So, why do I consider us to be budget travelers? Well. Simply put, because we need to budget to be able to afford to travel and we need to stick to a budget while we are traveling.
In our case, we make sacrifices in other areas of our day-to-day life to make sure we have money going into a travel savings account. A few examples: we don't have cable TV, we limit how often we grab fast food and we rarely dine out at full-service restaurants, almost all our clothes are bought off clearance racks, and we definitely don't run out to grab all the latest new technological gadgets.
It's a no-brainer for us. We prefer simple living and spending money frivolously stresses us out. We live comfortably, for us, though we recognize we are quite outside the societal norm. (I could write an entire essay on all the ways we find ourselves outside of societal norms – but that is for another time.)
Once we make these sacrifices to build up our travel savings, we then have a very strict budget to adhere to while we are on our vacation. We do a tremendous amount of research and planning before our trips, so we rarely have huge surprise expenses. And, we almost always choose low-cost options over luxury.
We also make use of reward programs. We put everything on credit cards to earn points but never carry a balance or pay any fees – paying interest or fees would defeat the point of the rewards. Depending on what kind of trip we have coming up, we either use a card that will rack up points for free hotel stays or for airline miles or, sometimes, a straight cash-back reward is the best way to go.
For every trip, we have a two-stage budget that is either printed and brought with us or is accessible on our devices.
Stage one of the budget is done while we are planning, before we book anything. This is necessary to make sure the trip is possible within our budget and we usually aim to over estimate if we are unsure about any costs. Going over budget is not an option, so we give ourselves some extra wiggle room. Plus, we love to come home with money to roll into the next trip's budget.
The second stage is tracking what we are actually spending each day. This allows us to, not only, make sure we don't over spend and end up with a credit card bill bigger than our bank account, but also to make changes on the go. If we notice we are $100 under budget for food, we may decide to treat ourselves to something special before the trip is over. If we come across an opportunity that wasn't budgeted for, we can look for ways to adjust. It is a little extra work to update the numbers each night, but it gives us peace of mind.
Here's the actual budget from our 2017 Road Trip:
Day
|
Budget
|
Spent
| |||
1
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$26.90
| ||
$100
|
Food
|
$64.08
| |||
Litchfield
|
$110
|
Hotel
|
$109.73
| ||
Extras
|
$2.04
| ||||
$29
|
Gas
|
$28.96
| |||
2
|
$100
|
Food
|
$4.28
| ||
Cape Girardeau
|
$0
|
Hotel
|
$0.00
| ||
Extras
|
$0.00
| ||||
3
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$19.56
| ||
$100
|
Food
|
$145.13
| |||
Southaven
|
$118
|
Hotel
|
$117.51
| ||
Extras
|
$8.41
| ||||
4
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$31.77
| ||
$150
|
Food
|
$51.63
| |||
Vicksburg
|
$0
|
Hotel
|
$0.00
| ||
$15
|
Extras
|
$0.00
| |||
5
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$0.00
| ||
$150
|
Food
|
$116.69
| |||
Vicksburg
|
$0
|
Hotel
|
$0.00
| ||
Extras
|
$51.00
| ||||
6
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$31.49
| ||
$100
|
Food
|
$192.19
| |||
Denham Springs
|
$0
|
Hotel
|
$0.00
| ||
Extras
|
$0.00
| ||||
7
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$0.00
| ||
$100
|
Food
|
$42.93
| |||
Denham Springs
|
$0
|
Hotel
|
$0.00
| ||
$12
|
Extras
|
$12.36
| |||
8
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$30.45
| ||
$150
|
Food
|
$95.38
| |||
Orange Beach
|
$391
|
Hotel
|
$391.55
| ||
$12
|
Extras
|
$28.50
| |||
9
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$0.00
| ||
$150
|
Food
|
$91.28
| |||
Orange Beach
|
$391
|
Hotel
|
$391.55
| ||
$0
|
Extras
|
$5.00
| |||
10
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$33.68
| ||
$100
|
Food
|
$104.86
| |||
Gadsden
|
$0
|
Hotel
|
$0.00
| ||
$0
|
Extras
|
$3.40
| |||
11
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$15.13
| ||
$150
|
Food
|
$121.72
| |||
Chattanooga
|
$0
|
Hotel
|
$0.00
| ||
$10
|
Extras
|
$15.80
| |||
12
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$0.00
| ||
$100
|
Food
|
$48.87
| |||
Cherokee
|
$104
|
Hotel
|
$104.77
| ||
$0
|
Extras
|
$0.00
| |||
13
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$23.30
| ||
$150
|
Food
|
$107.17
| |||
Gatlinburg
|
$166
|
Hotel
|
$166.73
| ||
$0
|
Extras
|
$0.00
| |||
14
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$26.24
| ||
$100
|
Food
|
$59.00
| |||
Murfreesboro
|
$117
|
Hotel
|
$119.51
| ||
Extras
|
$0.00
| ||||
15
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$0.00
| ||
$100
|
Food
|
$88.75
| |||
Horse Cave
|
$0
|
Hotel
|
$0.00
| ||
$21
|
Extras
|
$20.50
| |||
16
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$21.90
| ||
$100
|
Food
|
$189.86
| |||
Indianapolis
|
$0
|
Hotel
|
$0.00
| ||
$41
|
Extras
|
$0.00
| |||
17
|
$29
|
Gas
|
$0.00
| ||
$20
|
Food
|
$18.34
| |||
Home
|
$0
|
Hotel
|
$0.00
| ||
$579
|
Extras
|
$200.00
| |||
TOTALS
|
$4,500
|
$3,579.90
|
In 2017, we had a budget of $4,500 for the 5 of us to take a 17-day road trip. Is that a tight budget to most people? I'm actually not sure. I know there are plenty of families that would never be able to spend $4,500 on a vacation – all their money going straight to essentials. I never take for granted how fortunate we are to be able to travel, at all.
So, we do not feel like $4,500 is a small amount of money, by any means. But, it did feel like a tight budget. That was taking into account several hotel rooms budgeted at $0 which were to be booked with points. We also only budgeted $100 for food most days, $150 in more expensive cities. We ate the hotel's included breakfast and, with few exceptions, had fast food for lunch, snacks were packed with us, and dinner was either fast food or a casual full-service restaurant (think 2 for $20 or kids eat free deals). Without those hotel points we earned through our reward card, without eating cheap fast food so often, we couldn't have fit this trip into that $4,500 budget. You'll notice one day we only spent a few bucks on food, that was thanks to visiting family who fed us. (Thanks, fam!) And, we came in under budget much more often on a daily basis than we went over. That added up to an actual cost of just over $3,500 for the 17-day road trip (leaving us more than $900 to roll into our next vacation's budget).
So, we do not feel like $4,500 is a small amount of money, by any means. But, it did feel like a tight budget. That was taking into account several hotel rooms budgeted at $0 which were to be booked with points. We also only budgeted $100 for food most days, $150 in more expensive cities. We ate the hotel's included breakfast and, with few exceptions, had fast food for lunch, snacks were packed with us, and dinner was either fast food or a casual full-service restaurant (think 2 for $20 or kids eat free deals). Without those hotel points we earned through our reward card, without eating cheap fast food so often, we couldn't have fit this trip into that $4,500 budget. You'll notice one day we only spent a few bucks on food, that was thanks to visiting family who fed us. (Thanks, fam!) And, we came in under budget much more often on a daily basis than we went over. That added up to an actual cost of just over $3,500 for the 17-day road trip (leaving us more than $900 to roll into our next vacation's budget).
So, I'm not sure if we are "budget travelers" by every definition, but we definitely know how to budget for our travels!