some exciting income-related categories and see what happened.

Dividends
Last month showed a healthy stream of quarterly dividends. This month’s much smaller income came from our ownership of Seagate ($STX). Ultimately, it just flowed right back in through DRIP.

We earned $238 in dividends.

Credits
Several of our credit cards offer statement credits for purchasing with certain companies. Chase cardholders are eligible for statement credits with Gopuff ($10/month). Between the two of us, we can get back about $100 from Gopuff credits. That’s pretty great considering most of our Chase cards have no annual fee.

Chris’s AMEX gold earned $10 back for dining.

We earned $155 from Anthem for overcharging on previous insurance, too.

We received $265 in statement credits. 

Cashback
Laurel Road no-fee checking accounts earn a $10 monthly bonus for making direct deposits of at least $2,500/month. In addition, Chris received a $108 check from the WMATA metro system for cash unused on an old travel card.

We earned $118 in cash back.

Expense Summary

From our $5,147 monthly budget, we saved and invested about $291.

After subtracting our credits and savings, we spent about $4,590 on living expenses.

That’s 107% of our FIRE budget from 2021 ($4,281/month).

Let’s break down some of the more exciting details.

Food & Dining

As mentioned last month, our food expenses tend to vary a lot while we travel. Let’s see how we did with the rest of the trip.

Groceries
Our grocery spending came to about $411. That’s only a few bucks off of our spending from last month! That’s impressive for having been in Europe for much of the month.

It’s worth noting that about $110 of our grocery costs was covered by credits from AMEX/Chase for Grubhub, and Gopuff.

Restaurants, Fast food, Alcohol & bars
Our dining-out expenses saw a much larger increase. Restaurants rang in at about $255, alcohol & bars at $75, and fast food at $53. But, we had some great experiences!

Naturally, we had to do some wine tasting while we stayed in the Douro Valley. That’s Portugal’s most famous vineyard region and where the grapes for Port wine come from.

Of course, we also had to try some proper Port wine while in Porto. Our private tasting and tour of Cálem exceeded expectations!

We had countless, wonderful sit-down restaurant experiences, too! We loved how a standard protein-focused “plate” would include veggies and rice or potatoes. We weren’t very good vegetarians, though!

…And no, we didn’t skip tasty treats and specialty dishes.

Lots of yummy desserts!

We spent $794 on food & dining this month. 

Travel

Continuing our itinerary from last month, we spent another 19 days between Portugal, Spain, and the Azores. Our trip planning all worked out and we had a blast!

Chris’s parents joined us from September 30 to October 10, too! We shared in some expenses (like splitting a large Airbnb and guest house). Let’s have a look at our personal travel expenses.

Hotel

Below are our hotel, guest house, and Airbnb stays from October 1 to 19:

And, here are some photos in order of where we stayed—

Quinta da Portela (4 bedroom, Douro Valley):

Castillo del Buen Amor
 (Salamanca):

Quinta da Azenha (B&B, Douro Valley):

Handmade House and Solar Pontes (Azores):

Over the course of October, we spent a total of $1,219 on completed hotel stays. We did have some tricky ways to reduce our expenses: discounted Airbnb gift cards and a $100 credit from Citi for using their portal to book a hotel. Not to mention the use of a little under 30K reward points to offset about $450 in hotel costs.

6 out of 9 stays included breakfast, some were massive buffets!

Overall, we spent about $68/night staying in modern apartments, a family-run Quinta on a vineyard, a 13th-century castle, and a cottage overlooking the Douro River.

We really loved the variety of places we stayed in different experiences. Everything from concierge hotel service to a real feeling of being brought into the family. The cultural experiences we were able to absorb from our stays were worth even more than places to sleep!

Rental Car & Taxi

In order to explore Portugal, Spain, and the Azores we rented an additional two cars in October. Portugal has a lot of tolls which we added to the rental car cost.

We also took a bunch of Ubers throughout our trip in October. The rides cost us a total of about $65 but would be hard to avoid. Many of the trips were with Chris’s parents to avoid overlong walks or to train stations or airports.

We shared the cost of the Portugal/Spain rental, tolls, and Ubers with Chris’s parents.

Air Travel

We booked roundtrip tickets from Porto to Ponta Delgada in the Azores. At $194 for the both of us, it seemed like a steal! We managed to avoid Ryan Air’s baggage charges and skated by on just our fairly small backpacks as personal items without issue.

We spent $1,602 on travel this month.

30 Days Travel Summary

Now that we’ve discussed our October travel expenses, we can combine our September expenses from the same trip. That’ll give us the total cost of our trip between Portugal, Spain, and the Azores for 30 days.

We’ll include all expenses we incurred for the trip—even groceries, restaurants, and gas for the rental cars. But we’ll skip expenses that we incurred during the trip that were not part of the trip (for example, our utility bill back home in Virginia).

Trip cost table

Let’s take a look at our total trip cost. In the table below, you’ll find four columns:

• Description: a short summary of what the expense was for. We’ve included some basic geographical information for things like flights or hotels.
• Cost: our incurred expense in US dollars for the described line item. In some cases, this appears as zero. If a travel currency like hotel points, airline miles, or a credit card reward certificate covers the total expense, we record a zero here. In some cases, there’s a minor fee in addition to using points/miles for surcharges or taxes.
• Rewards Pts/Miles: we maximize our credit card rewards and frequent traveler currencies to cover the costs of our travel wherever possible. You’ll see a short description of the type of certificate or currency that we used.
• Estimated Value: when using a reward from the previous column to cover an expense, we record what we would have otherwise paid for the line item. This gives us a sense of our savings.

The table is generally in chronological order. Expenses from September (last month) are also included.

We still incurred expenses at home (mortgage, utilities, etc.)—but these do not appear as part of our trip costs.

Trip cost discussion

Ultimately, it cost us about $4,458 to travel around Iberia and São Miguel in the Azores for 30 days. That’s about $149/day or around $75/person/day on average. That’s all-in—food, fun, shelter, and transit!

Had we not cut our expenses by $1,573 through the use of travel rewards programs, we would have spent about $201/day or nearly 35% more.

One thing we’d like to reinforce is that while this blog is about personal finance and financial independence—that is not the focus of trips like this for us.

We thoroughly enjoy them. If we want to buy tickets for an experience, try a new food, or tack on flights to a nearby island (hello Azores!) for a new experience—we do it.

FIRE isn’t about deprivation, it’s about freedom!

Simply being able to research, plan ahead, and have the flexibility to travel on off days during shoulder seasons massively cuts down on costs. And, it cuts your queue times and crowds!

How Much We Work

We like to keep track of how much time we spend doing work that is paid.

Let’s add this month to the list…

Our work schedules came in about as we expected considering we were traveling.

Net Worth Update

Net worth is not our primary measurement and can understand it can be discouraging if you’re working yourself out of debt. We also understand it’s difficult to be transparent with our readers without divulging this information so we continue to do so.

Account breakdown

The market keeps chugging along and so do our investments. From a high level, our assets and liabilities are shown in the data table below as of October 31, 2023.

• Miscellaneous assets include specific investments we’ve made in physical assets (think collectibles) and treasury bonds
• Amounts do not reflect the value of the businesses Chris owns or their assets, which should appear as income to us over future years
• Jenni’s Prius is omitted

The S&P 500 was down about 2.2% for the month. Just a little less bad compared to last month.

We lost a bit less with a decrease of 1.3%.

Overall, our net worth decreased by around $27K.

Net Worth History

Previous Donation Winner

As the number of displaced persons continues to soar above 110 million, worldwide, we thank you for your votes for HIAS Inc., this month’s poll winner. This organization helps refugees, asylum seekers, and displaced people get settled into new places.

Our Reader’s Fund seeks to leverage the principles of FIRE to build a lifetime of giving.

Thank you for your participation in our polls over the last 39 months. We’ve given over $4,800 to deserving charities with your help in deciding which organizations to donate to.

Polls are now open for our next round of candidates: Holiday Support Charities.

Charity Round-Up

For the past two years, our end-of-year charity poll has had a holiday theme. To stick with that tradition, we’ve chosen three organizations that spread the holiday spirit and bring joy to families in need. The holidays should be a time of happiness and joy. When one is down on their luck, this can be a hard goal for them and their families to meet without some support.

These three organizations aim to spread some holiday cheer in a variety of ways. Each has excellent charity ratings to ensure our donation will have the most significant impact. We invite you to learn more about them and join us in donating to one of them by casting your vote.

Summaries below include the impact metrics and a link to their Guidestar profile which details the nonprofit’s operations and transparency.

1) Prison Fellowship Ministries

Why? Prison Fellowship Ministries extend their congregation to families of the Angel Tree Program. Children of incarcerated parents are delivered gifts on behalf of their parents on Christmas. Throughout the year, they also help send kids to summer camps and host sports camps.

Where? The United States.

What? Prison Fellowship Ministries is a Christian nonprofit organization for prisoners, past and present, and their families. The Angle Tree Christmas program, which started in 1982, is now active in all 50 states and helps around 365,000 incarcerated people each year. This program provides a way for the incarcerated parent to send a personal message and a gift to their loved ones, as well as a free bible.

[Guidestar] [About]

2) CARITAS

Why? CARITAS aims to bring hope for the Holidays by hosting a variety of holiday activities for those working through homelessness or recovery in their emergency shelters. A Holiday Shop, filled with locally donated items, provides more than 300 participants with necessities. Festive cheer bags are distributed containing a new pair of PJs, socks, and a pair of underwear. Holiday crafts and decor are set up at the shelters to help make this season seem not so bleak.

Where? Richmond, Virginia.

Our Notes: CARITAS is a non-profit organization that operates as an emergency shelter for those in housing a crisis, creating a safe space to heal and time to rebuild. Participants receive a hot meal, breakfast, and a bagged lunch. They have the opportunity for fellowship, laundry, and a place to shower. During their stays, case management works to move clients from shelters to permanent housing. Once they are stable, CARITAS continues to help by:

• Getting participants into the workplace.
• Providing furniture and essential household items at minimum costs for their permanent housing.
• Offering recovery residences to provide temporary shelter in sober community apartments for those recovering from addiction.
• Hosting those in need of additional recovery at The Healing Place: A 9-14 month residential recovery program.

[Guidestar] [About]

3) Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots

Why? The Marine Corps Reserve delivers hope to children during Christmastime and beyond. They’ve been getting toys and books to kids who need them for the past 75 years. To date, 652 million toys were distributed to 291 million children.

Where? The United States.

Our Notes: The Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots program helps make the holidays special for children across the United States. Their program is simple, collect and distribute toys. Its success comes down to those getting the word out. Financial support provides for public education of the program and helps the 800 local coordinators and 40,000 volunteers have a successful annual campaign. Beyond the holidays, they support kids year-round with:

• Fostercare toys.
• Books for literacy programs.
• Native American reservation toys.
• Youth Ambassador Program: children helping children.

[Guidestar] [About]

Nonprofit poll

After reviewing the list above, please take a moment to vote for which nonprofit you think will put funds to use in the best way.

(Have trouble using or seeing the poll above? Some reader tools or apps may not display it. View this page in a browser or use this link to our Reader Fund page which has a copy of the poll!)

Thank you for taking the time to vote!

One of our primary goals with TicTocLife is building a stream of giving within the FIRE community and that starts with knowledge.

What’s Next

With our last big trip of the year closed, we’re hoping to settle down a bit throughout November. But, we still have a few trips left.

November includes short trips to Cancun, Mexico, and Nashville, Tennessee. We’re celebrating with friends in the sun and catching some great music—hopefully!—with another group of friends for a birthday.

Finally, we’ll be in the Phoenix area for a week in December to see family around the holidays. Busy times ahead, but we’re looking forward to some time to focus on home and ourselves.

The holiday season is nearly upon us!

…And, yes, we still have the second post in our series on FIRE and marriage coming soon!

How are your holidays shaping up this season?
Let us know in the comments or on Threads and X (Twitter)!