If you've followed us very long, you know that we are experienced travelers. In the last 12 months we've visited New York, Cario (Egypt), Ireland, Rio de Janerio (Brazil), Los Angeles and in the next 4 months are visiting Chicago, Australia and New Zealand.
Each time we plan a trip, we start with how much money we are going to be spending. Clearly some trips are more expensive than others. For example our trip driving around Ireland & visiting Cairo (yes, that was all one trip) our budget was $5,000 total (so $2,500 per person), Rio de Janerio our budget was $2,000 or Los Angeles was $800 (we included Disney World in this one too). I do all our budgets on excel, but there is nothing fancy about what I do. Here is an example of my chart that I do on excel, we change the values after the trip to look at what our actual expenses were (this is why I prefer to travel with a credit card which you can read more about here.)
No one has to be able to understand your notes...except for you. I try to save them somewhat if I need to look back, or suggest places for fellow travelers. We use another sheet to track the actual names of places we stayed to help with that process. If you're more organized then me, maybe you will be doing more organized columns. For our trip around Europe where we were traveling to new countries every few days, I was much more organized! Our trip to LA was very simple with basic budgets for each day.
Anyway, here is where we suggest starting when you're working out a budget for your trip. After you decide how much you are going to be able to spend, and think of a place or two you'd like to go. Start first with one of the most expensive parts of booking travel.
Flights. If you'll be flying, the first place to start is the flight. Start early looking at flights so you know a good price when you see it. Give yourself a range of about how much time you'll spend there. If you have a certain number vacation days you will be able to use (this is new to me, but we dealt with this in planning our most recent Australia/New Zealand trip) work with those days, maybe try to plan it over a holiday to optimize your time off. Just remember sometimes flying over the holidays is more expensive, but often flying on the actual holiday is not as bad. We also optimize our time by often working the whole day, or half a day, and catching an evening flight allowing us travel and not take vacation the first day of the trip. My 3 best resources on checking flights are Southwest (if you're flying within the US or the Mexico), Expedia, and Google Flights. Google Flights is actually my new favorite, as it checks many of the other discount flight websites. It finds the cheapest then tells you were to book. So this most recent trip we're planning to Aus/Nz we booked on Orbitz, which is new for us! More on a post about flights here. Once you get an idea of what a good deal on a flight would be, go about budgeting the rest of your trip. If you're driving, use MapQuest or similar to figure mileage and get an estimate on gas.
Hotels/Hostels. Your next biggest cost will likely be hotels/hostels. Decide what you're willing to cut back on. Would you do something like Airbnb? Maybe that isn't for you, but you'd be willing to swing a hostel. How about a discount hotel chain like Super 8? Are there friends you can stay with? How far are you willing to stay from the tourist cites. Take a look and get an idea of cost.
Transportation. Whether its the tube in London, subways in New York, or renting a car in Los Angeles, take a look at the costs that will be associated with that. This goes together with where you'll be staying. If you have to ride the "L" in Chicago an extra 50 minutes to get to the Mile, and pay an extra $20 for your transport each day, per person, would it make more sense to spring for a more expensive hotel closer? Or perhaps drive your car into the city and pay $40 for parking. Will there be free parking where you're staying? In busier cities like LA or Chicago, you may not think to check if there will be a fee for leaving a car there! Google is a great resource when traveling to get an idea of cost, also if you're traveling in Europe Rick Steve's books are more than worth it to estimate these costs! I talk more on rental cars here.
Food. Food is tough to budget, but its the easiest to scale back on if your budget is tight. Yes, sometimes food is part of the travel experience. Maybe you need to experience deep dish pizza in Chicago, crepes in Paris, and the gelato in Rome. But you don't have to go crazy every meal. Often we will do 2 meals on-the-go, and one sit down each day while traveling. That means stopping by the grocery store to buy Nutella and bread when we are traveling in Europe to snack on for most of the morning and early afternoon. For Europe, I budget $15 per meal, per person, per day on food. We are always well below that, but I like to plan on spending more rather than less. In reality that means we spend $5 on breakfast, $5-$8 on lunch, and the remaining $30 on dinner (or do a large lunch and a light snack for dinner). If you're used to eating in, you may not think to budget food...however...it is a big expense when you're eating out 3 meals a day! Sometimes if you're lucky you're hotel/hostel will have a breakfast included...score!
Tourist Attractions. Look up the cost of all tourist attractions ahead of time, see if there are free days, discounted student tickets, or if they have a pass that lets you get into multiple attractions around the city at once. Often if you purchase tickets online ahead of time for many big attractions, it is cheaper and you avoid lines! Write it down and figure it into your budget.
Souvenirs & Extras. Things happen, and you never want to run out of money on a trip. Perhaps you forgot you'd have to pay extra to check a bag at the airport, or you got lost on the subway and had to pay for a taxi back to the hotel. Always try to budget in 10% of your total cost of your trip to be spent on extra things you weren't expecting to spend money on...even if its ice cream at the airport.
What happens if you get through all of this and you've completely blown your budget out of the water? You've got a few options:
-Put off the trip, and save more money
-Go through each category and try to give something up. Stay in a hostel instead of a hotel, agree that you'll eat PB&J twice a day while traveling to cut back on food, change your flights around to try for better rates, cut a night or two off your trip to save on hotel.
-Change your destination. Is there somewhere more affordable you'd like to visit? Maybe you could go to Chicago this year on a long weekend, and try for London next year.
-Ask friends to come along. The hotel we stayed at in New York for $200 a night became a lot more affordable when 5 of us went together. Plus the trip was a blast with more people!
-Talk to friends/family that have been there before, do they have a trick to make things more affordable?
-Cut back on the souvenirs. We really don't do souvenirs when we travel (Read more here about why) and you can get really caught up in buying things if you're not careful.
Other notes:
-Make sure you're aware of the exchange rates, London, for example may be more expensive to travel around than Cairo because of how strong the currency is.
-Check to make sure if you have a short time you are in each place, that you aren't there over a holiday where everything will be closed.
-Always make sure you have the cash NOW to pay for your trip. You never know what will come up and you'll want to have the money set aside and untouched. If you aren't sure you can put it all aside, then pre-book and prepay for everything so you're ready to go when the time comes.
-Decide whether you need trip insurance. We rarely ever buy trip insurance, as we know likley we will be able to go. If we can't, we accept that we will likely lose money on the flight. We try to buy refundable hotels, cars etc. whenever possible.
These are just a few things to consider when you're budgeting for a trip. Depending on where you're going and what you like to do, there are going to be many more factors that affect how you travel!
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