Once you’ve decided where you want to go on your road trip, it’s time to start thinking about your road trip budget! This post is part of my series on Planning Road Trips and will not only tell you why you should plan a road trip budget, but also give you the knowledge and tools to create your own customized cost planner and tracker to make your next road trip a success!

By the way: before you start PLANNING your budget, make sure you PRIORITIZE your budget!

Why You Should Have a Road Trip Budget

Budget planning is probably the least-fun part of planning a road trip. Thinking about the nitty-gritty financial details of something that is supposed to be fun (and which we often intend to feel flexible and spur-of-the-moment) is pretty much the opposite of how I want to spend my time. Skipping this step in planning your road trip, however, means that you might not have a clear idea of what your trip will cost altogether, a dangerous prospect when you will be out on the road and may need to call on your financial reserves to bail you out of trouble if something goes wrong.

You also don’t want to get home from your trip and dread checking your bank statement. Not knowing how much you’re going to spend — or keeping track of how much you did spend — is a recipe for being stressed when you get home, undoing all that good mental work you did while on vacation!

So maybe just think about planning a budget?

Planning Your Road Trip Budget

To start your road trip budget, first think of all the areas in which you will need to spend money on your trip. The more organized you are at this stage of planning, the less likely you will be to end up running up your credit card bill unexpectedly on the road. When I think about my road trip budget, I generally think about the following areas:

• Lodging
• Fuel
• Food and Drink
• Equipment and Supplies
• Pet Lodging / Sitting
• Miscellaneous Costs
• Emergency Fund

To plan your road trip budget, consider making a spreadsheet with a row for each expense type and columns for each day of the trip:

 

The great thing about a spreadsheet like this is that it allows you to see where the most expensive parts of your trip are as well as give you an idea of which days you might be able to eliminate from your agenda if your trip is starting to get too expensive. Remove any line items that don’t apply to you and add others that make more sense. (Will you be hitting any toll roads? Maybe that should be added as a line item under Miscellaneous Costs.)

To fill in the road trip budget spreadsheet, start moving down your list of expense types and estimate how much it will cost:

Your Road Trip Emergency Fund

An emergency fund is absolutely vital to a good road trip. It’s not impossible that things will go wrong on the road, and you want to be able to handle those incidents with calm and aplomb, which is MUCH easier to do when you know you have money set aside specifically for emergencies. I like to carry some of this fund in cash (because I once had a tow truck driver INSIST on being paid in cash) and also to bring my credit card with me (because some thing

Once you decide to have an emergency fund, it’s hard to know exactly how much to have. Should you plan for a paper cut or for major surgery? Should you plan for a flat tire or for your car to be totaled?

Your answer to these questions will depend on your own personal financial situation. Do you have health insurance? What’s your co-pay? What’s the co-pay for your car insurance? I have pretty good health insurance, but my co-pay for my insurance is $500–so I plan on having at least $500 in my emergency budget just in case something happens.

Note: Your emergency fund shouldn’t be considered money that you actually “have” to spend. You should mentally consider your emergency fund non-money so that you don’t spend it on “emergencies” like a piece of art that you fall in love with or to pay for a ziplining excursions. An emergency fund should be just that–for emergency use only. For this reason, the money should appear in your bank account (or in your wallet as cash) but nowhere on your road trip budget as money being spent.

Budget for Lodging

Since lodging will probably end up being the most expensive part of your road trip, I recommend you start here when planning your budget. You have a variety of options to consider for lodging:

• Private home rentals such as Airbnb or Vacation Rentals by Owner (VBRO)
• Hostels
• Hotels or motels
• B&Bs
• Camping
• Couch surfing (either with friends or through online tools like with CouchSurfing.com)
• Sleeping in your car

For each place you’re planning on stopping overnight on your road trip, do some research on your lodging options. Make some tentative plans and tally up the cost of lodging while you’re on the road. You may notice at this point that lodging is taking up more of your budget than you had planned, so you might want to consider changing your route to either aim for more affordable areas (such as non- or to shorten your trip and eliminate the cost of a night or two of lodging altogether.

For example, for our trip to Big Bend, we spent two nights in hotels (costing $75 and $150 each) and two nights in an Airbnb at $100 a night split three ways. My budget for lodging:

Don’t forget about taxes when you’re estimating your lodging budget!

 

Budget for Fuel

Once you’re sure you can afford to stay in the areas you’d like to visit, take a stab at your fuel budget. Tools like GasBuddy can help you estimate the cost of your fuel for your trip. Add this number to your estimated total for your lodging to see what your base expenses will be for your trip.

I like to figure out an estimate for each day of driving just so I can see how much I’m paying total for each day of experiences and figure out if it’s worth it to me for whatever I’m planning on that particular day. For our Big Bend Road Trip, we were driving my friend’s Toyota Prius so the costs were pretty low:

Want to save money on fuel? Check out my posts on ways to increase your car’s fuel efficiency:

Pet Lodging / Sitting During Your Road Trip

The final expense which I generally consider part of my “base” expenses is pet sitting, since this is a daily expense and I generally can’t do much to save money in this area. I use Rover.com to find sitters in my area who are available to pet sit my cat, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, during dates I’m planning to travel. I generally end up paying around $7 per day during non-holiday times and $17-20 per day for holiday weekends:

 

Road Trip Miscellaneous Costs

Am I going to encounter entrance fees to parks and museums? Am I taking any toll roads? Will I be doing any ride sharing using an app like Lyft? Will I be paying for parking anywhere? For our Big Bend trip, we had a couple of entrance fees to pay, and I budgeted money for buying books or art on the road.

 

Budgeting for Food and Drink

Next, ask yourself what you will be eating on your trip. I’ve had trips where I ate nothing but PB&J sandwiches and Goldfish crackers, and I’ve also had trips where I ate out every meal at fun local restaurants. It really depends on how much you’re willing to spend on food, as well as where you’re going and if there will even be restaurants available that you want to eat at. I tend to enjoy eating at local restaurants in big cities, but I sometimes struggle in small towns to find things other than fast food restaurants. Click here for Vegetarian Fast Food Options for eating on the road!

Based on where you’re going and how much you’re willing to spend, you can decide if you want to eat out every meal or if you will bring your own food to eat. (This doesn’t have to be limited to sandwiches on the road, by the way. There are plenty of no-cook options, as well as the option to cook on the road.) For our Big Bend Trip, we ate Overnight Oats every morning for breakfast, packed our own snacks, and made sandwiches on the road so we saved a lot of money eating on eating out. I budgeted about $25 each day for eating out, planning on $12-15 on dinners out in Terlingua and San Angelo, the potential for a drink or two, and adding tip. I also added a budget line item for visiting fun coffee shops because this is something that’s important to (including buying a bag of beans on the road):

 

Budgeting for One-Time Expenses and Purchases

By now you should have an idea of the general cost of your trip. I also like to plan for what I will need to pay for ahead of time for my trip, which will help me figure out if I need to adjust any of the other areas of my budget accordingly. Am I planning to buy anything for this trip such as hiking boots, winter gear, etc? Am I planning to rent anything on this trip such as skies? Will I need to get my car maintenanced? Do my tires need to be rotated? Am I going to buy food or drink to take with me?

I track these expenses in a separate list from my daily expenses, since these are one-time-only purchases. For my Big Bend trip, the only thing I had to get was some outdoor winter gear (since I was going to the mountains in the winter and I live in Houston, TX). We also packed fun food, which cost about $30 a person.

Totaling Your Budget

At this point, you should be able to guess around how much your road trip will cost. Now you’ll know ahead of time if you need to adjust your route, your lodging, or your meal planning accordingly. This will save you time, trouble, and heartache while out on the road–something we all want to do!

For our Big Bend trip, I budgeted around $200 for one-time expenses and purchases, $490 for the trip itself, and had $500 in reserve just in case something happened. (Luckily nothing did happen, so I have my emergency fund for my next trip!) Ultimately I ended up paying less than this for the trip than I had initially planned, but at least I knew I was covered just in case!

If $700 for a five-day trip sounds like a lot to you, keep in mind that we were paying for Airbnbs and hotels on the road (rather than camping or car camping), and I also bought winter gear that I can now use on future trips. Also keep in mind that it IS a lot of money, but at least I knew ahead of time what was coming!

Thanks for reading! Hopefully now you understand why you should have a budget as well as how to track one. Did I miss anything that you like to include in your budgets? – Lindsay