I strongly believe that your travels do not need to break your bank. Nor do you need to compromise on your bucketlist countries to fit your vacation within your budget. Rather, travel to your bucketlist destinations. Travel to every corner of the world that you have dreamt to visit BUT do this on a budget. One of the most important things to do if you want to travel luxuriously around the globe multiple times a year is planning a trip budget.
This can be especially important when travelling with kids. You are likely paying close to or full prices for your kids on flights and some hotels and/or tours. With the increasing costs of travel, budget trip is the way to go.
Contrary to the belief that travelling to luxurious destinations means you can’t have a budget or that you will be compromising on a ton of activities – vacations on a budget most certainly does NOT mean this. I can assure you that although we travel on and within our budget, we have never felt like we missed out on an experience we craved to do. In fact, we were able to add in way more than we anticipated and came back from our trip fully satisfied and content. We have been able to splurge a lot more on our activities and accommodations (depending on the destination) once we decided what our budget actually was.
Planning a trip budget can be overwhelming and a lot of work but it is so rewarding because you cross of your bucketlist countries all by planning a low budget trip – without making compromises!
So, lets jump right in..
Are you here because you are planning a trip on a budget?
I have done a lot of legwork for you to ensure that you can have those dream vacations on a budget. I have prepared templates on how to budget your vacation, daily day and budget planners and tips on planning a budget template.
Planning a vacation on a budget
Your budget for a trip can be dependent on your destination, time frame you plan to visit, the types of accommodations you pick, etc. Some of our best budget friendly vacations have been to South Africa and Maldives. Often considered expensive destinations, you can visit these places while staying within your budget.
For us, we love to use our credit card points that we accumulate towards travel. This card has helped us accumulate a ton of travel points and we have used it to book each of our trips in the past year and a half. If you want to read more on how to make the most of this card, read our blog post on it by clicking here.
Low budget travel has allowed us to visit countries from our bucketlist in the past 2 years. Every trip we have been on has been on either one of our bucketlist. Planning a family budget for your trip is the single most important step for you to take to plan your dream vacation.
I budget my trip keeping in mind that my weekend trip budget will be very different from international budget trips. If I plan to go on a trip for a week, my budget will be smaller compared to a three-week trip. If I am travelling during peak season, I anticipate higher costs than travelling during low or shoulder season. Click here to read my guide about family travel on a budget.
To help you reach your travel goals, I have prepared these templates for you to use. I always print these out and take it with us on our trips just so we can monitor our spending and know how much budget we have left to splurge during our trip – the last thing you want is to come back from your dream trip only to realize how over budget you went.
These templates will help you decide where you can save money, what credit cards you are using for bookings, the type of travel expenses to anticipate, what you spend on travel insurance, car rental, car insurance, plane ticket, etc.
Click here to access the templates and planners (PRESS DOWNLOAD BELOW THE FILE)
Now that you have had a chance to go over the templates, let me start off by explaining how to use them.
You may need to print more than one copy of some pages from the template package. For example, if you are taking 2 separate flights to and from your destination, print a copy for each flight. Similarly, for hotels, print as many copies as you need for the number of hotels you will be staying at during your trip.
Make sure you use the daily budget planner every night during your trip. It takes a few minutes to fill out, but this is an extremely essential step to help you stay within your budget. Most times I anticipate higher costs while planning, but we end up spending less and this daily budget planner helps me figure out our day-to-day expense. This means we have more budget to splurge on certain activities, tours, experiences or even souvenirs.
The point of these templates is to help you with a low budget trip. Not only will it support you with noting your expenses step by step but will also keep you extremely organized during your trip. For example, our trip to New Zealand includes: 3 countries, 8 flights, 3 car rentals, 13+ hotels and a ton of tours. This helps me organize and keep all my booking confirmation numbers, booking portal used, if the payment is done in full or pending, payment method used, check in times, pick up locations, etc, in one spot.
I have tried keeping a track of this on my phone in the past and let me tell you, although I am a big phone person, this was not the best way to do this. Be it a long trip or short, these templates are my go-to now.
Final thoughts on planning a trip budget
I hope you find these templates as useful as I find them. I bet if you are traveling with friends or family and have these printed and ready to go, you will be the most organized person in your group. My goal is to help everyone achieve their travel dreams so feel free to share them with anyone you think may benefit from it. If you have any thoughts or comments, as always please reach out to us through social media or the contact us page on this website.
