How to Build a Travel Budget
Everyone’s favorite thing: SPREADSHEETS!!!
Just kidding. If you’re anything like me, trying to get started on a budget spreadsheet for your trip will feel a little like this:
While this may not be as fun as pinning beautiful travel inspiration pictures on Pinterest, creating a budget for your trip is essential to avoid coming home and realizing you spent a loooooot more than you meant to.
For most of us, there is finite amount of money available to spend on a trip. Every dollar you save before you leave on your trip (flight, accommodations, transportation) is a dollar you get to spend enjoying yourself once you get there. Make the choices that will have your future self look back, saying
To get us started, here’s a simplified version of my budget from my most recent trip to Spain and the steps I took to build it.
List out the dates of your trip and the cities you will be staying in. Prices for accommodations and transportation can change from day to day, so it’s important to use your actual travel dates while building your budget. Likewise, the cost of lodging can vary so widely from city to city, that you can’t really average the cost out for your budget. Now you can start searching on AirBnB and Hostelworld to estimate your cost per night in each city you’re visiting. Be sure to save your favorites for when it’s time to book! In general, try to keep your cost per night to $35 or less. Check out my post about choosing accommodations for more tips!
Starting with your roundtrip flight, list out your transportation expenses: flights, trains, buses, taxis, airport shuttles, metro passes, etc. Rome2Rio is a great tool to help you with this step. The more cities you visit, the more money you will spend in this part of your budget. Remember: YOU WILL GO BACK. You don’t have to go everywhere on one trip. If it’s going to really blow your budget out to add the train fare to an out-of-the-way destination, consider seeing it on your next trip! For more tips on getting the best deal on your flight, check out this post, and for my advice on using public transportation abroad, read more here.
I generally estimate $40/day for food: $5 for breakfast, $15 for lunch, $20 for dinner. You can eat for less, but you will probably just end up spending the difference on gelato and coffee, so I wouldn’t recommend budgeting for much less.
This is the fun part. Depending on the amount of money left in your budget, you can divide out the remainder to spend on attractions. Depending on the city, you may not even spend the full amount you budgeted. When we were in Ronda, we hiked, which was free, allowing us to spend more on activities on another day. Visit A City will allow you to browse attractions in different cities and see the entry price, so you can plan out how much you’ll need to spend on activities without having to go to 50 different websites to find the cost of admission. To learn more about planning itineraries, check out this post.
Hiking in Ronda
I’ll be the first to admit that my budget starts to expand when it comes to activities. But honestly, I think that’s OK! You may never come back to this exact city again. You probably won’t care that you didn’t stay in a fancy hotel or eat at that really nice restaurant, but if you’re going to regret not paying to go to a certain attraction, then bite the bullet and pay for it. That’s why we budget so tightly everywhere else, so we can spend our money where it counts: on experiences.
Below is a link to download a blank version of the budget above to help you get started as you plan your next adventure. Pick your destination and get started planning! Where will you go next?