To keep track of your finances while on the road is not the most exciting nor joyous part of travel, but I would say it´s quite an essential one. Luckily, this is 2021, and any traveler comes prepared with some good and easy-to-use apps on their phones, including one to track and plan your expenses.
Furthermore, I will give some super easy tips to save some money as you are getting ready for your big trip.
The good old Excel-spreadsheet
I have to be honest, I am quite a big fan of the good old Excel spreadsheet. Since I moved to Spain (almost three years ago) I created this spreadsheet. Mostly because I wanted to make a budget with my partner at the time, to make sure we agreed what our common costs would be (it is here that we found out that his thoughts on budgeting for grocery shopping were 50,- a month, and I was thinking 200,- a month). After we broke up, I realized I liked to keep track of my expenses. It felt like a moment of peace and organization to sit down with my spreadsheet and see how things were evolving.
And so, I have continued to use this Spreadsheet as a back-up plan. I use different categories, such as rent, insurances, car, groceries, eating/drinking out, memberships, clothing, cosmetics, etc. These categories help me see where the biggest chunk of my money goes to, and where potentials for saving are. It´s a super simple system, but it takes time to sit down and look up your spendings. Also, it´s hard when most of your spendings is in cash because you might not actually remember what exactly you spend where. (it works well in Spain because I pay for almost everything with my card).
Apps on the market
Luckily, there are a bunch of apps on the market to track your expenses in real-time. It entirely depends on the features you want or need, such as linking the app to your bank account, or work with different currencies, both of which are features that are a plus to me.
As I live across currencies (my income tends to be in USD or Euro, whereas my spendings are between Euro and everything else). Also, I like that my bank account is connected because otherwise, I might as well keep on using my Excel sheet.
Something else that is highly important to me is the possibility to use it offline (due to internet limitations when traveling abroad). Then, there are a handful of apps that only work for Canadian/US-based bank accounts, which, of course, does not work for me.
If you want to link your bank/card accounts
If you want to keep track of your finances while on the road by linking your bank accounts, I personally like Wally (though unfortunately only available for iOS for now) that allows you to connect your current financial accounts and tracks your spending so you can get a handle on your cash flow and spending by category. Wally is useful because unlike some of the other budgeting apps, it lets you use private groups for managing trip spending or other budgets. You can even add reminders, notes, lists, documents, and comments.
A lot of travelers like Mint, because you can connect different bank accounts and can easily create budgets for different categories. However, as for now, it´s only available in the USA and Canada. I´m waiting for it to get to Europe as well.
TripCoin is another popular app, though also currently only available for iOS.
A recent add to the market is Trail Wallet, the iOS budget and expense tracker that was actually build by two long-term travelers. However, again, the app is only available for iOS and can be downloaded from the App Store.
If you want to keep track of your finances while on the road, but do not like linking your bank account and just go entirely manual: TravelSpend might be the way to go for you. You can manually add expenses as they happen and the app then converts foreign currencies. It also works offline and gives you an overview of your spendings by day and in total.
When traveling with other people
I´ve used Splitwise for years now as it allows me to enter spendings by different people in percentages or shares, using different currencies. At the end of the trip, it gives me an exact overview of who owes what to whom. The downside is that you have to enter it manually, so you have to be quite good at always adding in the expenses right as you go (with larger groups, you might end up forgetting who paid what, when). Also, it has a PayPal feature, allowing for easy pay-back once it´s time to settle the bill.
Some quick ideas on saving money for your big trip
- Reduce the amount of eating/drinking out. It´s the easiest one to do, and I am probably the worst at this one. Though I do try to just fill my thermos with coffee I make at home and take it to the beach or a park. Also, a homemade picnic on the beach in the summer is definitely equal to dining out.
- Do you live by yourself? Try to cook together with friends, and this way reduce the cost of the ingredients (plus, it´s so much nicer to cook and eat together).
- Cut back on your beauty products. And no, I´m not saying you don´t need shampoo anymore, but do you really need everything that is in your drawer? And if so, there are super easy ways to make some products yourself (and they are often even better for both you and the environment, as well as for your wallet).
- Look at all your memberships? Maybe you can exercise for free in the park near you, or go for runs? Instead of paying gym memberships?
- One thing to not cut back on: proper travel insurance. Luckily there are different insurances out there that are super reasonably priced (for some inspiration, see here)
Prepare by looking at some example budgets per country
Though we all know that, most likely, a larger budget is needed for your holidays to New York City, than it is to a small island in Indonesia, I personally like to plan my expenses a bit ahead. By scrolling through some blogs that have, very helpfully, shared some of their budgets from countries they´ve visited. Such as Goats on the Road.
Oh, and when you´re ready to book your flight, compare different cities, different times, and consider using stop-overs as ´free holiday´s (read my blog on how to do this here).
If you have other ideas or suggestions on how to keep track of your finances while on the road, please let me know!!!
