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>It wasn't just the obvious "things are more expensive now" Doesn't seem obvious at all, five 1960 dollars is around 40 2017 dollars. 40 dollars per day can be

by ryanlol 10y ago

>It wasn't just the obvious "things are more expensive now" Doesn't seem obvious at all, five 1960 dollars is around 40 2017 dollars. 40 dollars per day can be a plenty.

icebraining 10y ago
Sure, but the author was eating three course dinners in Paris and staying in sunny hotels in Florence with those $5 a day. Try doing that with $40 nowadays. The difference is, of course, mostly in the rates between the dollar and the European currencies, rather than simply an increase in costs locally.
- trendia 10y ago
  > mostly in the rates between the dollar and European currencies I think this might be true in some countries -- it used to be way cheaper to go to countries in Eastern Europe before they joined the Euro. But I believe that Germany and France would have always been rather expensive since they had rather strong currencies. As far as the Euro is concerned, USD / Eur is the highest it's been in 10 years [0]. [0] http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=EUR&view=10Y http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=EUR&view=10Y
  - icebraining 10y ago
    The book was written in the mid-50s, back in the days of the Bretton Woods system, and barely a decade after WW2.
VLM 10y ago
The problem with touring Europe on $40/day is a fairly typical contract software developer might pay $1800/month or $60/day for family health insurance. The point being that if you're wealthy enough to have a roof over your head and food and medical care, which a significant fraction of the American population doesn't have, then trying to nickel and dime it when traveling doesn't make any sense as an over-hyper-optimization. I'm in good financial shape so most Americans can't replicate this but I went to Ireland a couple years ago for a week, it was all the time I could get off work, I dropped oh at least a couple grand. From memory the plane tickets were like $700, so that's a hundred bucks a day even if all we did was panhandle at $0 per day. If I have to work 51 weeks a year, when am I going to spend the money on that prevents me from dropping $500/day instead having to spend $5?
- notahacker 10y ago
  Sure, but the whole point of "Europe on Five Dollars a Day" and "Southeast Asia on a Shoestring" and their ilk was opening up the idea of leisure travel to people who aren't working 51 weeks a year on contract programmers' salaries and feeding their families, and might instead have a few months off after their studies or in between low paid jobs.

by ryanlol 10y ago

>It wasn't just the obvious "things are more expensive now" Doesn't seem obvious at all, five 1960 dollars is around 40 2017 dollars. 40 dollars per day can be a plenty.

icebraining 10y ago

Sure, but the author was eating three course dinners in Paris and staying in sunny hotels in Florence with those $5 a day. Try doing that with $40 nowadays. The difference is, of course, mostly in the rates between the dollar and the European currencies, rather than simply an increase in costs locally.

trendia 10y ago
> mostly in the rates between the dollar and European currencies I think this might be true in some countries -- it used to be way cheaper to go to countries in Eastern Europe before they joined the Euro. But I believe that Germany and France would have always been rather expensive since they had rather strong currencies. As far as the Euro is concerned, USD / Eur is the highest it's been in 10 years [0]. [0] http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=EUR&view=10Y http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=EUR&view=10Y
- icebraining 10y ago
  The book was written in the mid-50s, back in the days of the Bretton Woods system, and barely a decade after WW2.

VLM 10y ago

The problem with touring Europe on $40/day is a fairly typical contract software developer might pay $1800/month or $60/day for family health insurance. The point being that if you're wealthy enough to have a roof over your head and food and medical care, which a significant fraction of the American population doesn't have, then trying to nickel and dime it when traveling doesn't make any sense as an over-hyper-optimization. I'm in good financial shape so most Americans can't replicate this but I went to Ireland a couple years ago for a week, it was all the time I could get off work, I dropped oh at least a couple grand. From memory the plane tickets were like $700, so that's a hundred bucks a day even if all we did was panhandle at $0 per day. If I have to work 51 weeks a year, when am I going to spend the money on that prevents me from dropping $500/day instead having to spend $5?

notahacker 10y ago
Sure, but the whole point of "Europe on Five Dollars a Day" and "Southeast Asia on a Shoestring" and their ilk was opening up the idea of leisure travel to people who aren't working 51 weeks a year on contract programmers' salaries and feeding their families, and might instead have a few months off after their studies or in between low paid jobs.