Let's Talk Budgets

This might be of some help. They are pretty much in the ballpark for the town I visit the most, dont know about Paris:

https://www.budgetyourtrip.com/france/paris

As close to Brittany as the site gets is Le Mans. But it does illustrate how much prices go down when you get out of Paris.

https://www.budgetyourtrip.com/france/le-mans

Depending on the season, you can find good hotels in Brittany for less than $150. Around the $100 mark is very doable, maybe $120 in high summer. It will make up for Paris hotel rates, where $200 is a more comfortable budget (and summer can be a hair cheaper).
Hotel rates almost never include breakfast in France.

I'm one of those who resents spending more than 50€ a night on hotels. These days, however, I find I'm needing to spend 60€ a night. Not easy in Paris, which is one of the reasons I spend less time there these days.

In the countryside it's not so much of an issue. However, you have to bear in mind that I use hotels between the hours of 10pm and 8am only, so as long as the bed is good and the hotel quite that's all I need.

My budget is usually based on past tips to similar places. I keep records. That said, I have recently returned from 30 days in Croatia and we spent $6600 total for two people. Airfare, hotels, a car rental for part of the time, museum entries, food and drink, etc.
Most hotels were way less than OP s $150 a night. So right there you have a huge disparity.
We pay for entry to museums, we eat and drink, but many times we eat from grocery shopping. We use public transport. We use free guided walking tours which we tip.
All in all we are not extravagant spenders. Mostly not for restaurants. I would say you could go cheaper, but then you would be in the backpack, hostel, never eat out crowd.
My travels are not budgeted in the sense of this much, that much. I go with an overall sense of what it will cost. At the end I have my stats.

OP, your trip to Paris and Brittany will undoubtedly cost you more than my travels in Croatia. Our trip pans out to approximately $220 day for two people. If I subtract airfare, I get a figure of about $146 day for two people. So I think on that note you may get by with budgeting $300 day for two people. That may be a good point of reference as you plan your trip. That is exclusive of airfare.
You should be looking at $4200 for your in country costs. For your 14 days.

My response is probably a little different than the others. I looked for where I want to stay and I base it on past experience and a lot of research including messageboards such as this, Forders and others, as well as looking up websites independently of sites like booking.com and so on. I.e. I may find a hotel on Booking .com, but them look up the website separately. Then once I know what I’m willing to spend on a hotel and have chosen, that’s my primary expense most likely, in addition to my airfare which usually is around $13-$1400 a pop. (From the US) At this point in life I usually rent an apartment which I prefer to a hotel because of the flexibility with food as well as a little more space and I can pretend that I’m actually living there. Then I plan on about $100 a day for food per person, which is usually way too much but that’s OK with me because then I have flexibility as well as shopping money. I also re-search the attractions that we want to go to and figure that into the budget as well. So for example this fall I’m going to Paris for two weeks and I have estimated that it will cost us less than $4200 per person and it’s entirety for the two weeks. If you have questions feel free to message me independently and I will be happy to break it down for you.

Excellent replies, everyone! I appreciate them all.

I'm trying to think of a list of things I can purchase in advance:

1. Flights
2. Hotels
3. Car Rental
4. List item
5. Attractions (i.e. certain museums)
6. Train Tickets

That would leave food, drinks, some activities, and souvenirs as our primary daily expenses, yes?

And local transport (if you end up in any places where you would use local transport).

Cost for fuel and tolls while driving your rental car, and parking.

Also you might want to think about what kind of cell phone connectivity you need - will you home carrier provide what you need, will it cost extra, or do you need to obtain a French SIM card (or cards)?

Also don't forget (in the buy-ahead category) the all-important trip and medical insurance.

Here is how I budget for a Euro trip for me and my wife. I take the cost of a similar length Rick Steves tour or an Exoticca Tour, etc. in the same country in the same month, add in the cost of airfare and multiply by 60%. This usually gives me a good estimate of how much we will spend in total for everything per person (air, hotel, train, taxi, metro, car, food, drink, entertainment, attractions, souvenirs, etc.).

I do a lot of planning to pre-book the best flights (shortest time and cheapest, in that priority) and the best accommodations (central location, nice, comfortable and affordable, in that priority). I also work hard to plan an efficient town to town itinerary, so that we reduce the amount of time we have to sit in a train/bus/car and to avoid back tracking. We try to stay a minimum of 3 nights in each town and try to reduce the number of times we have to pack and move. We pre-book trains to take advantage of discounts. I prefer not to pre-buy attraction tickets to keep our itinerary in each town flexible. Some attractions are weather dependent and, some days, we feel like doing more or less. Of course, during high season, we will pre-book if there is chance that tickets will sell out. Once we are on the vacation, we are never fussed about how much we spend each day on attractions, things to do or eat. Time is limited and most things on a trip are once in a lifetime, so we enjoy what we can. We may splurge on an expensive dinner one night and grab a slice of pizza the next night. I am not a big drinker and my wife does not drink at all. We add up the bills and pay off the credit card when we get home.

We are usually under budget and have never been off by more than 10%.

It's not necessarily a good plan to pay for as much in advance as you can. What happens if you need to cancel or postpone the trip? Will you have gold-standard trip insurance (which is not cheap) that will cover your losses? That will depend partly on what is the reason for not taking the trip as planned; read the fine print.

I always weigh the risk of the early purchase against what I might save by snagging a cheap train ticket or flight. I have never voluntarily made a non-refundable hotel reservation more than a few days before planned arrival, and rarely even then. Stuff happens, and I don't want to pay for components of a trip I didn't take--though the cost of totally avoiding that risk with airline tickets is not small unless you have an endless supply of airline miles.

I second the idea of staying in an apartment if you are going to be in the same town for 3 or more days in a row. You can save money by preparing some of your meals; it usually has a washing machine, so you can save time and money that way; and you get more space than you would in a hotel. Peter

My husband and I did a trip to Paris in 2014. We were young professionals in our mid-twenties, and needed to stay within a set budget for traveling. These days, we still budget, but I don't reconcile our actual costs to our budgeted costs, since we're much more experienced travelers now and I have a better sense for what we spend. We're fortunate now that a few extra euros here and there while traveling doesn't hurt, but that was certainly not the case 10 years ago.

Here are our actual, total costs by category (amounts are in 2014 USD, when the exchange rate was 1.29 EUR to 1 USD) for two adults for 4 days/3 nights in Paris:

• Hotel: $379.26 (we stayed at a 2 star hotel recommended by Rick Steves close to Luxembourg Gardens)
• Food: $304.74 (our hotel included a small breakfast; generally we ate lunches in a restaurant and grabbed prepared grocery store food for dinner)
  • Attractions: $147.06 (2 day Paris Museum Pass + Eiffel Tower)
  • Transportation: $58.50 (Paris metro, including tickets to/from Versailles, but does not include our high speed train tickets from Paris to Bayeux and back again)

Obviously prices have gone up since then, but the exchange rate has become more favorable.

Now we travel with our young son, so our trips look a little different. We spend more on lodging, and now prefer to rent an apartment so that we have more space, laundry facilities, and can cook some of our own meals. On our trip in 2019, for example, we stayed at an apartment near Les Invalides for a week for $1,736.92. On our 2019 trip, I estimate that we spent about 100 euros per meal we ate in a casual, mid-level café for one appetizer, two adult meals, one child's meal, one dessert, two espressos, and 2 glasses of wine.