What Our One Month Mexico Budget Cost in Yucatan

Curious what our one month Mexico budget in Yucatan cost us? Us too! So we kept track and here’s the nitty gritty breakdown.

I love keeping track of budgets when we travel. Some days I feel like we are spending so much money and it’s like, ‘Oh no, there goes the budget.’ Then other days it feels like we are finding tons of ways to save.

Most of the time I find it all averages out. I try to write posts like this to show others that going on vacation doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. Nor do you have to suffer greatly in terrible accommodation or sustain solely on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. If you want five star, go five star. If you are ok with middle ground accommodation and food options it’s possible to make the money stretch. If we didn’t we could never travel as long as we do.

A few notes: For these calculations I did not include the cost of flights (free!) nor our travel insurance. This is straight up cost of our month in Yucatan Mexico. And how where our flights free you might ask? We easily used our points from this Chase card. I am by no means a travel points expert. Others out there go way more in depth. I just look for a card that will give me a good sign up bonus if I meet the minimum spending. Never get into this whole process if you are not good with paying off your cards and being organized. But if so, we did not pay for our flights because, as very average people, we used the points on this Chase card and you could too.

One Month Mexico Budget:

Food: $442>>>$14.73 per day>>>$7.36 per person

Lodging: $553>>>$18.43 per day>>>$9.21 per person

Transportation: $248>>>$8.26 per day>>>$4.13 per person

Activity: $97>>>$3.23 per day>>>$1.61 per person

Misc: $114>>>$3.80 per day>>>$1.90 per person

TOTAL: $1454>>>$49 per day>>>$24.50 per person

Food Notes:

Oh we ate the food and we also cooked. We had a nice variety of eating out and cooking our own meals.

One nice thing about being in a more visited tourist area was local food trucks cooked in a way we could eat too. This delicious food truck was in Tulum. It was owned by the nicest family. They had a super clean food area and really nice services. And the food was amazing. Look for them if you go!

Lodging Notes:

We found great deals in Mexico with AirBnB. Bookings was our second best place to find deals. The AirBnB places almost all had kitchens which is just so nice to be able to cook.

For the question whether it’s better to book ahead or try your luck in town: book ahead. Almost always we saw the online rate was cheaper than the walk in rate. Plus, we are so over lugging our bags around town looking for a good place. With a few rare exceptions, we read the reviews and book ahead.

Activity Notes:

Coba Ruins near Tulum.

Much of our activities where visiting and climbing (where permitted) ancient ruins.

We laughed when taking this picture because as you can tell, we really had to fight the crowds here. This was a small ruin of Becan. This was when we rented a car for two days to drive out to the remote Calukmul. It was a refreshing break to be able to get off the beaten track and enjoy wandering some more desolate ruins.

Gran Cenote

We also spent a lot of time swimming in both the ocean and cenotes. This was a great way to balance out the budget. Swimming in the ocean was free. Chris did a great job picking out a couple cenotes where each one was different. If we had gone to any and all cenotes the entrance fees would have added up quick. So by just selecting a couple different ones it all balanced out.

This is also where we went swimming with a crocodile at Casa Cenote! Oh my gosh!

Transportation Notes:

Tulum Bus Terminal Station

Yeah Mexico! We were not sure what to expect, but the public transportation was so fantastic in Yucatan. Ok, maybe we figured there would be lots of public transportation, but even as a tourist it was so hassle free and easy.

The inside of the Tulum Bus Terminal Station

The buses were neat and timely. We took lots of little collectivos or small vans. We try to always ask ahead how much the fare should be. When we’d get to the collectivo they would tell us the same rate as what our lodging told us it should cost. We never felt like we were getting ripped off.

We didn’t go on this particular ferry, but we thought it was a cool picture to share. This was a car ferry – drive in one side and out the other.

Everything related to transportation in the Yucatan part of Mexico was great.

Calukmul

And that’s what our month in Mexico budget cost us. We could have spent way more money and we could have spent way less money. Nomadic Matt talks about spending $50 a Day for traveling and this month we were able to achieve that for two people. We did the things that were appealing and of interest to us and felt we had a fulfilling month.

If you are ever wanting an easy, low stress and easy on the budget destination consider Yucatan, Mexico. We only touched the surface of all the things there are to do and would go back in an instant. I hope by sharing what this month of travel cost for our Mexico budget it shows a way to achieve affordable long term travel.

Thank you so much for reading!

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Doing a little more planning?

The gear listed in this post is the same exact gear we use to travel the world or our back yard.
These booking resources are the same exact ones we use to find deals and acquire points for more travel.