Keeping Track of Your Summer Vacation Budget

Thank you to Dave Ramsey’s EveryDollar for sponsoring this post! As always, all opinions are my own.

I know we discussed earlier this month ways to keep in control of your budget this summer, but let’s be honest, keeping in control of your budget is only half the battle especially when you’re on vacation. You still have to find the time to manage your spending and oh, you actually have to create said budget.

I’m a big fan of the whole “pen-to-paper” method of budgeting but my husband prefers for things to be online and at his fingertips. So, for him, I put our budget into EveryDollar so he can see it. When it comes to budgeting for summer, I simply set up a separate “fund” for our summer vacation that we have planned.

This way, whenever we spend money related to our trip, I just add the transaction to the fund and everything is accounted for.

This way, I can keep track of the expenses and I don’t have to worry about how much we spent and where we spent it at.

What I personally love about the EveryDollar system is that we can track our progress through the Baby Steps. If you’re a big Dave Ramsey fan like I am, this will make you happy too. The only debt we have is our mortgage so I actually put our mortgage under the “debt” section instead of the housing/mortgage section so we can track our payoff.

So even though this is technically Baby Step 6, we’re treating it like Baby Step 2 due to the low amount of our mortgage.

And I know many of y’all have asked how we track our emergency fund goal, and this is how – through EveryDollar. It’s super easy to track your progress and figure out at a glance how much money you have left to save.

So, how do the Baby Steps tie into saving and budgeting for a summer vacation?

I’m a firm believer that without solid financial goals in place, you’re sure to stumble a lot more than you have to when it comes to managing your money. And the Baby Steps section of EveryDollar is the easiest way that I’ve found to track your financial goals progress.

You’ll be able to make decisions easier. Like, “do we stay at a condo on the beach for $1,500or do we stay at a camping cabin where we have to bring our own linens and camp stove for $400 for the weekend?” You’ll be able to see where that extra money if you chose the cheaper option could go. (P.S. we chose the camping cabin because we’re weird “sleep-in-tents-and-live-in-nature people. 🙂 )

And an added benefit to using EveryDollar is that you can see where and how all your money is budgeted for the month.

Which in turn helps you better prepare for your summer vacation and helps you keep things in perspective when planning. I know that I would love to take a winter vacation somewhere amazing like Lake Tahoe, but according to our budget, that’s not happening this year and that’s okay.

It’s all about perspective and the more aware you are of your money, the easier it is to stay in control of it.

P.S. EveryDollar is free to use – there is a paid version but everything above was done using the free version. 🙂

What is your best tip for tracking your summer vacation spending?