I found this document of a post that I was going to do back in 2019, but I guess I never did. I decided to go ahead and publish it now just to show you how my mind works when I’m trying to plan in advance for a trip.
Hope you enjoy a sneak peak into my mind.
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Planning Background
I’m currently in the process of trying to decide on a location for a trip that will be our last family trip as a trio.
I’ve narrowed it down to a couple places based on some general criteria and now want to look at budgeting to see which location makes the most sense for this trip. Here’s what our criteria is for this trip.
- Has to be kid friendly (this trip is really all about Isabel and spending quality time just with her before the new baby arrives).
- Walkable with a stroller (usually we don’t bring a stroller when we travel, but since I’m pregnant I don’t want to be stuck in a position where she only wants me and I have to carry her).
- Not too hot (because we’ll be going in the heat of the summer)
With this in mind, I have Orlando, Florida (Disney), Ireland, and the Amalfi Coast, Italy. I think realistically the Amalfi Coast would be a little bit out of budget for this trip, and I think that Isabel may still be a little bit too young for Disney. So, for this post I’m going to outline how I do my travel budget planning using Ireland as an example. We have some family there who we might be able to stay with, so that would help keep the costs down too.
The Process
So, I’m planning a trip to Ireland for my husband, 2 year old and I at the end of July. I want to go from Cincinnati (but am open to surrounding airports too). While there I know we would want to visit our family in Kildare, check out the Waterford area, and visit the Killarney National Park (we’ve already been and seen some of the more well known sites so we aren’t in need of doing everything). We’d look for a moderate Air B&B and wouldn’t be planning on doing too much shopping.
Here’s my train of thought for an estimated travel budget
Flights
I know I want to go somewhere near the end of July, before I can’t fly. So I go to Skyscanner, type in Dublin, and search for the entire month of July to look for the cheapest dates. Then I’ll search a couple of surrounding airports to see the price difference. Here’s what I came up with:
CVG – DUB – $969
CMH – DUB – $835
CLE – DUB – $830
CHI – DUB – $551 (this is the closest MAJOR airport to us, so would require 5+ hour drive or 6 hour bus ticket and possible hotel stay depending on when the flight would be. I always check this airport because sometimes the deal is worth it. In this case I’m not sure it is because the return ticket would require an airport change in New York. The next cheapest ticket is $806 which definitely wouldn’t be worth the long drive).
I searched a few more but they were even more than these so I didn’t even bother writing them down. I ended up searching July 23-30.
So, since I don’t think we’ll do the Chicago ticket in this instance, I will take the average of the other three prices and put that number on my travel budgeting spreadsheet (get yours here). In this case, $878 per person or $2,634 for the family. (I’M CRYING THAT MY 2 YEAR OLD NOW REQUIRES THE PURCHASE OF A TICKET!!)
Rental Car
Since Ireland is such a drivable country and we want to see a few parts, it’s easier to rent a car than rely on public transportation. For this I go to rentalcars.com because they have 4% cashback on Rakuten. I type in my dates with some general pick-up/drop-off times for the Dublin airport and get some quotes. We need a car big enough for a car seat, enough trunk space for our bags, and I’m sure my husband would prefer automatic but if the savings is good then manual would be fine. After that I just go with the cheapest model.
In this case we’re looking at $386.88 for 7 days ($55.27/day) for an automatic or $157.81 for 7 days ($22.54/day) for a manual. We’d likely choose the manual in this case.
Then since it’s a car, we also have to factor in gas. I’ll just type in gas prices for Dublin in google and pick a site. Right now it’s saying that prices are $1.58/liter or $5.97/gallon.
I’ll then go to Google Maps and type in a general map of places I want to go to get a general idea of mileage that we’ll be traveling and just do the math. In this case I estimate roughly 450 miles or ~724km in a car that gets an average of 35 miles per gallon. So for gas, I would estimate about $80 (this gives me a very nice cushion).
Accommodation
Before kids I always stayed in hostels, HostelWorld is the site I used for that. Now that I have little ones, my go to is Air B&B. I go to the site, type in my destination, get a few options that fit my criteria, and take the average for my budgeted amount.
For this trip I’ll need 1 night in Dublin, 2 nights in Killarney and 1 night in Waterford. The other 3 nights I would hope to stay in Kildare with my family. I want a 1 bedroom, king sized bed, close to where our activities are.
Here is a breakdown of what I found for my criteria:
Dublin – average price seems to be around $150/night
Killarney – average price looks to be about $100/night; so $200 for both nights
Waterford – averages to be about $110/night
So, assuming we could stay with family for the other 3 nights, it looks like we’d be spending about $460 on lodging.
Food
For this trip I would estimate that we will need money for about 4 days of meals. I anticipate being able to eat home cooked meals with my family for the rest of the meals.
I type in average meal costs in Ireland into Google and get $ 30 per person per day or $75/day for my family. I know typically we can shave off a few dollars because we don’t mind packing some of our own meals, but in this case because we will be eating with family for some of the time I don’t mind eating out for most meals so I will keep with the average numbers. I’ll multiply these by 2.5 since there’s two of us plus a toddler and put that into my travel budgeting worksheet. In this case, just under $190.
Activities
The two planned activities that I’ll have for this trip are to see the Waterford Lighthouse and go to Killarney National Park. I do a quick Google search to see what these cost and get the below numbers.
Waterford Lighthouse ticket – 10 euro for adults and free for kids; so with the exchange rate for 2 adults were looking at $22
Killarney National Park – free
Spending Money
The final step in budgeting is factoring in spending money. We don’t really buy much in terms of souvenirs because we pack light with no room to take anything extra in our suitcases, so I don’t budget anything for that. The extra money that we might spend is on an unplanned activity, parking, snacks and maybe a special treat. We do also enjoy stopping at coffee shops and having the occasional drink, so that is also budgeted for here. $175 is what I will put aside for that.
Putting it Together
For this trip I don’t really need to cushion, and I’m not worried about travel insurance. So, once I have all the numbers in my spreadsheet, I can look at the total and get a rough idea of what a trip to Ireland would cost us. For this example, it adds up to be about $3,719.
Once I have this number, I can start looking at what I would need to set aside each month in order to make the trip happen. In this case I’d have 6 months to save, which would be about $620 I would need to set aside each month. If it’s feasible, then I would start planning the specifics such as the exact place we would stay and flight that we would take. In this case, I know that putting over $600 aside each month for this trip would not be feasible in our budget, so we cannot take this trip before baby 2 arrives… but here’s to dreaming.
I hope this example gives you a peak into my mind during my travel budgeting process and helps you determine what a trip to your destination would cost. You can pick up the free travel budgeting spreadsheet here, as well as access to all of my free content. If you don’t have the password yet, sign up below and get it straight to your email.