Receipts, spreadsheets and eight months on the road.
Field notes · 2017/18Budget the world tour
How we planned eight months for two, what our original workbook records and which numbers we want to compare with our next family journey.
See the real numbers the honest ledgerSource note: this is the total recorded in the original travel workbook for 17 October 2017 to 20 June 2018. Pre-trip equipment was not itemised there.
Start with the route,
not the calculator
“Budget — how to plan it knowing that you will exceed it anyway.”
Before we started with the finance part, we had to narrow our lifetime travel bucket list to a realistic selection of places we could visit in eight months. Countries, transport and the way we wanted to sleep shaped almost every number.
We chose cars and campervans wherever possible because independence mattered to us. Cooking for ourselves saved money. The spreadsheet then became our running record of what this way of travelling really cost.
What the workbook records
Original workbook · figures in EUR
October 2017 to June 2018
The road was never
one straight line
The running budget changed with each part of the route. The monthly sheets show everyday spend only, before flights, rentals, insurance, visas and cruises.
What each destination cost
Daily costs exclude flights.
Values from the original workbook.
Very different daily costs. Field comparison · 2017/18
Collect.
Record.
Understand.
Before and during the journey, we checked the monthly budget regularly. The process was simple enough to keep doing while travelling.
-
01
Collect the receipts
Keep the small pieces of paper instead of relying on memory.
-
02
Enter the real spend
Use quiet travel moments to add every expense to the workbook.
-
03
Read the categories
Charts reveal what actually drives the total and where the plan moved.
The same ledger.
A very different trip.
For the next journey, this page can grow into a true comparison: two adults became a family of three, old prices meet new ones and planned costs will once again be measured against real life.