Vacation Cost Calculator: Make A Travel Budget You Can Actually Stick To (2024)

One of the most important things you can do when you start planning a new trip is to use a vacation cost calculator and create a travel budget.

But if you’re reading this post, I suspect you already know that 😉

We always, always use our travel budget worksheet so that we don’t feel guilty for spending money on our trips. We’ve also found that if we don’t make (and stick to) a budget, we overspend and have a mess to clean up when we get back home.

Sounds like no fun, huh?

I’m a firm believer that everyone can afford to travel – as long as you knowwhat kind of travel you can afford.

So these are the steps to using this vacation cost calculator:

• Research vacation costs
• Make a draft travel budget
• Then a final budget
• Pay off your trip in advance
• Know where your hard earned money is going

That right there will save you time, money, and headaches.

Most of this post will not be sexy – finances never are. But travel budgets are necessary to planning vacations on a budget & for saving money for travel.

So if you’re ready to roll up your sleeves, download the free Travel Budget Worksheetfrom ourresource libraryandlet’s get started.

Unfortunately, the answer to this will be different for everyone.

But these are the things you should be accounting for when creating your travel budget:

• Food costs
• Hotel costs
• Transportation costs
• Souvenirs or gifts
• Activities
• Miscellaneous (dog sitting, new luggage, ortravel essentialsfor your trip)
• Petty cash (maybe you want to buy an umbrella if it’s raining, or you forgot your toothbrush)

The exact amounts will depend on your exact needs, but you should always write down anything you think you might need and then take it off later, if you end up not using it.

Before you even start looking up your hotels or flights, you need a template.

Open up a simple word document, grab a notebook, or get our Printable Travel Budget Template from ourTravel Resource Library.

Below is the travel budget we used for our Amsterdam & France trip.

You can see that we start by filling in all of our expenses first. I break up the hotels by destination since we usually have more than on on our trips.

Next we do some research.

We start looking up flights, hotels, car rental/transportation costs, etc to get a good idea of how much we need to budget forrealistically.

I try to stick to hotels in the mid-range price point and flights on the cheaper side. You can change these preferences for more budget-friendly or luxury options, depending on your preferences.

Food costs will be specific to your situation (how many people/days) and other miscellaneous expenses will vary also from trip to trip.

We usually budget for about $75 – 100 per day for the both of us – but it really depends on where we’re traveling to and how expensive food is.

Little by little I go filling out the “Expected Cost” column. This is where I usually get a good idea of how much the total trip will cost – and how much we can really afford

For this trip, our estimated total was just over $4100. That estimate was for two people so it ended up being just over $2000 per person.

*** $4115÷ 2 people = $2057.50 per person budget ***

Now I look at how many days we will be traveling. In this case it’s 10 days, 9 nights. For roughly $2000 per person, it’s definitely doable for us.

But if you get to this step and you realize it’s too expensive you have a few options:

• Change your travel plans to a cheaper destination
• Change the time of year you’re traveling (this makes a huge difference)
• Give yourself more time to save up for your trip
• Find a way to cut expenses (more on that next!)

This last screenshot shows you the completed travel budget. We always make it a point to highlight all of the expenses we’ve already paid for. And we pay for things in advance one at a time until finally everything is highlighted.

If your travel budget seems just a little bit too high, there are some things you can do to cut costs.

The main way we reduce travel expenses is by planning our trip in advance. Flights and hotels generally go up as you get closer to your travel dates so start early to get the best price.

We’ve written an entire post on23 Ways to Reduce Travel Costs and Save You Hundredsthat you can check out too!

But here are a few of our go-to moves:

• Being flexible. Even just a little flexibility on travel dates/travel destination make a huge difference. We useSkyscannerto find the cheapest places to go to! Just search for “everywhere” as the destination and then you can sort by the whole month to find the cheapest dates to fly.
• Don’t buy the in-flight meal. Usually the food iscrappysub-par and fasting is actually better on flights! Read our10 Travel Mistakes You’re Making post for more details on that!
• Time of year makes a big difference on hotel rooms too. Peak seasons will always be more expensive!
• UseGoEuro to compare transportation options for the cheapest rates
• Find free or low cost activities like gardens, local hiking trains, and vintage markets

The last way we reduce our travel expenses is actually by saving for travel in advance. We always have a travel fund that we tap into on our trips.

We use this travel fund for miscellaneous purchases as well as expenses that we can get out of the way quickly.

And we keep it going year-round so that we’re not struggling to save at the last minute! We also have a few other money saving tricks that we use year-round to save money!

So when you’re ready to start your own travel budget, print out the free Travel Budget Worksheet from our resource library and use this guide to make a travel budget you can actually stick to!

Happy travels!