So you are skimming through Instagram pictures and picking out all of your favorite destinations for the trip you’e planning, you have started to compile a list of your must sees, and you are building a route. What’s your next step? According to the BootsnAll email series, you should start thinking about your budget. I am sure that’s exactly what you wanted to do at this point. As you drift into fantasies of your epic soon to be travel journey, you’ll be quickly brought down to earth by the thought of budgeting. I know it’s not the most fun travel topic, but it’s way better to sort out your budget now than to be halfway around the world, two-thirds of the way into your trip with no money left in the bank. TRUST ME on this one! You will thank your travel loving, project manager blogging friend if you decide to follow these basic budgeting suggestions. Plus, I’ll be sharing my personal travel budget soon and providing updates on how well I stayed on budget during my RTW trip. Stay tuned!
DECIDE HOW YOU WANT TO TRAVEL
Whether you are looking to backpack like a pro on a shoe string budget, ball on a smedium budget, live in the lap of luxury or spend anywhere on that spectrum, the best way to make sure you have enough money during your trip is to decide your spending style during the early planning stages.
Consider a very simple example. Say you want to go to Miami for a five day vacation. Is the goal of your trip to simply get away and soak up the sun rays or are you planning a trip for a milestone birthday party that will include a lavish suite life hotel room for you and your friends along with VIP bottle service club nights each night? As you can imagine, one of those vacations will be fairly inexpensive while the other will most likely cost an arm and a leg. Both are perfectly fine and awesome ways of vacationing in Miami, but if you planned the VIP birthday bash on a barely there budget, chances are you and your friends would be very disappointed with your experience as you would likely end up staying outside the velvet rope or the club entirely for the duration of the trip. Being mindful of your budget can ensure that your travel lifestyle expectations are inline with your bank account.
The above Miami example was a short trip, and it is very clear what could happen if the wrong traveling lifestyle expectation is set. Now instead of a 5 day vacation think about a 6 month or 1 year journey around the world. If you plan a trip of that magnitude using a travel lifestyle expectation that’s incongruent with your budget, you are toast!
A GOOD BUDGET IS YOUR FRIEND
A budget is simply a plan for your money – a plan that you you control and create. A good budget can give you the freedom and piece of mind to spend freely knowing that you have the money to cover your wants and needs without running the risk of prematurely exhausting your funds.
Say you’ve saved $1,000 to go on a trip Great! How will you plan to spend that money to make sure you don’t run out of money before you return home? Maybe you give yourself permission to spend up to $300 for a flight, $400 for accommodations, and $300 for food and activities. How easy was that?! You can play with the combination until the budget feels right and realistic to you. If you have flight loyalty miles that will cover your plane ticket, you’ll be able to redistribute the amount of money you originally bucketed for airfare. You might decide to up your food/activities budget bucket by $100 and create a new budget called contingency in case of an emergency or something unknown. If you don’t spend your contingency money by the end of the trip, you could park that money in you travel savings bank account so you are $200 ahead of the game in saving for your next trip! See how awesome budgeting can be if you put it to work for you?
FOMALIZING YOUR BUDGET
The above example was pretty simple right? Well budgeting can be a simple or as complex as you need it to be. There are several factors that could go into your budgeting decisions that may require a formal more complex budget. The length of your trip, whether or not you are familiar with the destination and associated cost of living in that location, and whether or not you are planning for a group of people are all examples of decisions that might lead you to create a formal budget. I use Excel to create my travel budgets. If you need an Excel template for your next trip budgeting exercise, please click here for my example budget template. Happy budgeting!
