I figured I’d start of strong with two posts - one meandering stream-of-consciousness and one potentially useful read.
To prepare for traveling, I spent a weekend creating a Travel cost estimator/expenses tracker, found here. Jordan and I used this to give us a rough sense of how far our money will go in each country and to have a system to track our expenses.
Screenshot of the Cost overview tab
This is how it works, by sheet:
Cost overview: This is the high level estimate/expense tracker sheet that sum up total estimated costs for budget travel and total expenses in cells B5 and B7. To use it to estimate weekly costs, fill in country names in row 7 and price estimates will be automatically pulled from the Estimated daily costs sheet (see below for a description) and multiplied by 7. Also, add any large expenses like airfare or special guided experiences in column C starting at row 11 (Note: if you go below C16 you need to update the ‘Total Estimate’ cell in row B11 to include whatever additional cells you added). Finally, adjust the dates above the numbered weeks in row 5 as needed. To use it to track expenses, add expenses to the Expenses tab (detailed below).
Expenses: Use this sheet to track your expenses. Fill in a type (Accommodation, Transportation, Food & Drink, or Other), the cost (e.g., 45), the name of the expense (e.g., Dinner at Sushi Yoshizumi), the date(s) that expense occurred on, the week number that expense should be appear in (e.g., week 1), and the conversion rate between the currency used and USD (e.g., 1 if spent using USD). The USD cost will automatically calculate. This will then be aggregated in the Cost overview tab.
Estimated daily costs: This sheet aggregates daily cost information from several websites and averages them into an average estimated daily cost (column I). Feel free to add more to it to refine the estimate by inserting a column inbetween columns C and F (inserting a column outside of C and F will require you to update the calculation in column I) and adding additional daily cost estimates there. (Note: the averages estimates are applicable for a budget traveler. Prepare to spend significantly more than the estimate if you aren’t planning a shoestring budget trip)
This should hopefully help you forecast the cost of your travel. Feel free to ask any questions and let me know if you catch any bugs!