How to budget for your next trip abroad

As we all sit here waiting for the day when we can finally travel again, I’m sure like me, you are also putting together endless itineraries. It does help to curb the wanderlust, even if only slightly. On the bright side, at least this will give you time to save up money?

As a Type-A personality, you can only imagine how much I love being organized and having things pre-planned. I can’t tell you how many of my friends ask me for previous itineraries or for help with planning. I think sharing information, even budgets can be the most helpful part of travel. For us, it actually helps to determine where we will travel.

What to research ahead of time

The best way I’ve found to get a truly accurate picture of how much I’ll be spending on vacation is to research the crap out of four things: transportation, accommodation, tours and the average price of a meal. If we are deciding between a couple of destinations I will quickly look into the averages to help determine which country or city fits our budget.

Transportation

Transportation for me includes flights to the destination and also how we will get around once we’ve landed. Here are 3 questions I generally ask myself when planning out our trip:

• Will we be moving around or staying in one place?
• Is public transportation easy to use at the destination?
• Do we feel comfortable renting a car and driving around?

There are some destinations where we just don’t feel safe driving around. During our trip to the Amalfi coast I had looked into renting a car to drive from Sorrento to Positano. Everything I was reading about the roads and driving along the coast made us too nervous so we opted for a tour instead.

I typically use other blog posts or Google Maps to help figure out the driving route and ease of driving. If renting a car isn’t an option my favourit resource to use is Rome2Rio, the website is amazing for helping you figure out how to get from one destination to the next.

Accommodation

Honestly my favourite thing to do is research where we are going to stay. There are always SO many options no matter where we decide to go that I could spend hours pouring over websites to find the perfect place. My favourite places to look for accommodation are:

• Airbnb is generally the best resource when it comes to budgets of all kinds. You can choose to share a room with someone, stay in budget apartment or find somewhere extravagant. For tips about booking Airbnb check out my post here.
• Booking.com is another great resource to help you budget if you simply must stay in a hotel. Whenever I do book hotels I typically book through Booking.com as their prices are the most reasonable I’ve found.
• Hostelworld is also a good way to find cheap accommodations. If you plan on staying in a hostel though please do yourself a favour and always sort by rating not price. Trust me, you’ll regret it if you don’t.

When it comes to looking for a place to stay there are a few things to keep in mind and what I always use to narrow down my search:

• Budget: obviously this is first and foremost. You need to figure out how much you are willing to spend because that will definitely limit your options
• Type: are you looking for a hotel or are you more interested in looking for a place that will let you cook your own meals like an Airbnb?
• Star rating: always, and I mean always look at the reviews of the place you are going to stay at before you book. It is very easy to edit photos and make a place look a lot nicer than it is. Trust me, I’ve learned that mistake in the past with an absolute nightmare of an Airbnb stay
• Proximity: as a rule of thumb you will always pay more for being located close to a city center or main attractions. If you are working within a strict budget, consider staying a little outside of the city – just make sure it’s easy enough to get to where you want to go

Tours

Unfortunately when I travel on a budget this is one of the first things I cut out of my trip, unless it’s a free walking tour. That being said, I absolutely love taking tours when I can. In some cases it even helps to save me money, or at least a lot of headaches if the place I’m visiting is tricky to navigate or hard to get around.

There are a couple of things I ask myself before booking a tour:

• Is it possible for me to put this itinerary together on my own for less money?
• Is this a once in a lifetime experience? (while expensive one of the best tours and activities we’ve ever done was diving through Silfra in Iceland)
• Will the tour take me to places I wouldn’t be able to get to on my own?

Once I’ve answered those questions I do my research to find the best tour for what we are looking for. Again this is where reading reviews really comes in handy. While I often find you need to take reviews with a grain of salt (more people complain when they’ve had a really bad tour vs a really good one).

Price of food

I always find it’s important to look for the price of food or how much you could be spending. It can really add up when you’re eating every meal at a restaurant or out so having a good idea of what that will be and working that into my budget is something I always do.

A quick Google search on the average price of food in an area will give you a great idea. Make sure to search what that is in your currency as well (I’ve made that mistake in the past).

Whatever you end up doing just be sure to save some money for at least one or two nice meals out. It’s great to save money but you don’t want to be so worried about budgeting that you miss out on other amazing experiences!

Finding the best resources

There are so many ways to research how to budget for your trip it’s hard to know where to start. While I’ve listed some websites above there are more than just those. Here are a few things I use whenever planning my trip:

Ask a friend

I use this method of research first and foremost. If you can’t trust your friends opinions who can you trust? They will give you an honest opinion and sometimes give you tips or advice that you never would have thought of yourself.

Blogs

The next best thing to asking a friend is reading blogs. I mean I may be bias but 9/10 you will find an honest review from a blogger. They also have tips and tricks to help you out. In some cases bloggers have worked out deals or discounts with vendors so it’s always worth looking there as well.

Social Media

In my opinion social media is one of the most underutilized tools when it comes to planning or working to budget for your trip. Once you figure out where you want to go and have an idea of the accommodations or tours you want to do, start following those accounts. That way you’ll get to see any sort of discounts or sales they have going on before your trip. This is where it’s better to do your research as far in advance as possible.