There are two basic approaches to planning and budgeting travel.
- Bucket List Travel – When you know the where. If the destination is really important to you (and your travel style – whether it’s luxury, eating at special restaurants, taking classes, or relaxing at a resort) are not flexible then your planning starts with how much money the trip will actually cost.
- Just Go Travel – When your going to go with whatever money you have. If the fact that you’re traveling is more important than where and how, then your planning is based on the money you actually have. In each case, you need to know your budget.
Bucket List Travel Planning/Budgeting Approach
First, lets tackle the one where you know where you want to go. We’ll call this the bucket list travel. I have a few posts that go into this in detail, so I am just going to touch on the basics here. You can read Travel Budgeting – How Much Is This Trip Going to Cost Me? OR Travel Budgeting Example – Going to Ireland
You’ll need to figure out the general costs of Transportation, Accommodation, Food, Activities and Spending Money. Once you have these numbers, you can divide the total by the number of months when you want to take the trip, and you’ll get the amount you need to save per month in order to take the trip without going into debt.
If there’s no way that you can put aside enough money for your trip, consider changing the dates you want to go to the shoulder or off-season. If that still doesn’t make it feasible, plan to extend the trip for another year. You can always choose a smaller trip in the meantime.
If you need some tips on how to save money for a trip, read these posts Saving Money To Travel AND How to Cut Back on Travel Spending AND Free Activities When Traveling
Just Go Travel Planning/Budgeting Approach
If you are in the latter group, and you just want to travel (because really there isn’t a bad destination!) then planning is a little bit different. We’ll call this the just go travel.
Determine your budget
What do you already have saved, or what can you reasonably save between now and the time you want to leave. That is how much money you have to spend on wherever you go.
Pick where you want to go
There are a few ways to think about this, but for me the choice always comes down to transportation and lodging. Food and activities never have much weight in my budget, because there are so many ways to cut back on those (read these posts here How to Cut Back on Travel Spending AND Free Activities When Traveling
I like to start by thinking about how I could get free accommodation. Think about the people in your life and where they live. Does exploring their area sound enticing to you? Ask and see if you can stay with them. Or, have you heard that someone is going to take a vacation of their own, and their house might be empty? Maybe you could pitch house sitting for them.
Don’t limit yourself by only thinking about far distances either. If you have a friend or family member that lives just a couple of hours away, you can still get a new cultural experience from nearby.
If free accommodation isn’t an option, it’s time to think about getting a deal on transportation. Like I touched on above, you don’t have to go far to experience something new. What city or area within driving distance to you have you not yet visited. Near Cincinnati for example, there are TONS of destinations within 5 hours or less for all types of different adventures – from big city to remote woods.
If you’re set on taking a flight, head on over to Skyscanner and use the everywhere feature for the destination from your home airport for the dates you want and it will give you the cheapest results it can find. You can often find a domestic option for right around $100, and sometimes you can score an international option for as low as $300-$400.
When you don’t have many restrictions, your travel budget will go much further. Take advantage of the different saving options that you have and you can still get out there and travel no matter your budget.
You can grab a free travel budgeting worksheet from my content library here.