How Much Did It Cost Us to Live In the Dominican Republic for 3 Months?
Every dollar, broken down by category, for 13 weeks on the beach.
In January, we packed up our family and moved to the Dominican Republic for 13 weeks.
You see, this crazy thing happened last June - our landlord sold the house we were renting and instead of settling into a new home, we packed our life into a storage locker and decided to become nomads.
It’s been quite an adjustment as we’ve been living out of a suitcase for exactly 8 months, constantly moving homes and never staying anywhere longer than 1-2 months at a time.
We’ve spent time in Qualicum Beach and Vancouver, Canada and most recently, lived in 3 cities in the Dominican Republic.
Living as nomads had been such an eye opening, fun experience but has made for some unpredictable budgeting money dates with my husband, Flynn.
As we continue slow travelling around the world (we leave for Bali in 99 days), I want to show you what it costs to travel abroad for my family of 4 in the DR.
**Before we jump in, I saved the highlights from our trip on my Instagram page. Click here to jump over and watch from the beginning.
The Breakdown (All $ in CAD)
We tracked our expenses on a Google Sheet pretty closely for this trip because it would help us continue to plan for our upcoming trips.
We recorded costs in 4 categories: Travel, Accommodations, Food & Entertainment, & Miscellaneous.
On this trip, there were four of us: me, my husband and our 2 girls aged 5 & 2.
Travel: $3,267 for 13 Weeks
YVR (Vancouver) to POP (Puerta Plata) ……. $1,512.44
Return (PUJ to YVR) …………………………………. $0 / 116,670 Aeroplan Points
Travel Medical Insurance ………………………….. $435.63
Taxis ……………………………………………………..…. $297.60
Car Service Between Cities ……………………….$698.48
Departure Tax ……………………………………………$322.64
For this trip, we booked our flights to and from DR out of different airports as we wanted to travel the country during our stay. We flew into Puerto Plata and out of Cancun.
We used Aeroplan points to pay for our return flights in full through Air Canada and we flew economy both directions.
Packing light was a huge goal for this trip and we only took 2 regular suitcases and 3 backpacks.
We were able to save on our travel medical insurance as we used our TD Aeroplan travel insurance with our credit card for the first 21 days and then went with TuGo insurance for the remainder of the trip. It’s a good thing we got it as we used it while we were there!
We used taxis primarily to go to the grocery store or to excursions, parks and beaches nearby. Taxis are NOT cheap in the DR. A 3 to 7 minute taxi into town to get groceries cost us $1200 DOP round trip/$29 CAD. With the Canadian dollar being so weak while we were there, we definitely paid a premium.
Our trip was split over 3 cities - Cabarete, Las Terrenas and Juan Dolio . We hired a private driver to take us between cities with the same company, Edward Taxi. They had fair rates and gave us a 10% discount since we used them 5 times during our stay.
Lastly, if you stay longer than 30 days in the country, you are issued an overstay fine. This is not a problem in the Dominican and is not frowned upon - you just have to pay the overstay fee before you leave. We stayed 89 days, which cost us $2500 DOP per person, totalling $323 CAD.
Accommodations: $13,697 for 13 Weeks
Cabarete Airbnb (20 nights)……………………….$3,854.46 (including refund)
Cabarete Electricity…………………………………….$94.91
Las Terrenas Airbnb (35 nights)………………….$4,684.91
Las Terrenas Electricity……………………………….$214.16
Juan Dolio Airbnb (33 nights)……………………….$4,519.19
Juan Dolio Electricity…………………………………….$251.04
Hotel Near Departure Airport (1 night) ……….. $78.36
We stayed on the beach in Cabarete and Juan Dolio and a block back from the beach in Las Terrenas, so this category was definitely a splurge for us.
Our Cabarete Airbnb wasn’t a great experience. We didn’t have towels, bed sheets or duvet covers in one bedroom, the shower leaked all over the floor, there were cockroaches regularly (including in my coffee!), the place smelled/felt damp, there was no soap and the dryer was broken for the first week.
Because of this, I asked for a discount for the poor experience and they refunded $200 USD / $272.61 CAD.
Something else to plan for - every Airbnb we stayed at charged for electricity if you stayed more than a week. The rate was $15 pesos per kWh and added $560.11 to our bill. For reference, we only used the AC at night while we slept.
We budget about $1000/week on our trips as we like to stay ON the beach as much as possible with two young children. Beach is our main activity.
Food & Entertainment: $3,952 for 13 Weeks
Groceries…………………………………….. $2544.85
Dining Out……………………………..……. $728.88
Entertainment & Adventures……..… $677.95
We didn’t find grocery shopping cheap or expensive in the DR. It felt just a bit less expensive in Canada. Notably, the eggs were very well priced at $9.90 CAD for 60 eggs whereas back in Vancouver it is $22 for 60 eggs.
We cooked 90% of our meals fresh at home and did a bi-weekly grocery haul and meal planning system, just like we did at home.
We went out to eat 1-2x/week with each dish averaging $10-15. One unexpected thing was the really high tax rate! Restaurants charge 28% (yes you read that right) on top of your bill. This tax is split into 18% for the government tax and 10% charged by the restaurant as a tip.
For activities, in Las Terrenas we kayaked through mangroves, went whale watching in Samana, and hiked El Limon Waterfall.
In Juan Dolio, we went on a city tour of the capital, Santo Domingo.
Miscellaneous & Travel Prep: $603
Parking Our Car @ Home …...……... $120.00
Passport Renewal Fees ……….………$160.00 (Flynn’s Renewal)
Dominican Phone Plan ……………….. $37.81 (3x30 Day eSim with GigSky)
Shopping ……………………………….……$43.40
ATM Withdrawal Fees ………………….$49.22
Photographer ………………………………$214.50
Pharmacy ……………………………………$68.22
Because we are nomads, we have nowhere to park our car when we are abroad so we paid a friend $120 to store our car in her driveway for 3 months.
With this trip, we opted for an eSim instead of buying local sim cards from the telecom stores in the Dominican Republic. We found a company called GigSky that was reliable and cheaper than most other eSim providers that we researched.
You can use code JFLY100 to get $3USD/$4.20CAD towards an eSim with GigSky.
The ATM withdrawal fees were a bit pricey as well. Each ATM charged a 300 DOP (~$7 CAD) fee on top of any fees charged by our bank, which is usually a conversion fee of $3-$4. Because of this, we tried to make as few trips to the ATM as possible.
The Grand Total
The entire trip cost us $21,609 or $7,203/month.
This spanned 13 weeks (Jan 8 - April 8, 2025).
We had budgeted about $24,920.00 for the trip, so we were happy with how this turned out as we stayed on the beach for the entire trip.
Since our kids are so little, we spent most of the days slow living on the beach, napping and playing in the pool. There were not a ton of outings and adventures and we genuinely enjoy these slow days.
I hope this has been helpful, especially if you were curious about the Dominican Republic or even longer duration trips like this.
Flynn and I created a full walkthrough video of what it was like to live in Cabarete (our favorite city!) for three full weeks.
You can click here to watch it.
Have a beautiful week.
Tanessa