Trip Budget Worksheet
The main costs, then the long tail everyone forgets. Fill in real prices for your actual destination — the second list is where budgets go wrong.
BFCBrilliance · bfcbrilliance.com/tools/vacation-budget-calculator
The trip
- Destination
- Dates
- Nights
- Days
- People
- Accommodation/night
- Food/person/day
- Activities/person/day
- Transport total
- TRIP TOTAL
- Per person
Day by day — plan the expensive days on purpose
| Day | Plan | Food | Activities | Other | Day total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
The arithmetic
- Accommodation
- per NIGHT x nights
- Food
- per person per DAY x people x days
- Activities
- per person per DAY x people x days
- Transport
- one total for everyone
- ⚠ Days vs nights
- usually nights + 1 — you eat on both travel days
- Each extra day costs
- a night + a day of food and activities
The costs that are not in the total
- Travel insurance
- Visas, entry fees, vaccinations
- Airport parking, or the taxi to it
- Luggage fees — often more on the return leg
- Transfers at BOTH ends
- Tips, where they are expected
- Currency conversion and foreign transaction charges
- Phone roaming or a local SIM
- Pet care, plant watering, someone checking the house
- A contingency you do not spend in the first three days
Before booking
- Two or three REAL prices looked up for the actual destination
- Per-person figure agreed with everyone travelling
- Nights and days counted separately and checked
- Accommodation confirmed as per room or per person
- Cancellation terms read on the expensive bookings
- Payment split and settled BEFORE the trip, not during
- The one thing you would be sad to miss — costed and booked
A seven-night trip is eight days of eating
The single most common budgeting error on a holiday, and the reason nights and days are separate boxes here. You arrive on day one and eat; you leave on day eight and eat. Using the night count for food quietly understates it by about an eighth — small enough not to notice when planning and large enough to notice at the end.
Agree the money before you go
The per-person figure is not really a maths problem, it is a social one. Settling who pays for what at the kitchen table costs nothing; working it out on day five, when one person has covered two dinners and another booked the car, is how trips develop an atmosphere that outlasts them.