chloedickensonLast Updated on 14th August 2023
This post about how much money we spent in 3 months in the USA contains affiliate links.
Both Matt and I knew that spending 3 months in the USA was never going to be cheap. However, we probably didn’t realise just how expensive our 3-month trip around America would be. I want to preface this post about how much money we spent during our 90 day trip to the USA by saying that this is by no means how much money you have to spend in America, it’s just how much money we spent.
I’m very aware that it seems like a crazy amount of money and to be perfectly candid, when you consider that we spent just over £3,300 between us on a 3-month New Zealand trip (which I thought was crazy expensive at the time!), the amount of money we spent in America is pretty astronomical.
However, it truly was the trip of a lifetime and after spending almost two years “stuck” at home due to Covid when we’re both nomadic travellers, the cost of the trip was entirely worth it and I’d happily do it all over again!
These kinds of monetary posts always seem to do well on my blog and you guys always seem to find them useful, so even if you have absolutely zero intention of spending anywhere near the amount of money we spent on a 3 month trip in the USA, I really hope you find this post useful in some way (even if it is just to encourage you to spend less than us!).
Without further ado, let’s get cracking with the post all about how much money we spent in the USA for 3 months!
Prices in this post are based on the USD-GBP exchange rate as of December 2021-March 2022.
Read more: The Ultimate 1 Month USA Road Trip Itinerary – California To Texas
USA road trip cost – 3 months in the USA: £15,949.03 (£7,974.52 each – £88.61 each per day for 90 days)
I told you it was an astronomical figure!
Almost £16,000 between us on a 3-month trip does seem incredibly excessive and I know for a fact that you could travel around the USA on a much tighter budget.
However, we both went into this trip head-first with every intention of seeing, doing and experiencing as much as possible. Before we left for America, I wasn’t in the best headspace largely due to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially when I lost my grandad to the dreaded virus. So, I knew that I needed radical change and that meant booking a one-way flight to the US (knowing that we did have to leave at some point within 90 days due to the UK-US visa situation).
With this, I also knew that I wanted it to be the most magical and remarkable trip of my life (which it certainly was), so we knew that we didn’t want to hold back on anything and we wanted to ensure that we experienced every single thing we could.
Of course, the cost of the trip accurately reflects our philosophy for this adventure and while I couldn’t believe just how much we’d spent once I sat at home and worked it all out, I’m so happy that we spent every single penny on an experience that quite honestly changed my life.
I also think that an average of £88 (approx $110) a day per person isn’t too bad, especially considering the average person in America spends around $164.55 a day, according to a study carried out by GOBankingRates!
In my post below, I’ve broken down all the costs of every single thing that we spent during our 3 months in the USA, including how much money we spent on accommodation all across America, the amount of money we spent on food (including meals out and groceries), plus activities, transport costs, petrol costs and even a section on our pre-trip travel costs!
Let’s get started!
Pre-trip costs – USA road trip budget
Before we’d even left the UK to travel to America, we’d already spent over £1,000 in pre-travel costs on things such as initial flights to New York, travel insurance for both of us for three months, prescription medication for both of us and as we were travelling when testing was still required to enter the US due to the Coronavirus pandemic, we also had to pay for pre-trip testing.
Total pre-trip travel costs: £1,139.53 for two people.
P.S. Don’t forget to get travel insurance before you travel to the USA (or anywhere else for that matter!). We use SafetyWing and while we’ve (thankfully!) never had to make a claim on our policy, I’m super happy with the service we’ve received from them and they’re one of the most competitively priced travel insurers on the market!
Accommodation costs in America for 3 months
The price of accommodation was by far the biggest expense on our 3 month trip around America and while we knew that it would be pretty expensive, I don’t think either of us realised just how bloody costly it is to travel around the US!
Of course, we tried to stay in the cheapest places possible and while sometimes we managed to get accommodation for as little as £14 each a night in some places, other times we were paying as much as £100 a night!
£100 a night might not seem that expensive if you’re only going on a short trip for a few days, but when you’re travelling for 3 months at a time and the accommodation can be that expensive, your budget is going to absolutely skyrocket!
Our apartment in New York for one month, for example, cost us £2,750.93 which is obviously an awful lot of money, but that was genuinely one of the cheapest places we could find for a monthly rental; most of them were upwards of £3,500 a month!
For the rest of our road trip across America, we tried to stay in budget hotels and motels where possible in chains such as Days Inn, Comfort Inn, Motel 6 (which I would not recommend!), La Quinta, Super 8 and more.
The initial price of these hotels and motels on Booking.com was relatively cheap, with some of them as little as £30-£40 a night. However, as you may be aware with travelling in America, there are always lots of additional taxes and fees to pay on accommodation (as well as on many other things in the US), so the prices seemed to shoot up once we actually confirmed the booking.
During our 3 months in the USA, we stayed in a total of 27 paid-for accommodations (including the apartment we had for one month in NYC), plus we spent one week of our trip at my aunty and uncle’s house in Virginia.
The total cost of accommodation to travel around America for 3 months: £6,357.84 for two people.
Food – meals and drinks at bars and restaurants
Food and drink in America was another pretty hefty cost for us, especially when it came to eating and drinking in bars and restaurants.
During the first month of our trip when we were “living” in New York, we tried to experience as many of the city’s best cafes, bars, restaurants and food stalls as possible as that’s what I really wanted to focus on during our time there. Of course, we spent tonnes of time exploring the city and experiencing as many attractions as possible but even though it was my fifth time in NYC, I’d never really prioritised the foodie side of the city before so I was determined to eat at as many places as possible while we were there.
Thankfully, that certainly paid off as we managed to tick off 50 new places to eat in New York City so I have absolutely zero regrets about that! Of course, as we were there for one month and we had our own apartment with a fully equipped kitchen, it meant that we could also cook our own meals as well.
Once we’d left New York and began our road trip across the rest of the USA, however, we hardly ever stayed anywhere where we could cook our own food so we ate out or ordered takeaway food for almost every meal.
This, of course, is what bumped our food budget up immensely and even though I had the best time eating my way across America, I would probably try and prioritise accommodation with cooking facilities if we were to do the trip again to try and save a little bit of money on meals out.
The total cost of food (meals and drinks in bars and restaurants) in the USA: £3,070.03 for two people.
Food costs in America – groceries and toiletries
As I mentioned above, the vast majority of our food budget was spent on meals out at restaurants but we also spent a good few hundred pounds on groceries. Once we’d hired a rental car in Dallas, we started to spend a bit more money on groceries as we bought lots of snacks and drinks for our long road trips.
We found some things in the supermarket to be pretty expensive in America, but the cost of groceries wasn’t hugely different from what we spend when we’re in the UK so I was pretty happy with how much we spent on groceries during our 3 months in the USA.
The total cost of groceries and toiletries during our 3-month trip around America: £644.10 for two people.
Activities – road trip costs in 3 months in the USA
During our 3 months in the USA, we spent just over £1000 on activities which included things like an annual national park pass, tickets to watch basketball, ice hockey and NFL, tickets to visit Summit in New York, a visit to Alcatraz, tickets to Universal Studios in Orlando (which were over £200 each!), plus much more.
I was actually expecting the total figure for the amount of money we spent on activities to be much higher, especially considering all the epic things we did!
The total amount of money we spent on activities in America for 3 months: £1,065.26 for two people.
Transport costs for 3 months in America
Our transport costs in America were also pretty hefty, with the cost of our rental car equalling almost half of what we spent on transport for the whole trip!
The cost of the rental car and insurance was over £1000 and then we spent another £1000 on Uber, Lyft, buses, domestic flights, trains and even bicycles! We used so many modes of transport to get across America, especially in the first two months and then once we hired a car, all of our transport costs (apart from petrol) were covered.
Total transport costs in the USA: £2,190.43 for two people.
Petrol – USA road trip costs
We had a hire car in America for 28 days and during that time, we filled up the car 13 times, although it wasn’t always completely empty when we filled the tank.
I should also note that the cost of gas went up massively during our trip, so by the end of our rental period, we were paying much more than at the very start of our road trip!
We also drove almost 4,400 miles during the 4 weeks that we had the hire car as we drove all the way from Dallas, Texas to San Francisco, California while travelling through New Mexico, Utah, Arizona and Nevada in between.
Total petrol costs for our 3 month USA road trip: £529.40.
Miscellaneous costs (including laundry, new clothes, cash withdrawals etc)
I’ve included this “miscellaneous” section as this includes all the random costs that don’t really fit into any other category, including laundry costs, new clothes and shoes that we bought in New Mexico as we didn’t really have anything warm to wear, plus a few hundred pounds in cash withdrawals, parking costs and a few other various things.
Total “miscellaneous” costs from our 3 months in the USA: £943.44.
Related posts:
- Ultimate 3-Month USA Road Trip Itinerary – New York To California
- How Much Money We Spent Living In New York For One Month In 2022
- How Much Money We Spent Travelling NZ, Australia & Southeast Asia
- How Much Money We Spent On A 3 Month Trip Around New Zealand
- The Best Travel Jobs To Make Money Travelling – How To Get Paid To Travel
- How To Make Passive Income While Travelling – 7 Best Ideas
Pin for later – USA road trip budget for 3 months
Have you ever wanted to embark on a road trip around the USA? Did you think it would be more or less expensive to spend 90 days in America? Let me know in the comments or on Instagram at @imjustagirl_16.
