My Arctic Adventure – The Budget

Earlier this year I fulfilled a dream and had an Arctic Adventure. I went all by myself. I prepared for 15 months. I shared my prep work and certain aspects of the trip and about the challenging things with you already. One thing I wanted to share and have not come around to is my Arctic Adventure budget. I know many of you love a good money post so here we go.

When I decided I would go on this adventure it was simultaneously knowing I’ll use my grandpa’s inherited money. I had put it aside always knowing this would be a dream I’d fulfill and I loosely thought it would go to a solo photo excursion. This was better. That set the budget at 5.000€*. Of course my goal was to stay under if I can manage. But at the same time – because that is usually my bigger issue – allow myself to spend the money and enjoy it.

In my preparation and my countdown post I mentioned all the things I needed to get. But it all started with a spreadsheet. Of course. I use the apple template for budgeting and just reworked it so it fit. I had the categories: Travel | Flights | Insurance | Clothing | Miscellaneous | Food.

First thing I did was allot a budget to each category. This was purely made upon my intuition. It mainly worked out. I think I had to up the clothing slightly and was able to lower the flights section. I’ll take you through each section.

My Arctic Budget – Travel Expenses

This was by far the biggest junk of money. I had a tour guide who provided this trip and he had two packages. One was sleeping in a tent one was in cabins. The cabin one was slightly more expensive (which I would have paid) but a few things made me choose the tent version that was 3.100€

I later had to bump up this category because I realized I would need a hotel room in Kiruna (104€). I had not really thought about how to get from the airport to town I figured I could get the bus but I shared an uber (20€). Due to the shortened trip and one more necessary hotel stay I had to add more hotel cost (61€). I would have easily slept in the tent again but everyone was too lazy to set it up and after I felt that day and night it was probably better to sleep in a bed.

Ready for my adventure.

My Arctic Budget – Flights

When I knew which dates and when to arrive I was able to use Kyria’s tip and set a google alert for the flights. The flights however were a bit tricky because there was no direct flight and I had at least a six hour layover in Stockholm. There was an option to get a hotel in Stockholm airport and then fly in on the appointed day at the right time. Or I could fly in the day prior. I figured I do that – this way I also had some buffer in case of delays and cancellations. As much as I appreciated the tips for waiting it out for the flights to drop it caused a lot of anxiety for me. I feared the flight would book out. So I purchased the outbound flight rather quickly for 158€. It was including luggage (I could not find any option to deselect this) even though I wouldn’t need it. The inbound flight was booked later because I didn’t care if I stayed another night or two in the Arctic. I ended up paying 106€. I originally had allotted a lot more money here as it was still high season.

My Arctic Budget – Insurances

I hate paying for insurance, but for this trip I knew I had to do it. What if I get sick with a fever or worse, break my leg. So off I went to get travel insurance (annual fee 181€). It was also required to have a rescue insurance in case something happened during the trip. For that I became a member of the DAV (German Alpine Club) which includes rescue and only costs 110€. I also have had a foreign travel insurance for years (not included but annual fee is a ridiculous 8€) so I was covered the minute I would walk/pushed into a hospital door and that covered a med flight home.

Edit: stupid me managed to forget to cancel the travel insurance (I had a different cut-off-date remembered which was a month later) and so on October 30th this year they charged me the next 181€. I guess I would have to add this stupidity into the budget. I am so mad at myself for this. Like unhealthily mad.

My Arctic Budget – Clothing

I knew I would have to get some clothing for the trip. But also I knew I didn’t need all the clothing because the guide provided everything but base and some mid layers. I also knew this was something I could ask for for Christmas and I tried to buy some stuff during the previous summer I sale. Over all I felt I made good choices but then it was rather hot during the trip so I didn’t even use it all to the extent I had hoped.

I spent a total of 491,88€ on clothing and was gifted another 219,62€.
The red turtleneck was the first piece I bought during summer sale but I ended up not needing it because it was too warm. I have lost the blue sports bra the first day and this really bothers me because it was so expensive and a set. I have gotten very good use out of my merino hat and headband. And I love the gloves. So much so that I don’t want to use them in order to not wear them down (I know stupid).

Overall I think I did pretty good on the clothing budget when you think of how high the quality of merino wool is.

Part of the clothing I had packed for the trip.

My Arctic Budget – Miscellaneous

This is a random category that included some cosmetics (Carmex and sunscreen) I needed (6€), cable earphones (3€) because loosing your white air pods in snow… and postcards and stamps for friends and family as well as some special tea blend as a souvenir for myself. It all came in at 35,75€.

My Arctic Budget – Food & Provisions

Du to my migraine and the issues I had leading up to the trip whenever I was doing some endurance work out I decided I needed to take some beef jerky (37,50€) with me. The rest of the total of 172,89€ was spent on food during travel. Like airport layovers, coffee and dinners/breakfast that I had gotten from the supermarket in Kiruna. I think this was pretty good and rather frugal. The only thing I splurged and had never done before get lounge access during my layover in Stockholm for 42,88€ which included all food and drink and also some lounge chair in a quiet zone that was much needed.

My Arctic Budget – Overview

Did you keep track and add all the numbers? No, well let me tell you I did get in under budget. The whole Arctic trip cost me 4.540,80€. If I add in the gifted clothing it would have been 4.760,42€. And if I add in my stupidity insurance thing it would still be under budget with 4.941,42€. All prices do include tax as is common in Germany.

Not listed outside this budget is my new iPhone and Apple Watch. I needed both anyways and so I just timed it accordingly. The phone came out of my work account. Also my backpack (89€) is not part of this budget as I needed a new one for my business travels and just picked one that would work for this trip as well. And two power banks. One for 47,49€ and one for 77,80€. I probably should have had included this in the budget but my pretty diagrams are done… Also I bought it through my business account so its technically a different budget. And I use it for work. So maybe it is not Arctic budget after all.

Would you do such a trip? Do you think this budget is tight or generous? Do you think you would have gone overboard on a category? Would you have budgeted something I didn’t? Should I include the backpack into this budget? Would you use a travel organizer like I did or would you do it on your own?

*I decided that I will write numbers from now on in the globally common way in metric system.