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So you are planning a vacation but where do you begin? You have a budget for your everyday spending but what about budgeting for a vacation. Did you save enough money? How much can you spend on a hotel and still have enough money for food and activities? I am here to tell you that you can budget your vacations just like you budget your income. There are many ways to create a vacation budget. I will explain creating a vacation budget using percentages.

Why Create a Vacation Budget?

Creating a budget is being wise with your money. Just because you are on vacation does not mean you have an endless pool of money to spend. It is not worth going into debt for a vacation. Creating a spending plan will help you know if you need to save more or if you need to cut any activities. Better to find out now than to run out of money on vacation. Been there done that.

Before my husband and I started our money journey, we would spend too much money on vacations. We spent so much money that groceries were scarce until our next paychecks. Haha. Those were the days.

Vacation Budget Percentages

These percentages are what I use to plan my family’s vacation. Since I am a money nerd, I came up with these vacation budget percentages by comparing my family’s past vacations. I combed through lots of expenses to just get an average of money spent in each category. I was tired of having to “guess” how much money would be enough for vacation. So this is what I came up with:

Hotel/Lodging – 40% to 50%

Food – 20% to 25%

Transportation – 20% to 25%

Entertainment/Activities – 15% to 20%

Miscellaneous – 5% to 10%

As you noticed, I have a miscellaneous category. Being a mom and a wife, there are things that we forget or don’t plan on like those late night trips to the corner store for snacks. It is nice to have a buffer in the budget for those things.

Summary

Using these vacation budget percentages as a guide will help keep your everyday budget in line. You worked hard making your budget and sticking with it so keep it up! Remember, a budget is just a spending plan. This spending plan is to make sure you are NOT depriving yourself of fun. So go have fun knowing that you planned for it.

What budgeting tricks do you use for vacation planning?