The Ultimate Travel Expenses And Budgeting Spreadsheet

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My love of spreadsheets knows no limits and it’s no secret I use them for every facet of my life. In this post, I will go over my travel expenses and budgeting spreadsheet. Planning travel can be complicated enough so I’ve created a comprehensive travel itinerary spreadsheet for planning your trip. In addition to that, I’ve created this spreadsheet which will help you track your expenses for the trip so you don’t go over budget.

After achieving financial independence at 34, I needed a spreadsheet to plan out the countless trips I was planning to do in early retirement and to manage my expenses judiciously. Even more complicated is tracking costs among multiple people and who owes who what which I cover in my expense splitting spreadsheet.

NOTE: THIS POST/SPREADSHEET IS BEST VIEWED ON A DESKTOP AND NOT ON A MOBILE PHONE!

This post is part of my comprehensive guide to travel hacking where I go into detail about how I fly for free, book the cheapest flights, and how to be an overall better traveler!

I reached Financial Independence in 2020 which was quite the milestone for me. In the last year, I’ve traveled the world for a year and my net worth actually increased. This spreadsheet helped me plan my travels around the world!

Table Of Contents show

Why use a spreadsheet to track travel expenses?

I’ll admit, there are countless Apps and services nowadays to track travel expenses. Nevertheless, there is still nothing in my opinion that substitutes for a nice, professional spreadsheet that puts it all together in an easily digestible format. For as much traveling as I do, this really helps me save time!

Normally, I manage all my expenses using Mint and just having a general idea of what I’m spending money on. However, I find that having one spreadsheet that tracks my travel expenses for one whole trip, and another spreadsheet for another trip really allows me to get great stats for how I travel.

Using a travel expenses spreadsheet can be incredibly helpful for several reasons:

  1. Specificity: A travel expenses spreadsheet is designed specifically for tracking expenses related to travel, so it will have categories and fields tailored to this purpose.
  2. Ease of use: Travel expenses spreadsheets are usually user-friendly and easy to navigate, with clear labels and instructions.
  3. Organization: A travel expenses spreadsheet allows you to keep all of your travel-related expenses in one place, making it easier to keep track of everything and stay organized.
  4. Accuracy: With a travel expenses spreadsheet, you can input your expenses as soon as you make them, ensuring that you don’t forget anything and that your records are accurate.
  5. Analysis: By keeping your travel expenses in a spreadsheet, you can easily analyze your spending patterns and identify areas where you might be overspending or could save money in the future.
  6. Budgeting: A travel expenses spreadsheet can help you stick to your travel budget by allowing you to track your expenses in real-time and adjust your spending as needed.
  7. Tax purposes: If you’re self-employed or traveling for business purposes, a travel expenses spreadsheet can help you keep accurate records for tax purposes.

The spreadsheet is made in Google Sheets so a link is all you’ll need to share it with friends. Google Sheets also allows multiple people to make edits (if that is something you want!)

My Travel Expenses Spreadsheet

Without further ado, here is my travel expenses spreadsheet. You can see from the below screenshot that it is very intuitive and easy to use.

travel expenses spreadsheet and budgeting

Without further ado, here is the spreadsheet. There are multiple columns associated with the spreadsheet and it’s likely I will continue to make updates to this spreadsheet as time goes on

Download Travel Expenses and Budgeting Spreadsheet

Using The Travel Expenses and budgeting Spreadsheet

The spreadsheet is very easy to use. It might seem a little daunting at first if you’re not used to dealing with spreadsheets, but I assure you it is easy to use. I structured the sheet in a way so it’s very clear to input your desired expenses along with the respective categories.

Simply input your transaction name, the quantity of said transaction, the category, and the price. Do not edit the cells at the top table or the shaded gray cells as they are all formula driven. Everything updates automatically including the pie chart.

If you have many expenses and don’t feel like keying them one by one, simply export your bank/credit card transactions to excel and copy and paste the list into this travel expense spreadsheet. You will still have to select the category manually if you want to keep your expenses sorted. Otherwise, it’s not important if you only care about the total expense amount.

In the end, this travel expenses spreadsheet will help you with your travel budgeting and general budgeting throughout your expenses.

Plan your travel with my travel itinerary spreadsheet

If you’re looking to combine this spreadsheet with a travel itinerary planner, then please use my travel planner spreadsheet which is perfect to plan out your trip on a day by day basis.

You can use these spreadsheets separately to split out the fun part of it and the finance part of it, or you can simply copy my travel expense spreadsheet to the travel itinerary planner to keep everything in the same file.

Happy travels and planning everyone!

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Johnny
Johnny

I'm a dual Canadian-American from NYC that moved to South Africa for work and ended up traveling all through the continent. I'm currently living the expat life in Frankfurt, Germany and traveling the world as much as I can. I'm a bit obsessed with scuba diving, churning credit cards so I never pay to fly, and eating the most questionable of foods in the most peculiar of places. My bucket list is the world, and some day I might make it there.

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