AIBU to think £10k is enough for 10 days in Boston?

[1ladybird]

Family of 5. 2adults 3 kids. Is £10k enough for flights and meals out for 10 days in US summer 2027?

Staying with friends who like to eat out- Boston. Possibly need car hire.

I thought this would be plenty as flights available £3k and we can stay with our friends.

However, we visited NYC (just me and DH). SO SO expensive!!!

US vs Uk economy reminds me of how rich British ppl felt visiting Eastern Europe 20+ years ago..! Now we’re on the receiving end!! Our economy is so poo and London seemed so cheap after visiting NYC Nov ‘25 😬.

After advice from families who travel to US regularly/ recently. TIA xxx

We flew with Norse Air outbound, which is classed as budget, and back with BA (open-jaw). Norse Air was absolutely fine, just more limited in terms of films etc and you had to pay extra for food (and a blanket!).

Our biggest accommodation cost was NYC Hotel, which was £2k for 4 nights booked direct with the hotel. The rest was booked via Booking.com and AirBnB and was around £150-£180 per night. That was a couple of Premier Inn style places on the road, a lovely flat in DC and a stunning cottage in Virginia.

Car was hired for 6 days and originally paid £340 (Discover Cars) but cancelled that for free and rebooked for £800ish with Alamo Cars as it was more convenient locations and we didn't need to return the car full. We had an amazing time.

Tips - I found if you paid by card, which I nearly always did, they gave 3 options and I chose the middle one most of the time, unless service had been exceptional. I'm sure 15% was usually offered as the lower or middle option but I wouldn't swear to it. If they offer it I don't think it's wrong to choose that option. I'm pretty sure I never saw 30% (think it seemed to be 15%, 20%, 25%) as a set option on the machine but I may be remembering wrong. As for tipping for takeaways/counter service, the machines offer it but I found the staff don't expect it and usually aren't looking and some even cancelled it themselves before I could.

Thanks @pinotnow that's very helpful.

And if 15% is an option for a tip - I'll be pressing that!

More than enough, as others have said plenty of things to do and see for free just by walking around. A while restaurants ate $$ you aren’t going be going out to a nice dinner every single night or be having a sit down lunch every day. Plenty of fast casual places like Chipotle or Cava where you can get more affordable meals and pizza places are never that much and are always crowd pleasers for family. Whole Foods has good options for lunch food you can grab and go, same with Trader Joe’s and local supermarkets chains (I think it is Shaws in Boston that is good).

Boston is 2 hours from where I live so we go pretty regularly for weekends.

We don’t do stuff like get coffee from Starbucks. It’s ridiculously overpriced.

We check prices before we book restaurants. A fancy meal out might cost $450 for 5 of us but typically we’d spend much less.

Bring snacks, eat picnics in the park, get meals from Wholefoods, pizza and pastries when you’re in the North End, etc.

Are you going to be north or south of Boston OP? I’m not convinced you need a rental car the entire time. Parking in Boston midweek is so expensive that you’re better off travelling in by bus, train or T. Boston has excellent public transport (OK let’s not discuss the Green Line.) At weekends we park in Post Office Square which is cheap.

I’d consider renting a car for maybe 5 days and spending those going to Salem, Cape Cod, New Hampshire, etc.

Look at what you want to actually do in Boston and add up those costs. We loved the Science Museum when the kids were younger, Newbury St for window shopping with older teens, Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, and just meandering around the place. You don’t have to do tourist attractions all day.

I’ve been told that the cheapest way by far to see a Red Sox game is to queue for tickets half an hour before the game. Never done it myself.

Honesly I think 10 days in Boston is too much, and there are so many other great places to visit within a few hours. Coastal Maine is fabulous in summer/fall. The NH White Mountains are full of fantastic hiking and some cool waterfalls.

You can spend a fortune in Boston if you want, but there’s no need to.

I’m not sure it’s going to be and if you tip 15 percent then wait staff may question what was wrong with the service.
Staff get paid based on average tip and taxed on that, so choosing to tip less is taking away from their expected pay packet. Only do this if there was a problem.
You may not like the way the USA manages its tips but you have chosen to travel there.

Sorry, I haven't seen a 15% option, or even 18% for a long time. It's 20, 25 or 28 in most sit-down places in Mass. 20% really is minimum minimum

Op just thinking out of the box a little.

can you speak to your friends and sort of plan a schedule, so plan which nights you will eat out/them cooking/you cooking at theirs. What days you will be travelling about without them/with etc.

cost up the things you plan to do, offer to pay your hosts a contribution towards food for the week. Get on trip advisor and plan where you might want to eat & again cost it up.

I would budget the 10k and then maybe try and ensure you have a back up buffer.

I think you could have a really exciting trip, I found New York really expensive too but its New York!!

18% was frequently the lowest option on our recent trip. A southern state.

It’s really awful to tip 15%.

I immigrated to the UK from the states so have experienced the other side of this. I worked my way through Uni by waitressing full time and we used to rock/paper/scissors for tables of British or European customers as we knew it would cost us money to serve them.

Where I worked, min wage for tipped staff was $2.13 an hour - and we paid taxes based on an assumed tip rate on our sales. I worked 45 hours a week so my paycheck was for 90 hours and was usually about $50. Every penny I paid for tuition was from tips.

Just checked and min wage for tipped staff in MA is $6.75 an hour. Clearly no one can live on that. So your refusal to engage with local practice will hurt people. I would never want to make someone’s day worse for such a petty reason.

edited because I didn’t mean to quote anyome!

Why dont workers in America demand proper wages then?

My bug bear is the current trend in America to start asking for tips on fast food dining where you grab and go, coffee shops etc, it’s even being done in supermarkets! Thankfully this seems to be getting challenged by US people themselves. I always deny those requests.

I know the thread isn’t about tipping, but the US tipping culture is so absurdly ridiculous and confusing. Especially for tourists or newcomers.

It can also lead to different levels of service being given to different demographics based on prejudices or assumptions.

It’s also rooted in racism like so many things are in the U.S. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/22/980047710/the-land-of-the-fee

So in California and possibly other states the minimum wage is about $40K. So does that mean someone in California earning 40K in a non-service industry job that doesn’t get tips, is meant to tip 20% to food servers who already get paid the same as them for their minimum wage? Crazy!

I lived in east Asia for a while and I loved how you’d just pay the stated bill - that’s it that’s all. It just wasn’t the done thing back then to pay a tip.

I even tried to tip a taxi driver on my way to the airport once since I wasn’t going to be using the extra currency and he ran after me to say I’d paid too much. I had to explain using my limited knowledge of the language that it was deliberate and I wasn’t coming back to the country and he finally accepted it. The honesty was outstanding there.

It happens here too! I’ve been in plenty of places where they (the machine) gives the option for a tip when it’s just counter service. The absolute greed of these companies is embarrassing.

@Unclesadam I don’t think I’ve seen it in the UK yet, I would have no embarrassment in declining it though!

Same - not embarrassed to select the no-tip option.

And to be fair to the staff I’ve encountered in these places in the UK don’t seem to expect a tip - it’s the companies to blame really.

I do recall I got a frosty look in Houston a while back when I didn't opt to pay the tip while picking up lunch from an indoor food market.

I was planning to go eat it back in my hotel room which I did, if I wanted to pay 20% tip I’d have gone and sat in a restaurant!

7k for a family of 5 for 10 days is loads. Three us did 5 nights in NYC recently and it was no more expensive than London. In fact broadway shows and big attractions were cheaper than comparisons in London. Alcohol was a bit more expensive but we didn’t drink much. I would imagine Boston would be slight cheaper than NYC.

Likely because they earn a relatively decent wage by being tipped 20%+ from all the tables they serve.

Its a shit way to do it as there's no security but let's not pretend its a low income. If the bill is $200, thats $40+ tip. For one table, during one shift.

Multiply up by multiple tables across the week and its likely well north of $1000 a week in tips.

You do need to think about activities, we did the Boston Duck tour on a WW2 landing craft and it was great, looked and it’s £46 per head now. We did a self guided walking tour and also looked round a warship, it was free and still is apparently. We also went to a baseball game. We spent 5 days in Boston and do have relatives there but stayed in a hotel. We then went to Nantucket which was brilliant and stayed in a little boho bed and breakfast and did a whale watching boat trip. I just checked it’s $75 for an adult and $55 per child now. I would recommend the whale watching wholeheartedly. We also went to Salem. If the air fares are 3k then your 7k will be totally fine.

That's about right for flights. Showing Aug 26 here ( cheaper if you book earlier)

Oh and I used the Boston pass while I was there Saved money on attractions that was

https://gocity.com/en/boston

But they have 23kg carry on

It’s for 2027 things may change a lot.

I don't actually know how to answer this. The working situation in the states is hugely different to here, everything is different by state, it's at-will employment so no one is protected, there's rarely much accommodation for sick leave or holiday time or anything really. Working in the states made me very, very happy to immigrate.

But whatever you think about the wider picture, anyone refusing to engage in the actual culture of wherever they are visiting is punishing the wrong person.

We got really overwhelmed by tipping in India - we were never sure what the right amount with and never had the right sort of cash so we just tipped constantly and probably way too much. But we were in such a privileged situation to be able to travel at all so we just accepted it as part of our trip, and didn't feel uncomfortable about making someone's day a bit better unexpectedly.

I just can't wrap my head around moral stances on tipping meaning you make an actual person have a worse day than if you'd just gone somewhere else. If you are really struggling financially and being forced to travel, then buy food at the grocery store and have a picnic - no one needs you to tip for that.

I engage with tipping in the USA but I hate it and it puts me off visiting. Either it is compulsary so staff get a liveable wage - then factor it in to prices, or it's not - so stop whining if people don't pay a voluntary extra sum on top of advertised costs.

The whole stance of paying for service is voluntary but you are an awful human if you don't pay it feels childish and passive aggressive to Europeans.

That's totally fine - you don't have to engage with it at all. I really hate bargaining so tend to avoid places where that's expected. Just makes me super uncomfortable! Plenty of lovely places to visit in the world that can work for everyone's preferences.

Back to the OP's point though - please add in at least 20% for tips when you're working out usual costs. Everywhere will have menus online so just build up what you think your family would order, multiply by 2 for the other family and add 20% and you'll know what sort of costs you'll have if you go out for dinner several times. Portions will be bigger so you can think about sharing, doing appetisers only, etc.

I went to NYC in Nov with my DH and thought it was loads more expensive than London for food and drinks out in restaurants!

Shows/ attractions were similar.

I was hoping people would say Boston cheaper but it appears not!

I think general consensus is it’s doable if we’re careful some days!

Thanks for taking time to respond x