Tracking expenses on our trips

Quicken works too.

That's a heck of a spreadsheet you have there! I use something similar while I'm planning my trip. Largely to make sure I've booked and paid for everything, secondarily to make sure I am not overspending my means.

I wish the Quicken app would be enhanced to handle currencies - as the software itself does. As it is, I use a different app that is more capable in that regard to track my few non-credit card purchases during my trips and then import those into Quicken afterwards.

My experience is that I try to enjoy myself in the evenings and save my excel spreadsheet for our laundry days (about one afternoon in five). I start the spreadsheet with travel arrangements, hotel reservations and planned AM, PM, Evening activity columns (rows for each recommended hotel website till one is booked, and each museum activity website for reference on opening times/costs to decide on passes or individual entrance fees). Add expenses as I go with exchange rates from cash withdrawals, and credit card receipts.

The planning of travel details, hotel details and 50% of the activity details up front relaxes me. If you come home meeting your budget within 10% you will feel accomplished, and your companions will feel that the attention to detail is no burden... Ask my DW.

I got the "how" (I'm a spreadsheet junkie myself), but the bigger question is the "why"? Why does someone go through all this trouble on a daily basis while on their trip? What is the upside? I'm genuinely interested, it's not a criticism. I'm guessing a part of this is to make sure nothing unaccounted for disappeared from your wallet?

I'm too lazy to spend time on my (already short) trips reconciling my expenses, and I hardly carry any cash on me and largely use credit cards. I do keep my receipts just in case, but I simply stuff them into an envelope as I go. I wait until I get home and then I can easily export my credit card entries and ATM withdrawals electronically. I regularly track my monthly household budget, so my travel expenses will automatically go into that relevant month. Once in a while, I like to review which places are more cost-effective than others on a per day basis in case I want to return (there is a wide variance on this, but Mexico and Turkey are well out ahead).

Why do you do this? It seems like a lot of work and would be depressing to me.
The only thing I do is keep the ATM receipts in an envelope to enter in checkbook upon return home.

As to the "why",

• it is interesting to us to know what we spent
• it takes max of 20 minutes each day to do this, since we track expenses as we go
• Isaac Newton did it on his travels
• if we don't balance out, we can remember what we spent money on
• it helps us remember our trips later.
• I'm a statistician. My wife has an MBA. Tracking stuff is what we do.
• I will be able to write some of this trip off. So details are important.

We keep a separate Word document with daily activities. Nothing complicated, just what we did, and who ordered what for dinner. If we don't do that, we never remember what we did on what day.

As to the detail, it's good to know what you are spending. Most days, we have 6-10 items. These take a very short time to enter.

If it saves time overall to do it during a trip, then I "get it" (but do you go back and then re-check after your credit card purchases get posted?). There's nothing wrong with tracking your expenses and it's probably the best option for people who use largely cash on their trips (not saying the OP is in that boat, just speaking generally). I just couldn't do it until I got home because my days are too packed "as is" (I regularly eat dinner close to 9-10pm and get back around midnight) and I don't check my bank accounts over public wifi.

@CWsocial: This spreadsheet, like many, is on Currency #6. We have balanced out almost every morning. We know what we spent money on. This allows us to decide to splurge occasionally. We decided that we were doing well, so stayed in the amazing Hotel Moskva in Beograd, Serbia. They have macaroons on the breakfast bar. As far as macaroons go, they were about a 2.5 on a 5 pt scale, but still.... Also a hot tub, which helped my knee.

I already paid for the bulk of my purchases and entered them into an Excel spreadsheet, and we leave in two days. I planned on tracking the rest, which will be food, restaurants, Metro cards and passes, etc. by saving receipts and then at the end of each location when we will depart for the next location, I'll just e-mail myself a very brief description of each expense (date, place, and amount) that we incurred in that location. When I get back home, I'll enter all that info into the Excel spreadsheet.

I’m really bad about this. I have planning documents and know my hotel costs (I book ahead) as well as big things like flights or long distance trains. I have a rough number in my head for estimated “on the ground” expenses like meals or sight entry fees. But I don’t log it in the form of lunch - 30euros, Museum - 12, subway tickets 5, etc. Usually this has worked fine. Coming home my estimate has always been high and I’ve spent less. I look at my credit card charges and cash withdrawals and add it all up. I can say I spent $X/day on average but don’t log it so can’t say I spent $Y on meals.

As I said, this has worked fine. But I’m starting to think I should be more careful. Thanks for sharing your system.

We are two MBAs as well. We make a mental note of our cash balance when we start the trip. We would already have a list of pretrip expenses--airline tickets, sight tickets, any prepayment of hotels/tours. During the trip we just track ATM withdrawals, if any. I also pretty much have a "Photo track" of what we did everyday on vacation. I usually take photos of the restaurant front or menu so I remember the names of places we've been to. When we return home we look at the credit card bills, tabulate and make sure everything looks accurate. We can go back and look at photos if something doesn't make sense. This all takes very little time. Perhaps this works well for us because we mostly deal in CCs and we are not souvenir shoppers.

What do you learn from this – do you create a chart or data points?

Maybe a map showing where you spent the money. I’m sure google maps could offer this. Hot zones, cold zones.

Time of day? Maybe peak hours of expenditure….

And what value did you get from your types of purchases – I guess that’s more qualitative than quantitative.

So much data so little time.

@ramblin' on: What value? Memory is details. If we go back to the date, we see we spent money on the boat ride. That was the day of the boat ride, and then we look at our boat pix.

I use Quicken. Does about the same thing.

I do it because I want to make sure I haven't misplaced or lost cash during the day. (If I did, not much I can do about it.) Also allows me to make sure I have enough cash for the next day's activities so I can plan an ATM stop if needed. And it does help with memory.

I agree that if you already have an Excel template set up and you've been doing this on every trip, it's second nature and takes up hardly any time just to plug in the numbers. My original question was simply "why do it while on a trip as opposed to afterward?", but it got answered (it's just quicker to do as you go along).

I don't take my laptop on my overseas travels. Just curious, does anyone do this kind of tracking via a phone app? If so, which one(s)? If I were to do this, it would only be for the few cash withdrawals and expenses (credit card stuff takes care of itself, so don't want to do any extra work). I still like Excel the most, it's the most flexible software and files export easily.

I usually just keep track because I’m curious how much our trip has cost.

Right now I use a simple app called Fudget and just input the expenses with notes...whether food or accoms or transport, etc. I just do it in the dollars of the country (unless it’s things like accoms which I’ve booked ahead and paid for in Cdn $). Then when I get home, I’ll add up the total for whichever currency and just convert it.

There are other budget apps where you can break it down into categories and it’ll give you a pie chart and whatnot. It certainly doesn’t change how we spend, but I’m nosy about how much and what went where. Oh...it was good last year when we rented a car and I could say...ok, we paid this in tolls/gas/parking just to see what the cost was.

And keeping detailed notes helps when I finally get around to doing my travel blog 6 mos later...I can say...oh yes, we ate here or we did such and such a thing on this day.

Between hubby and I, we do this as well. I created an Excel workbook tempalte that works for me although trips with multiple currencies make it a lot more work.

I track so I can

a - remember what we did and to feed my blog when I get around to writing it (part of my spreadsheet has extensive notes on the day)

b - use costs for future trip estimates ("Honey, I think we can go twice this year!")

c - go back and find info to answer Forum questions, LOL!

Hubby is an accountant and tracks all household expenses, perhaps with too much detail. Professional liability. With each of us tracking we can compare notes and reconstruct anything we may have forgotten, like where, exactly, did we have those fabulous mussels? Or where did the 500 CHF we took out yesterday go?

We all have different travel styles. For me, I have a budget once flights, hotels, and major train tickets have been paid for. As long as I stick to that, I’m good. I came in way under budget my last trip, I just didn’t have time to do some of the shopping I had planned. But, I spent a bit more on restaurants and drinks than I normally would have.

To each their own. I just wander around, eating and buying and doing stuff as I please. By now I have a good idea of what it costs to keep myself entertained and fed on a trip. If I keep track of food expenditures it's only for further mention here in the forum, and I do jot down credit card purchases--so helpful that Capital One sends an immediate text with the US amount--so I can quickly reconcile my statement and prepare for making a bigger payment.

Agnes, you asked: Just curious, does anyone do this kind of tracking via a phone app? If so, which one(s)?

I use an Android (possibly also iPhone) app called "Handtrip" to track my travel expenses. It tracks multiple trips, multiple currencies, credit and cash transactions, cash balances in each currency, simple categories (e.g, food, hotel, transport, admission, souvenir,) a quick memo and photos, such as for receipts or a photo of a restaurant or menu or whatever else might help you remember expenses or experiences. At the end of a trip you can export to Excel or CSV formats.

I'll jot a note in the app for a hotel or restaurant for which I'm planning to write a review after I get back.

I use my Quicken tracking to estimate costs for future trips and as a memory aid about my travels. It's also the quickest way for me to find detail from prior trips to share with other travelers on this forum.

We also track our expenses and for the same reasons as Paul, Nicole P, and Laurel state . We like to know how much we spent in a particular country/city and it does help us to remember what we did. It's interesting to us and maybe makes the memories more fresh. We do it a bit differently. I have a spreadsheet with our tentative itinerary by city and sights/activities we plan to visit while in each town or in between towns. We add or subtract while we're there.

I also have a spreadsheet for costs, also broken down by the towns where we sleep. I input what we have prepaid before we leave and finish it when we return. And yes, Paul, it does get confusing if visiting more than one country with different currencies. We don't have an actual stated budget. Before we leave we already know the cost of lodging, most transportation, about how much it will cost for sights, etc., and we have an idea of how much meals cost in each location. We have always lived modestly without expensive tastes and we travel the same way.

While on our trip we keep most receipts, ATM receipts, etc. I carry a pocket note pad which I divide into sections: what we did, where we went which I input in order; what we spent; ATM withdrawals. It just takes a couple of minutes to make these notes, sometimes even while we're enjoying a rest on a bench or at a cafe. When we get home these notes help to identify our pictures and refresh our memories as I make a photo book of each trip. I use the note pad to update our cost spreadsheet. It's interesting to look back a few years and compare the exchange rates, etc. We also sometimes take pictures of menus and some meals or street signs to remind ourselves of what we did. How many times have we asked ourselves where we ate a certain meal or what was it called - lots! Our pictures and notes help us to remember.

All in all, I see keeping track of this information as one of the three ways we enjoy our trips: planning, doing, remembering. Happy to see others do the same!

Edit: Forgot to mention that I break down our costs by category; lodging, transportation, food, entertainment and museums etc., and miscellaneous. Interesting to compare the costs of different trips.

I start a spreadsheet every trip - for keeping track of the itinerary, calculate vacation days from work (always nice to travel over statutory holidays to retain an extra vacation day here or there), keep track of accommodation bookings and confirmations, lodging prices, transport costs (on a big scale), a budget for food and daily stuff and a broad list of activities (or moves).
I generally have already budgeted the total for the trip so this gives me an idea whether I can work within that budget or not. At times, some locations are more than my general daily accommodation budget, so I either have to up the overall budget, or reduce the number of trip days.
A lot are prepaid or pre-purchased, so unknowns are minimal. On the road I use a pocket note book. Over a glass of wine I jot down the amounts of the expenditures for the day then just enter the total into a 'daily spend' column. If it was train tickets, for example, then that is a separate line item and goes to the transport column. I don't spend a lot on food and rarely eat somewhere memorable, so that isn't the point of the spreadsheet. If memorable, I will have a photo of it.
I don't scrimp on my entry fees and never budget an amount for that...that is the whole purpose of travelling for me. I spend under $20 on keepsakes or gifts. No clothing purchases. So the daily expenses are easy enough to enter as a total sum.
I do a little self challenge to make that start budget. $100 either way is a win for me, but it is rare to be over. I am generally pretty close to the mark.
I don't keep a home budget spreadsheet. I never carry over monthly expenses. I am sure I would benefit if I did keep a budget....more money for post retirement travel, but I find finances painful and I avoid it like the plague generally. A statistician's mind I certainly do not have. However, I may be open to checking out the phone apps mentioned to move away from my notebook.

Agnes, Yes, both Excel and Quicken have iPhone and possibly Android apps. Both are "free" but require you to have current versions of the paid products on your home computer.

Unfortunately the Quicken app does not handle multiple currencies. The Quicken desktop software does handle them.

I'm a bit of a numbers nerd - I actually one time thought of going into accounting, so I do like this kind of thing.

After posting earlier, I went on a hunt for some other budget apps on my ipad and found one called Trail Wallet that looks promising - I was trying the Apple Numbers app but wasn't having luck personalizing a spreadsheet. The nice thing (on initial viewing) of Trail Wallet vs Fudget - you can set different currencies (and it'll convert to your home currency) - I was able to input all 3 currencies we'll be using on our trip in Sept - and it seems to be easy to input expenses in the currency (which I couldn't do w/Fudget). It also has a categories setting and you can see a pie/bar chart as you go (which I couldn't do in Fudget either - it just lumped every transaction onto a pie chart, not broken down). You can set the dates for your trip, enter a trip budget and a daily budget. Apparently you can also take pictures with the expenses (may be fun to remember the food you ate)! And you can enter whether you used cash, debit, credit or other.

It is a paid app - first 25 transactions are free - then it's $5 or so - I'm going to give it a go and just may end up paying for it.

Sorry Paul, this would drive me crazy. I only keep my Visa and ATM receipts for reconciliation and anything that was paid before departure such as tours, trains, rental cars as proof of payment. I don’t want to think about every € or nickel I spend. I know how much is in my ATM checking account and what my Visa balance is. I live frugally at home. I want to enjoy my vacation where ever it may be and not worry about money spent,

I used to prepare an Excel spreadsheet before the trip, input lodging / transportation expenses as they were booked (in local currency, with a column converting to USD), estimates of known city transit passes and entrance fees, and a generic "daily expenses" at $100 per day for both of us -- then summed it up, added in dog sitter cost, and took a deep breath when I looked at the total. Once I was OK with the total, I didn't worry about the day-to-day expenditures.

Used Quicken to download credit card expenses and post USD cost of ATM withdrawals after I got home. Each trip had a different name, but no breakout for travel, lodging, meals.
Daily local cash noted in a pocket notebook, reconciled sorta daily to what we remembered spending so could determine when it was time to get more cash.
The "budget" was an expectation of what the trip would cost. Quicken showed what the trip actually cost.

After a bunch of trips in the last few years, I know what price range of hotels and restaurants we are comfortable with.

As to those who don't think this is sane, that's fine. I enjoy the feeling of closure when we balance out. It's our way of keeping our trip organized and fun. My wife is relentless about writing down expenses.

You do what you feel completes your trip. Some like to be less detailed in record-keeping. Fine. But if you want more detail, my approach can be used for you, too.

This is a little more tracking than I need, but I am glad that you have found a system that works for you. What I want to know, is how you find a way to deduct part of the costs for your trip. Do you have a business that requires European travel? If so, slightly envious......

I attend a small conference in Croatia every other year. This should be deductible as a business expense.

As a retired CPA, I no longer believe in overkill and love the simplicity of some apps. Trip Splitter Lite is a free app designed to easily record and categorize your expenses. It was designed to record trips for groups and easily splits expenses between members. The Lite version is limited to 2 “splitters.” The $1.99 upgrade allows unlimited splitters. It’s available in the App Store and I don’t think there’s an Android version. I’ve used this for six trips over the last 3 years and love it. You can email info, import into excel, tap on the the GPS reading when you enter an item and a map pops up. Easy to use, feature laden. The only drawback. Is it doesn’t install across platforms, info is just on one device. But if you go to the blog within the app, there are instructions on copying the dB to another device.

I’m a retired project engineer (Master Black Belt, Lean Master) so very familiar with Excel, statistics, etc. I enjoy compiling the expenses of each trip with an overall pie chart of categories and also another tab with the details within each category. I first started creating these, so we would know approximately how much we were saving by having me doing all of the planning vs. taking a travel tour. Afterwards, it’s mainly been to know budget when we’re retired.

I mainly use the detailed tab during my planning stage. I like to plan some of our lodging to be less, some more expensive where it matters the most. I have the formulas in the spreadsheet to see my average night lodging cost at a glance. I’ll digress a moment: this was hilarious at a recent timeshare hard sale. The salesman asked what we typically spend per night on lodging for vacation, and I quickly responded, “I can tell you exactly! $130/ night.” That didn’t go over well because he was trying to load high numbers to show “their savings” - ha!

Since there’s a lot of research in the planning stage of the trip (I love the planning & research), most of the costs are already filled into the spreadsheet except for meals. By now, we can pretty well estimate what that will be for our easier style of eating. I just jot down in a small notebook each night what we ate (we like to remember the food!) and museum cost, etc. It takes less than two minutes. Our receipts are placed into my itinerary reservation zipped folder, and I do a final tally when we’re back home. For us, our vacation time is too valuable to spend more time than that in the evenings, but each person traveling has their own priorities.

Jean, I also do all the planning and we also like to compare our costs with the cost of a similar tour. Nice to know we're not the only ones!

We never do this - YOLO

I wonder if any of the folks who do this kind of tracking would be willing to give some kind of analysis and report on their data. I think it would be helpful in answering budgeting questions. I don't think Rick spends enough time on this subject.

While I love spreadsheets for certain functions at home, I've never thought of being that technical on vacation. I'm still old fashion with my moleskin book, which includes pre-vacation planning and recommendations for things to see on a day to day basis, and then on vacation journaling on a daily basis in the rest of the book. My day to day journaling includes my/our daily costs; ie, local transportion, food, activities, etc. I already know my larger transportation and hotel costs. I have a daily rate that I try to hit. Some days are under it, which then allows me to splurge should I choose to do so. I've always kept a budget regardless of the amount of my income.

I will, on the side, say that I was so proud when my daughter sent me her detailed monthly financial spread sheet when she was asking me if she could afford a particular house. I must have done something right! Anyway...so I am into spreadsheets...just not when I'm on vacation. I will scribble in a book, but I don't want to be on a computerized device.

Here's three years of our expenses per a poster's request. Obviously, the longer you stay, fixed costs such as airplane tickets/travel insurance become cheaper in the "per day" calculations.

When I traveled solo in 2019, my lodging cost more than 50% of our couple's rooms in previous years. This was my retirement celebration, so I booked some great festivals, a symphony, a couple of cooking classes, bike tour, etc. (the reasons activity $ were up)
We travel by train, and I purchase tickets as soon as possible to acquire some nice savings.
We typically have one very nice artistic event, such as ballet tickets in Vienna during a trip. Cooking classes are considered an activity, not a meal in my calculations.

ITALY/FRANCE 2016 for 17 nights (2 people) in Sept:
Airplane Tickets $1,608 (used miles for 1 person)
Hotels $2,584
Meals $1,101
Transportation $617
Activities $674
TOTAL $6,583 (Per person, per day = $194)

SPAIN 2017 for 21 nights (2 people) in October:
Airplane Tickets $298 (used miles)
Hotels $2,458
Meals $1,077
Transportation $625
Activities $572
TOTAL $5,031 (Per person, per day = $120)

ITALY 2018 for 18 nights (1 person) in Aug/Sept:
Airplane Tickets $90 (used miles)
Hotels $1,874
Meals $532
Transportation $254
Activities $508
TOTAL $3,258 (Per person, per day = $181)

I have a spreadsheet for more than just expenses. Many people would call it retentive :- ), but its saved has us time re-looking up stuff.

The first tab has our overall itinerary, the second tab is transportation, the each location gets a tab for what we want to see or do, and the last two tabs are trip costs and contact information.

I save the spreadsheet for each trip more out of curiosity and comparison. Fro example, the cost of traveling in the UK is always more expensive (for us) than any other country.

And, yes, we take both an electronic and paper copy with us.

It sounds like a lot of work, but it really isn't as you do it in bits and pieces as you plan your trip. The spreadsheet has come in handy many times.

It also helps because we're two friend traveling together rather than a couple. So during planning we can send versions back and forth to each other and it also helps us divide up the costs at the end.

Thanks for sharing your data. Its very interesting to see real world information, especially that "activities" number. I dont keep track of expenses so did not have a ballpark idea of how much that impacts the budget.

Any one remember FROMMERS book: Europe on $30 a day? In 1988 my sister and I used the envelope system to track daily expenses. {We had found a great deal on a flight and had a one month rail pass} Each day we had an envelope marked food $15 and one for room ( split the cost) for $15. If my share of the room cost more than $15- I "borrowed" from my daily food/drink envelope. At the end of the day $ not used went into the Splurge envelope for our end of the trip special dinner. We traveled for a month from Germany , Greece, France, Amsterdam, even Yugoslavia ( now Croatia).
Today I remain a budget traveler and often go solo. I spend 20-$50 on lodging/ try to use some hostels and airbnb rooms/ cook meals when I can/ make full use of deli departments in local grocery stories. At times I take local tours. I have been able to travel as a retired USA teacher by going budget, I have been to Ecuador/Belize/ Guatemala/Mexico. I think Thailand and Camboidia are very easy on the budget. I spent 6 weeks in Eastern Europe, Slovenia, Croatia. In 2018 at age 75 I had 8 weeks island hopping in Greece.
All in all food/ drink/souvenirs are expenses that you can skimp on if needed. Rooms and transport are not so flexible depending on your location. As a senior solo traveler I need a clean and SAFE room. This summer I am heading to Thailand and Malaysia.
If you have wanderlust you can travel with pre planning and willing to adjust to budget level travel so you can go more often and to more places.

In 1971 that Frommer's book was "Europe on $5 a Day" I didn't use it when I went over that summer but know people here who used it in 1969 and 1971. The book served as their travel guide and compass.

Funny, I don't track expenses at all. I plan expenses. When I'm on the road, however, I just make the choices that seem right based on the information in front of me (food, sights, etc.). When I'm home, I pay off my trip and am thankful for the chance to travel.

I used to skip sights because they were a budget buster. Now I visit any sight I'm slightly interested in because the cost of coming back again, when I'll presumably have more money, dwarfs the cost of the sight.

I agree, Brad. The Activity category is around 10 percent of the overall trip cost, and it’s what we generally remember and enjoy the most, besides the joy of just walking around being there.

I have added functionality to compute expenses for categories. For our 28 day trip this year:

************** Total ******* Per Day *** Per Person
Food ****** 1421.65 ****** 50.77 ********* 25.38
Hotels **** 1593.41 ****** 56.91 ********* 28.46
Travel ***** 946.29 ****** 33.80 ********* 16.90
Activities * 868.47 ******* 31.02 ********* 15.51
Coffee ***** 178.81 ******** 6.39 *********** 3.19
Total **** 5008.61 ******* 178.88 ******** 89.44

Part of the expense was that we got the airline tix for $2.81, as we purchased them with Chase Visa points.

We are able to do the trip for this kind of money since
1) We stayed in a dorm for 4 nights reducing hotel costs
2) We usually ate out 1x/day, for dinner. We routinely eat at a moderately priced restaurant, but almost always have wine.
3) About 1 in 5 nights, we would eat a picnic-type dinner - rolls from the supermarket, cheese, salami.
4) We don't buy many souvenirs. I bought a card case and several pins. My wife bought a fan, 3 china glasses, and some postcards.

Sorry to revive an old post, but I wanted to mention that I used the Trail Wallet budget app on our trip 3 weeks ago and it's a keeper for me. I even paid the 6.99 cdn for unlimited entries.

You put in your budget (yes, we went over), have diff categories (I had 9 - flights, accoms, food eating out and food - groceries, public transport, admissions, tours, shopping and other) - you can colour code the categories so you can see them easily on the pie chart. The nice thing is you can set different currencies - we had 4 on our last trip (cdn, CZK, euro and GBP) and if you set your usual currency (cdn in my case) it'll convert for you. You can even say if it was debit, credit, cash or other (I just input everything as cash). You can add notes (as I did for food and whatnot, even what the shopping purchases were) and there is a photo option.

Pretty simple to use if anyone really likes budget apps! First 25 entries are free if you want to give it a test run.

Edit - I see I said most of this stuff in my above post - but I just wanted to mention how much I liked the app!

I do not have a reason to do an accounting of my travel spending. However, I am a value spender. I keep a mental track of our spending to insure we don't get carried away. Ask me how much we spent on a trip, I could till you with a hundred dollars without doing an accounting.

Being a value spender, here are some examples:
1) We fly tourist, since Business Class would seriously mushroom our flying costs.

2) We generally prefer B&Bs over five star hotels due to free breakfasts and the friendly folks that run the B&Bs, always very helpful for a number of things. If a B&B is not available we go for smaller hotels, but no lower than 3 star.
3) I always do serious research on what there is to see when we visit a city. If we can do it on our own, we do that. If tours are available, we can find good deals that provide what we want.
4) We still have some great meals, but some may be in pub like places where the fare is budget, but healthy and good.

If your like the OP and love doing this stuff I say go for it! For the OP it seems to add to his trips pleasure, during and after. And that is a win in my book.

For me hell would have to freeze over before I would do it. But then again I haven't balanced my checking accounts for a decade. (I do go in line a couple times per month to make sure there are no strange withdrawals/fraud charges).

I love seeing and reading the RS Tour Scrapbooks, but I’d never do one (I envy those with the planning and patience to make them).

Travel safe,

One Fast Bob

Wow -- I am an old accountant by training but that is a lot of overkill. --- I take a number of small envelopes. Write the amounts spent, day by day, on the outside of the envelopes and put the receipts in the envelope. When full, shift to another envelope. When I get home I sort it out. My goal is not budgeting as much as it is to just check credit card receipts and withdraws for accuracy after we get home.

So interesting, and glad this old post was revived. To each their own, and this would be so much tedium for me, and as such, not worth it. Most of my expenses are prepaid months in advance (and I will admit in a very plain Excel pie chart), and we just mostly use credit cards on the trip for meal and occasional incidentals, so it's tracked for us. We take out about 200 in local currency twice in a two week trip, and that sustains us for the little things with cash leftover for the next time.

I wish I had the patience to keep track. We pre-book Hotel, airfare, short flights/trains, and many sights so we have a handle on those expenses. Since we don’t drink that cuts down our restaurant bills, and we try to get hotels with breakfast. I do shop, but my last few trips I have really cut down my shopping because we don’t have any space left in our small house. I do enjoy looking at my items, but we purchased a new digital frame, which also display video, so those are my new souvenirs. I do keep a journal so that helps with remembering what we did and where we ate. Also, I do scrapbook all our trips.

2019, 28 nights - "Splurge" trip (some private drivers and so forth to make life easier for mid-70s folks; however, no splurge lodgings or meals) - Vienna, Budapest, Ljubljana, Trieste, Venice, Dolomites, Zurich - $8042 for two - $144/day each

2017 - 21 nights - Italy (used miles to fly) - $4280 for two - $102/day each

2017 - 24 nights - Austria, Czech Republic, etc. - $6302 for two - $131/day each

If I cared to know, I’d look at the CC receipts when I return. Airfare, rental car, and occasionally hotels, are paid in advance, so it’s only the daily expenses that are unknown. If I know how much currency I started and ended with, how much I spent is simple math. No need to make things more complicated than they need to be.

Well, for all of you techno-averse sloppy spenders, I do enjoy this. It gives both of us a good exercise to keep track of the expenses.
Plus being a programmer/statistician, I like writing code and building up little tools.

Expenses are a form of a diary. While we do balance out on 1 in 4 days, we often do not, which is a little annoying. I think about it for a bit, and often remember the expense that was omitted.

As many say above, it's fun if this is for you. It works for us.

Yes, it used to be fun doing an Excel spreadsheet to estimate costs. Now we feel comfortable just spending what needs to be spent (I know the acceptable accommodations price range and we don't change our dining style when on a trip.) After the fact, I add up credit card charges and ATM withdrawals (EDIT - use Quicken for this, set up a new category for each trip) for a general overall cost ... and once I pick myself up from the floor, start planning the next trip. ;- )

In Italy we pay cash for just about everything. So trip cost equals total cash drawn from ATMs less cash on hand.

Laura B - I asked my husband if he wanted to know how much over we went on our last trip - he told me NO! ;)

Anyways, I had a budget of 7k Cdn for 23 nights and we went over 25%. But I was using the same budget as last year, when our trip was about a week shorter and we didn't move around as much, so I really should have bumped it up, but I just picked a number without really thinking. Spent around 8800 - almost half of that was flights and accoms.

It certainly isn't going to change how much we spend when we travel, as we aren't super frivolous, I just find it interesting to see where it goes.

Laura B: Agree that it used to be fun to track our expenses. It's not as much fun now but I continue to do it. It's not fun to input the expenses but still fun to see the results. So though it's become a bit of a chore, I'll continue to track them. We just returned from a trip a week ago and yesterday we looked at the final spreadsheet. Interesting to see the cost of food, etc. in the different towns. Tracking expenses is not only to know how much we've spent but to add a bit of knowledge about where we've been.

Data junkies and to each his own.
What is fun to one is a chore to another.
Live and let live.

I love to keep track, but I just write down the days expenses on a piece of paper at the end of each day. Maybe I should look into apps, but it's easy to just jot it down. I set an estimate for our trip, but then we do whatever we want and spend what we want when on a trip. I do like to see if my estimate comes close to what we spend. It it interesting and it helps plan for future trips since we save and only spend money we have in advance. So far, we have come under budget on each trip. I like to plan high so we have the freedom to do what we want without over spending.

We use Trail Wallet, and got the upgrade. You can set a trip or daily budget and then record all expenses as they occur (and designate whether credit card, debit card, cash or other). Different currencies can be used for the same trip. You can break your expenses into as many categories as you like. To review, you can look at expenses by day, by trip, by category, etc. It is all very handy and done easily on an iPhone with the Trail Wallet app. This last year, we used for extended stays in Mexico and Spain, trips to Morocco, and 12 weeks traveling through Europe. Highly recommend.

This is a great post and thread! I like Excel and use it for trip planning, for both itinerary and major costs. I would not be able to use Excel during the trip because I choose not to bring my computer, but I love the idea of getting data to enter later to determine costs per category, etc. I like the idea of determining an average overall cost per day and using the data to help determine future travel budges. Thanks also for the app ideas, I'm more likely to use those.

I always work with cash. I know how much I spend every day, it makes little difference to me what I spend it on. Then again, if you can write off some of your trip then it makes sense.

I don't have an MBA but do have a COOSE certificate.

I have a complicated formula for calculating my trip costs. Here it is...

-"A" is the starting account balance and "B" is the ending account balance

Now here's where it gets tricky. Stay with me...

A-B = Trip Cost

We divide the trip cost by the number of days we were away and use that for calculating the cost of the next trip.

I am a strict budget traveler yet we always seem to go slightly over our budget so all these app suggestions are awesome.
I always use an excel spreadsheet when planning a trip, so many moving parts I need to keep them all in one place, including how much everything will cost and what has been prepaid (AIRBNB, Tours, Airfare, Parking (LAX)) and what is still outstanding.
Thanks to all the posters who listed their actual expenses, let's me know where I am on track and where i can pare down.

As to actual expenses, I find that helpful too.

I often read about other travelers, who plan a trip, and say "My budget is $150/night/room." I am amazed at that. As my post earlier notes, you can easily get by for much less than that. Of course, for some people, their standards for rooms are very high, and would never consider sharing a bath, or taking an AirBnB/sobe.

But you can get by for a lot less than $150/night/room.