We learned long ago at Family Travels on Budget that the first thing to do for a successful vacation is to determine the budget, no matter how big or small.
Budgeting is part of our daily lives. We budget for groceries, gas, clothes, and gifts.
We also calculate the trip costs.
You have come to the correct place if you do not know how to estimate your travel expenses!
This step-by-step guide, Our Travel Cost Estimator, helps us to estimate trip costs before we make a decision.
This article explains how to use the travel cost estimator in order to create a budget for your vacation.
You can download the free travel cost estimator at the end of this post to plan your family vacations within a budget.
We estimate travel costs to get an idea of how much we’ll spend. Estimating the cost of a trip is much easier with online tools.
How to Budget for a Vacation Using Travel Costs
It’s true! A vacation budget can make your vacation more enjoyable.
You can better plan your trip when you know the cost of travel in advance.
You won’t be wondering, “How much does this cost me?”
The first step involves deciding what type of vacation and where you would like to go. You got it?
The second step is to determine the cost.
It can be overwhelming to plan your vacation expenses if you’ve never done it before. After you’ve done it once, I promise it will be easy. You’ll feel more at ease knowing that you can afford to go on vacation. Priceless!
Let’s see how you can calculate the travel cost of your vacation.
To help you understand how this works, I will use a 5-day vacation as an example.
Vacation Planning Tools To Help You Estimate Travel Costs.
Two tools that I use for calculating travel costs is MOMONDO and Kayak.
MOMONDO can be used to compare prices online.
- Compare flight prices by airline, date/time and airport to get the best deal for your vacation.
- Compare the hotel rates of different discounters, and compare them by travel dates. You may be able to save a lot by changing your vacation schedule by a couple days or even weeks.
- Compare the cost of car rentals by company and location.
- Book directly on the website.
MOMONDO is great because it allows me to compare all my options and choose the best option for my budget.
We used this tool on one trip to find that flying out of Fayetteville was cheaper than flying in from Raleigh. Even though I had to drive an extra 30 minutes, I still saved $200. It was a great investment!
KAYAK can save you money when traveling.
KAYAK allows you to book hotels, flights, rental cars, and cruises. Kayak offers more flexibility in terms of dates, so I compare the prices found on Momondo with Kayak for specific dates. Kayak is a booking website.
KAYAK’s map helps me to visualize the location of a hotel. KAYAK makes it easy to book once I’ve decided what I want.
The summer trip planner tool is a new feature that makes it easier to plan your vacation through KAYAK. Enter your starting and destination locations, number of travelers, and dates of travel. KAYAK’s summer trip planner shows you estimated costs for air travel, road trips and hotels. You can estimate your travel costs by plugging in the numbers you have into our worksheet.
How to Plan Vacation Expenses: A Step-by-Step Guide
1. What is the cost of travel?
How will you get to your destination?
When I plan a trip that is more than one day away from home (ten car hours), I compare driving expenses to flying expenses.
We enjoy travel so ten hours on the road is not too bad.
When you consider all the costs involved, it is sometimes more economical to fly than to drive.
How do you calculate travel costs by car?
- Determine the price of gas for your road trip.
- Determine the number of miles that you plan to travel (google map provides an approximate figure).
- Divide the number of miles traveled by your vehicle’s mpg.
- Multiply the answer by the current price of gasoline per gallon
- Formula: (Miles Round Trip) / mpg (price per gallon of gas) X $ ($ (price for gas per gallon of fuel) = Total Cost of Gas for Travel.
- Example: Say you decide to travel 250 miles away from home. That’s 500 miles roundtrip. Say your car gets an average of 20 miles per gallon. Let’s assume that gas costs $2.50 per gallon. The formula looks like this using the above:
- Gas needed for 500 miles at 20 mpg is 25 gallons.
- For a car trip, 25 gallons at $2.50 each is $62.00.
- This fuel economy trip calculator will simplify the process.
- Add toll road costs if necessary. The link makes it easy. In our example there are no toll charges.
- Include the cost of food during your road trip:
- As a rule of thumb, budget $20 per person for a full day’s travel. When traveling with teenagers or other people with big appetites, you can increase the budget to $25 per person for each day of travel.
- For example, in the above example, a trip of 250 miles (one-way) is equivalent to between 3.5 and 4.5 hours. This is at most one meal. This meal would cost $40 per day for a family with four members (half of the daily budget). For the meal I’d have on the way home, I would budget $40.
- Add an overnight hotel stay (if necessary for the duration of your trip):
- If the trip is longer than one day, you will need to factor in $100 per room/per night (there and back).
- In the above example, a night’s stay is not necessary.
- Add the parking costs to your total.
- Is parking at your destination a cost? For major cities like Washington, DC or NYC, daily parking is $40/day. Some cities may be a little cheaper.
- Add up the costs of each category to get an idea of how much it will cost to drive to and from your destination.
- The cost of travel in this example is $142.50.
- The estimated cost of a 5-day trip to New York City is $342.50. This includes parking for five days at $40/day, plus gas and food.
How do you calculate the cost of air travel?
To estimate travel costs, I use simple numbers. At this point, all I’m doing is deciding if it would be better for my family to travel on a tight budget to fly or drive.
- Calculate round-trip tickets within your half (east or West of the Mississippi).
- Calculate the cost of round-trip tickets within Canada at $600.
- You can also explore the actual costs of air travel on MoMondo. The prices change with demand, but this tool will give you a good estimate.
- Add luggage fees ($30 per bag checked each way).
- Consider the cost of parking (anywhere between $6 and $15/day). For easy math, I use $10/day.
- Add the cost of the airport transfer to the hotel, or the rental car cost for the entire trip. I quickly calculate $100 each way for airport transfers and $25 per day for car rentals (which is low).
- The cost for a round-trip flight for a family of 4 would be $1200 in airline tickets, plus $60 for two bags checked at the airport and $50 for parking. The total comes to $1435.
Traveling by car can be cheaper for a short trip, such as our 5-day vacation example.
2. What Are the Costs of Lodging at Your Destination?
Hotel costs are second only to airline tickets in terms of vacation expenditures.
When deciding on your vacation budget, compare the hotel brands, locations, and amenities.
We’re going on a cruise and would like to stay in a hotel before the cruise. The cheapest hotel we could find was around $300 per night. The hotels were about an hour from our travel route, and we found a hotel for $120 per night that included a hot breakfast. We can drive an hour to the port of departure the morning of our cruise and save $180.
Look for resort fees. They are charged by some hotels, particularly those with more amenities. Some hotels charge daily resort fees, especially those with extra amenities such as a lazy-river, playgrounds, or sauna. Some hotels charge daily fees for parking and/or WiFi. Include these costs in your travel expense worksheet.
Add an additional 15% to the total hotel bill for taxes and hotel expenses. This is an excellent way to add a cushion, especially if your goal is to stick to your budget.
Estimated hotel expenses for our sample vacation: When looking at hotels on the beach, I am looking for an outdoor pool and easy access to the beach. I also want some dining options. I find three hotels with these amenities, and decent ratings. Hotel A costs $140/night. Hotel A is $140/night. Hotel B is $160/night. Hotel C is $175/night, with breakfast included and the largest rooms. I would choose Hotel C to fit my budget.
- 5 nights at $175/night is $875.
- This hotel does NOT require an extra resort fee.
- Add 15% to the tax and buffer ($875 x.15 = $131.25).
- The total hotel budget is $875 plus $131.25 for a total $1006.25.
3. Calculate Food Costs for Vacation
If you know how much you spend at restaurants, you can estimate your travel costs.
- Budget $100 per meal if your family will spend $100 on eating out.
- You may be able spend less if you carry snacks and/or eat on the run.
- If you enjoy a bottle or two of wine at dinner, your costs will increase.
- You already know what you spend on restaurants. Calculate your vacation dining expenses using this number.
In general, we figure $100/day per family of four (before 2022) if the breakfast at the hotel is included. On vacation, we usually have quick meals in between our sightseeing and only plan one or two “nice restaurant meals”.
If breakfast isn’t included, we increase the budget to $150/day. We increase our budget to $200/day in major cities and theme parks.
If you are looking for a specific restaurant, check out the menus at theme parks or search online.
Example Using the same 5-day vacation scenario, with breakfast included in the hotel, I calculate food costs as $500 (five days x $100/day = $ 500).
4. Calculate travel costs for attractions and entertainment
What are your plans for vacation? Estimate the cost of parking and tickets. Make a list.
Travel costs can be calculated by:
- Tickets to theme parks (multiday tickets cost less than single-day tickets).
- Theatre Tickets
- Concert tickets
- Museum admission costs
- National Park Admission Fees
- Renting a bike, kayak or another adventure activity can be expensive.
- Ferry costs
- Costs of mass transit (subway or Metro tickets)
A BONUS tip to help you save money when visiting major cities Save up to 40% when you use cityPASS for attractions in major cities.
You can save a lot in these cities:
- Chicago CityPASS includes five attractions at a discount of up to 50%. (Includes Shedd Aquarium Skydeck, Field Museum, and more).
- New York CityPASS offers up to a 44% discount on popular attractions such as the Empire State Building and 9/11 Memorial.
- San Francisco CityPASS offers up to 50% off popular attractions such as the San Francisco Bay Cruise, San Francisco Zoo & Gardens, and Walt Disney Family Museum.
CityPASS can be purchased in many other cities around the country, and even the world. This is a great way to save money if you are traveling with your family on a tight budget.
Let’s return to the topic of estimating travel costs for attractions and entertainment.
Let’s take a five-day sample vacation.Our family would like to visit a “theme” restaurant that offers entertainment for $40 per person. This would cost $160 for a family of 4. We want to rent beach bicycles for a day for 60. We want to spend a little extra on a beach cabana for two days. The cost is $80/day, for a total of $150.
Add-on costs would be $160 + 60 + $160 for a total of 380.
5. Add up all your estimated vacation expenses.
Add all estimated vacation expenses from Steps 1 through 4. You can roughly expect to spend this amount on your vacation.
In the example below, we have total costs of:
- $142.50 road trip expenses
- $1006.25 is the amount you will pay for your hotel.
- $500 for food
- $380 for attractions and entertainment
Add up the totals: $142.50, $1006.25, $500 and $380 to get $2116.25.