Trip budget template: a simple travel budget you can copy

A trip budget does not need a spreadsheet with forty rows. It needs a handful of honest categories, a number for each, and a habit of checking it while you are away. The template below is short on purpose. Copy it into any notes app or document and you can have a first draft in twenty minutes.

If you want the thinking behind the numbers, how to make a travel budget goes into it. This post is the template itself, and how to fill it in.

The template

Trip basics

• Trip name:
• Dates and number of nights:
• Number of people:
• Currency you will spend in:
• Your home currency:
• Total I can spend:

Costs you can fix before you go

• Transport to the destination: flights, trains or fuel
• Stays: total for all nights
• Transport between places: trains, ferries, internal flights
• Tours and tickets you know you want:
• Travel insurance:
• Visas, permits and entry fees:
• Things to buy for the trip: luggage, adapters, clothing

Costs per day

• Food: a daily amount per person
• Local transport: metro, buses, taxis
• Activities and entry fees you have not booked:
• Drinks, coffee, snacks:
• Small extras: tips, laundry, pharmacy
• Daily total per person:
• Number of days:
• Days total:

The cushion

• Buffer: a percentage of everything above, kept separate
• Souvenirs and gifts: a fixed amount, so it does not drift

The sum

• Fixed costs total:
• Days total:
• Buffer and extras:
• Trip total:
• Per person:
• Compared with what I can spend: over, under or on target

While you are away

• Spent so far:
• Days left:
• Daily average so far:
• Daily amount I can spend from here:

Shared trip only

• What counts as shared: stay, transport, groceries, group meals
• What stays personal: drinks, shopping, solo activities
• How shared costs are split: evenly, by share or by exact amounts
• Who pays upfront:
• When we settle up:

How to fill it in

Start from the total you can spend. Write the real ceiling at the top before anything else, even if it is uncomfortable. A budget built to fit a number is more useful than one that shows what the trip costs when everything goes well.

Fill the fixed costs first. These are the ones you can look up now: the flights, the stays, the tickets you have already decided on. They are usually the largest part of the total, and they are the only part where waiting makes things worse.

Make the daily amount a range of three, then pick one. Think of a careful day, a normal day and a generous day. Pick the middle one for the budget. Knowing what the careful day looks like gives you somewhere to retreat to if you run ahead.

Keep the buffer separate. Ten to fifteen per cent of the total is a common starting point. Put it on its own line rather than padding the other figures, so that when you dip into it you know you are doing so.

Name the souvenirs. A fixed figure for gifts and things you will want to bring home stops them silently eating the daily budget.

Check it in the middle. The "while you are away" block is the one that earns its keep. Halfway through, work out the daily average so far and the daily amount you can spend from here. It takes two minutes and it is the difference between a budget and a wish. Tracking travel expenses shows easy ways to keep the running total.

A worked example: ten days in Japan

Two friends travelling together, ten nights, mostly Tokyo and Kyoto. The figures below are placeholders to show the shape, not prices to rely on, so treat the amounts as round numbers.

Trip basics

• Dates: ten nights, two people
• Currency you will spend in: yen
• Home currency: dollars
• Total I can spend: 5,000 per person

Fixed costs per person

• Flights: 1,300
• Stays: 1,100, sharing a twin room
• Train between Tokyo and Kyoto: 120
• Booked experiences: 150
• Insurance: 80
• Subtotal: 2,750

Daily costs per person

• Food: 40
• Local transport: 12
• Activities: 20
• Drinks and snacks: 10
• Extras: 8
• Daily total: 90, times ten days, is 900

The cushion

• Buffer: 12 per cent of 3,650, so about 440
• Gifts: 200

The sum

• Trip total: about 4,290 per person
• Compared with what I can spend: 710 under

Reading it back, the budget tells us three useful things. Flights and stays are more than half of the cost, so any saving worth chasing is there. A day of 90 is a sensible planning figure, but it is not a target to spend. And there is real slack, so adding a night or an extra experience is a decision, not a gamble. For more on how daily costs differ between regions, see daily travel costs by region.

Budgeting as a group

A group budget has two extra parts: what is shared and how it is divided. Write both down before booking. Most of the awkward moments on group trips come from someone discovering halfway through that a cost they never agreed to is being split with them, so shared kitty or split as you go is worth reading together. The worked example above would add a line for the shared rooms, the taxis and a couple of group dinners, split evenly, with everything else personal.

Where to go next

Once the totals are down, the next job is making sure they hold. Save for a trip turns the total into a monthly figure, and hidden costs of travel lists the things that tend to be missing from a first draft.