I’m 31 & This Is How Much I Spent On A Weekend In Queenstown, New Zealand

Welcome to Travel Diaries, a Refinery29 series where we tag along as real women embark on trips around the world and track their travel expenses down to the last cent. Here, we offer a detailed, intimate account of when, where, and how our peers spend their vacation days and disposable income: all the meals, adventures, indulgences, setbacks, and surprises.

Age: 31
Occupation: QA Analyst
Salary: $71,500 NZD ($48K USD)
Travel Companion: My partner, M.
Travel Companion's Salary: $67,000 NZD ($44K USD)

Hometown: Wellington, New Zealand
Trip Location: Queenstown, New Zealand
Trip Length: 4 days
Annual # Of Vacation Days: 15
Companion’s # of Vacation Days: 15

Transportation
Costs: It’s a short flight from Wellington to Queenstown. It was $130 for both round-trip flights. I booked our flights about five weeks out — we got a great deal on flights by traveling on off-days at off-hours (Saturday morning to Tuesday morning — we’ll get back before work on Tuesday).

We rented a car when we landed. I reserved our rental car with an estimated payment of $65, but we didn't pay until we picked the car up (noted below).  

Total: $130

Accommodations
Costs: We’re staying in an Airbnb in central Queenstown (it will hopefully save us a lot of money we’d otherwise spend on Ubers getting to and from town!). The total cost including cleaning fee and Airbnb fee was $338 for three nights. 

Total: $338

Miscellaneous pre-vacation spending:
$0

Miscellaneous post-vacation spending: I pay my dog sitter $13.20/day, and I dropped my dog off with her the night before we left.

Total: $66