We just got back from a two week to visit family in Ontario and the numbers are in! Did we do a good job budgeting and saving for our trip?

The key is to plan well for a big vacation because once the flight has left the airport we are committed to the majority of the costs. There is very little discretionary spending and not many places to cut expenses. There were opportunities to economize but as a family of four, we don’t have a lot of flexibility in areas such as transportation and accommodation.

Here’s what I budgeted:

• I was hoping for $500 each flight ticket
• $300 for 2 nights in a hotel
• $300 for a rental car for a few days
• $100 per day for food and incidentals

Here’s how I budgeted:

• A – I set a savings target of $3,000 for the big ticket items
• B – I planned to use our regular monthly budget set aside for food, entertainment, gifts, travel and recreation for food and incidentals (approximately $1,000 for two weeks)
• C – My ballpark trip estimate (without thinking too hard) was $5,000

You may notice that A + B = $4,000 whereas C = $5,000. Compare these to the detailed trip budget of $3,600 ((4 * $500) + $300 + $300 + (11*$100)). The budget range was $3,600 to $5,000 which gave me a nice amount of wiggle room.

We hit our savings target of $3,000 last year and I set aside a little each month for trips and weekends away. We bought our flight tickets in February and they were $700 each. I booked our hotel and rental car in July.

Tune in next week to see what our vacation cost versus our budget.