Calculate your travel budget: stay in control of your holiday spending

Nothing spoils a trip as quickly as discovering halfway through that your funds are almost gone. Fortunately, that's easy to prevent. With a simple method you keep control of your money before and during the trip, without endless number-crunching. In this guide you'll learn to split your holiday spending into clear categories and get practical calculation tips that don't go out of date.

Calculate your travel budget in five categories

The core of a good cost estimate is splitting it up. One big number says little, but if you estimate your holiday costs per category, everything suddenly becomes concrete. Work with these five categories and you'll capture almost every expense:

• Transport: there and back, plus all local travel on site.
• Accommodation: overnight stays, including any tourist tax.
• Food and drink: from groceries to eating out.
• Activities: entrance fees, excursions, tours and individual outings.
• Buffer: a reserve for the unexpected.

Category 1: transport

Start with the big chunks, because they often make up half your budget. Calculate your outbound and return journey separately and add the transport at your destination: metro, bus, train tickets or a rental car with fuel. Don't forget small recurring trips, because they add up considerably over a whole trip.

Category 2: accommodation

Accommodation is easiest to calculate per night. Take a realistic price per night and multiply by the number of nights. Watch out for extra costs you only see at checkout, such as cleaning fees or tourist tax per person per night.

Category 3: food and drink

Food is the category people most often misjudge. The trick is to calculate per day instead of for the whole trip at once. Think about how much you spend on an average day on breakfast, lunch, dinner and a few drinks, and multiply that by the number of days. If you cook yourself, this category comes out lower than if you eat out every evening.

Category 4: activities

List what you really want to do and look up the entrance prices. Museums, a day trip, a tour or a ticket for a sight: write them down one by one. That way you immediately see whether your wish list fits your budget or whether you have to choose.

Category 5: the buffer, your financial safety net

The most important category is the one most often forgotten. Always add a reserve of about ten to fifteen percent on top of your total for the unexpected: a missed connection, a medicine, a spontaneous outing or simply days that turn out more expensive. This buffer is the difference between relaxed travelling and nervously watching your balance.

Calculation tips that always work

Amounts change from year to year and from destination to destination, but the way you calculate stays the same. With this approach you're rarely far off:

• Calculate in fixed daily amounts for food and local transport, so your budget scales with the length of your trip.
• When in doubt, round up. Overestimating is annoying, underestimating is a problem.
• Take exchange rates and withdrawal fees into account when travelling outside the eurozone.
• Note your big expenses along the way, so you can adjust halfway through.

Keep your budget in one place

A budget only really works when you see it alongside the rest of your trip. When your transport, accommodation and activities are on a timeline, you see exactly when which costs fall. A travel planner like Zuvy puts your whole trip, including budget and documents, on a timeline, so your estimate and your plan never drift apart. That way you not only start your holiday well prepared, but also keep an effortless overview on the road.