Do you know how to budget for a road trip the right way? Because yes, there is a way that can make things simpler & less stressful for you.
Regardless of how much money you have set aside for vacation, it’s still important to make a budget, or at the very least, give yourself an idea of how much you can expect to spend.
We love road trips because they give us more room for tweaking our spending to save money. Road trips are typically cheaper, at least in our experience, plus we get to see so much more along the way!
We’ve become pros at budgeting for road trips, and today we’re going to show you our method!
So if you’re ready to learn how to budget for a road trip (the right way), keep reading!
Budget your gas costs
For the past several years, road trips have been so much more affordable than flights. Paying for gas is typically a lot cheaper than paying for plane tickets.
When you’re calculating gas costs, we recommend two things.
Use an online calculator
There are online calculators that will take in the distance you’ll be driving, gas costs in the area, and your vehicle’s MPG and give you an estimate of how much you’ll spend in gas. Here’s the one we usually use.
Round up (or down) on everything
Let me explain.
It’s always best to overbudget, so way overbudgeting for your gas is going to come in handy on your trip.
Using the calculator we linked above, you’ll need to know your trip’s distance, fuel efficiency, and average gas price. Here’s how we estimate each of those:
Trip’s Distance: Head to Google maps and pull up your route. Figure out what your total predicted driving distance will be. If we’re driving from Indiana to California and back, we would take the mileage of our trip (round trip), and then add quite a bit, depending on what we thought we’d be doing.
The chances of you driving the exact number of miles you’re predicted to is unlikely, even just considering bathroom or meal breaks. So we aways add a few hundred (short trips) to even a few thousand (long trips) extra miles to our estimate. This gives you plenty of wiggle room for spontaneous drives and activities.
Fuel Efficiency: Round down. If you’re taking your own vehicle and you know what the fuel efficiency is, round a few MPG lower. My car gets roughly 29mpg right now, I would probably say 25 to account for any changes that happen after driving interstate or city roads.
Gas Price: Always pick the highest gas price you’ll encounter on your trip, then add a bit extra. So if we take a road trip from Indiana to California, I’m going to pick California’s gas prices because they are significantly higher than here in Indiana. Even then, I would add a bit to the average cost in case gas prices go up before/during our trip.
So as a visual example, if our road trip was predicted to be (actual) 3,000 miles in a car that gets 30mpg and average gas price of 3.90/gallon, this is what I might type into the calculator:
Budget your food costs
To figure out your food costs, we recommend giving yourself a dedicated meal allowance or maybe day allowance, and customize it to the day.
So let’s say Day 1 of the trip is just going to be driving all day, maybe we’ll be eating fast food and have maybe one sit down meal for dinner. Here is how we would budget it:
Breakfast- $35 | Lunch- $40 | Dinner- $50
These estimates are high because we love giving ourselves wiggle room!
Then if on Day 2 of our trip, we’ve reached our destination and we’re maybe eating more sit-down meals or at fancier restaurants, our budget would reflect that.
Breakfast- $40 | Lunch- $50 | Dinner- $70
We also do this with groceries if we’re planning on buying food to cook at our lodging!
Having a dedicated food budget, including a known grocery budget, can help you out big time on your road trip!
Once we’re done estimating all meal costs, we will total everything up. If we think the total seems bigger than we actually have the budget for, we know in advance that maybe we need to cook at our Airbnb a few extra meals, or find more budget-friendly restaurant options.
Budget for your lodging
Most people have an idea of how much they like to spend on lodging on any given trip. For us, no matter the trip, we try to stick to the $100-250/night range. We’ve found that this usually gives us some nice options without absolutely breaking the bank.
A good rule of thumb when budgeting for road trip lodging is to sit down and pick out ALL your lodging BEFORE actually booking any of it.
If you book nights 1-5 and then you realize your night 6 destination only has expensive lodging options that go way over budget, it’ll be too late.
But if you can look at your lodging costs as a whole before booking anything, you can see if you need to make any adjustments on any of them.
For example, if Night 6 has to be expensive, then maybe you can find more affordable places for a couple of the other nights.
Like this post? You might also like:
The Road Trip Essentials We Swear by: How to Pack for a Road Trip the Right Way
How to Get Your Car Ready for a Road Trip
Budget for activities
Activities are always the part we forget to even think about and then it feels like it pops up on us and racks up extra costs we weren’t prepared for.
If you already know some activities you’ll be doing on your trip, do yourself a favor and find out the costs now!
How much is a ticket to that museum? Is there an entry fee for that national park you’re going to?
Even things like parking garage fees can pile up if you aren’t expecting them.
Knowing these fees in advance can give you peace of mind on your trip.
There will of course be activities that you don’t plan for- things that you see on the side of the road, souvenirs you want to buy, etc. That’s why it’s good to also have an ‘activities cushion’ for those unexpected expenses.
Budget for car maintenance
Most people completely skip this part.
If you’re driving a very long distance, you will likely, at minimum, need an oil change before or after your trip.
When we drove to California and back for our wedding, we had to stop halfway through our trip and get an oil change because we had driven so much!
So having the money for that at least mentally accounted for is super helpful.
Budget for road trip emergencies
Don’t forget to give yourself a little cushion in case something goes wrong!
A flat tire, an injury, last-minute accommodation changes, accidentally running your phone over, I mean anything can happen!
Why not be prepared for it?
How much you budget is totally dependent on the money you’re able to set aside for the trip. This may even just look like making sure you have enough room on an emergency credit card in case something happens. We’ve totally been there!
Budget for your pets
If you don’t have pets you can skip this section 😎
But as pet owners, expenses always come up whether we bring our dogs along on tyhe trip with us or not!
If we do bring them along, we have to consider lodging pet fees, gear for them, etc.
If we don’t bring them along, we have to pay for a sitter or pay to board them, which amounts to usually hundreds of dollars (dogs are expensive, man).
So if you have pets, don’t forget to think about their expenses too!
How to keep track of your road trip expenses
Setting a budget is one thing, but keeping it is another.
There are no shortage of budgeting apps you can download to help you keep track of your expenses easily.
We have always just used the notes app on our phones, and every time we spend money, we deduct it in real time in our notes.
BUT having an app to do it for us does seem easier. So we are going to do some testing on our upcoming road trips and see which app we love the most and report back to you! 🙂
If you have a favorite budgeting app for road trips, let us know in the comments!
Wrapping Up
Now that you’ve learned how to budget for a road trip, you’ll be well on your way to a stress-free vacation where you aren’t worried about money the whole time.
If you want more road trip trips, you can read our guides here!
And let us know in the comments- what road trip topics would you like us to cover?
Happy Road Tripping!
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