Holiday budget worksheet

Going on holiday always needs some planning and preparation and as part of that planning process, a holiday budget worksheet is essential to know the true cost of your trip.

We all go on holiday and family holidays are a great time to relax, have fun and spend together as a family. It's also an expensive time, whether if you opt to stay to close to home or take a package holiday. Keeping on top of those costs is essential if you want to live within your means.

More often than not we just work our roughly how much our holiday is going to cost by adding together the flights, accommodation and then a bit of spending money.

All too often we forget to include the little things like sun screen, new swimming outfits for the kids and insect repellent. It's all these little things that easily make you overspend, pushing you over your budget.

If you've being budgeting carefully in other areas of your life and using the monthly budget, then you will have been putting aside an allowance for your holiday. Hopefully, when you work out your holiday budget, it will match the 'pot' you've been putting aside. If it doesn't, then you may want to consider the type of family holiday you have.

This free budget worksheet covers all the big things like flights, accommodation and food as well as the little things associated with your holiday.

Here are a few tips to help make your budget accurate:

• Research your destination and find out what you'd like to do and how much it costs to do those activities in advance. This helps prevents any surprises, and disappointments, when you get there.
• Give yourself a set budget daily for food and drink and stick to it, but make it realistic.
• If you're going abroad, then check the exchange rate to see how far your pound will go.
• Try and get an idea for the cost of things at your destination. We recently went to Ireland and knew the pound was low against the euro, but still found that prices were 30-40% higher than the cost of goods in the UK.
• Add a contingency to your budget if you can, just in case. About 10% will keep you on track.
• Finally, take a credit card with you 'just in case'. You never know what might happen and the access to money will make life easier in an emergency. Just make sure you pay it off as soon as you get home.

If you're budgeting carefully in other areas of your life, then hopefully, you've been making an allowance each month for your trip. When you work out your holiday budget, you should hopefully have the cash sitting there waiting for you.

How to download this holiday budget worksheet

Simply click on the link below and save the spreadsheet to your desktop. The spreadsheet is in Microsoft Office Excel 2003 worksheet.

The PDF version

Once your file has opened, you can save it to your desktop and print it out.

You will need Adobe Reader (the latest version is recommended) installed on your computer in order to open and read the budget. You can get Adobe Reader here (a new window will open so you can download it without leaving this page).

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