hello welcome back to the bliss bean and it's now been more than a month since I got back
from Europe it definitely doesn't feel that way the time flies so from the middle of November
to the middle of January I spent two months in Europe mostly in Spain and Portugal I spent a
significant amount of money there and in this video we're gonna figure out exactly how much
money and exactly how I tracked how much I spent while I was traveling I also made a little Google
sheets template out of the spreadsheet that I personally created for myself for this trip so if
you don't want to hear me talk and you just want the free resource fine it's in the description
bye but for the rest of you let's talk money so this was my very first solo trip and it was
very much a learning experience for me in trying to like figure out what travel methods work best
for me I learned that I'm not a very spontaneous person and I prefer to do a lot of planning before
a trip I learned that traveling for long periods of time absolutely destroys my immune system and
most importantly I was able to figure out a travel budgeting system that worked for me so I already
had a monthly budgeting system but it didn't really carry over that well to traveling and
I just wanted something separate to only track what I was spending while I was on my trip so
the system I'm about to show you I only came up with about half way through my trip up until then
I was keeping a gigantic running list of every single expense that I was making but not really
categorizing it in any way and not tracking how much I spent in each city that I was visiting
so let's get into it so the first part of the spreadsheet that I started with as I said was just
a simple running list of each purchase that I made the date the category the subcategory if I was
feeling extra and then how I paid for it just to clarify the main reason that I was keeping track
of how I paid for each expense is because the credit card that I was using while traveling is
connected to my parents bank account because they get much better cash back benefits than my credit
card does and so I needed to keep careful track of how much I was spending on that card specifically
so that at the end of the trip I could total all of that up and write out a check to them so this
is all going great and fine until the middle of December the data nerd inside of me started
getting antsy and I was like you know what I have these categories but I don't have the totals so I
really want to total up how much I spent on each category in each city and so I did that I love
colors so I went to my list of expenses and I highlighted by color what city those expenses
were for I highlighted pre-departure expenses like my travel insurance backpack money belt raincoat
I highlighted all of those in gray and then for each leg of the trip I chose a different color
transportation from one location to another I left blank and I'll show you why in a minute - for
example my bus and flight tickets from Madrid to Germany I did not label that as Madrid tourist
Germany I just left those blank for the most part I didn't have solid chunks of like gray purple red
but sometimes I did make purchases in advance for example I booked my accommodations for Portugal
while I was still in Madrid so I had a little bit of green mixed in with the red but it's okay the
point is that the colors make it really easy to go back and total everything up once you're
trying to figure out how much you spent in each city then on a separate part of the spreadsheet
I created a little tracker for each city I'm sure you could program this to transfer data
automatically but pretty much the only coating I've ever learned in my life was basic HTML and
CSS to customize my middle school blogger website so I did it manually but you know if you have the
skills and you want to automate this please send that to me I would really appreciate it so yeah
for each city I create a table of that same color and I included all the categories of spending then
periodically like every few days I take the data from the running list and input it into the city
tracker I did have a column for how much I plan to spend versus how much I actually spend but again I
was just like learning how to travel on this trip so it was really hard for me to estimate because I
just I didn't know how much it cost to travel what my personal spending habits where so I didn't use
that column a whole lot but it was still a good way to like self that I was trying not to spend
all my money on this trip okay so now remember the cost of transportation from city to city
that I would write in between the city trackers so for example to get to Germany I had to buy a
bus ticket and a plane ticket so I added up the cost of that and then I put it right in between
my tracker for Madrid and my tracker for Germany I just did this because I couldn't think of any
logical reason to put it with Madrid or Germany so I felt like I would get super confused if I didn't
just separate it out completely now I want to talk a little bit about my specific expenses in Europe
because a lot of people have asked me how much does it actually cost to travel in Europe so I
have a few key points to make in Lisbon I probably overspent it was literally the first two or three
days of my trip the first 2 to 3 days that I've ever traveled by myself so I was a little
clueless I took an uber on my last day because I couldn't figure out the bus system it was so
confusing and I was worried I was gonna miss my flight I tip like $20 for a tour which was a good
tour but maybe not like a 20 dollar tour I also loaded up my metro card with a lot more rights
than I actually needed but that part worked out because I ended up visiting Lisbon a total of I
think four times throughout my entire trip and so by the time I finally took my final metro ride and
Lisbon I had actually used up exactly the amount I had on the MetroCard so I spent a very little
in Madrid and honestly I was surprised by this but it makes sense because I spent all of my time with
host families so my food and my accommodation is recovered and like what else is there basically I
did eat out sometimes but somehow I only spent a total of $60 on food which I don't really
understand that maybe I tracked something wrong but I also looking back on it was pretty frugal
with my food spending I also spent very little on entertainment cuz I did a lot of free things and
the most expensive thing that I did was I went on a guided hike which was only like 15 euros
or something like that and it pretty much took up my entire day so I thought that was a pretty good
deal Germany I was just with my family chilling Portugal I expect it to be more expensive and so
I was okay with it being more expensive because we stayed in an airbnb in Lagos we ate out a lot so
yes it was more expensive but it was a fun time so you just have to pick and choose finally in
Barcelona I spent a bit more in my accommodation than I had planned but I really liked the hostel
that I was staying at and I also spent a lot less on food than I thought I would so that kind of
balanced out at the end of the spreadsheet I made a separate tracker for medical expenses because
I was not expecting to be spending like eight to nine hundred dollars for a measly hospital visit
and also supposedly my travel insurance will pay for that but I'm still waiting so so all in all
I wanted purposes by saying this is probably an estimate because literally as I was filming
this video I remembered one expense that I did not track I was like I'm pretty sure I visited
a video game exhibition and I just didn't write that down so take this with a grain of salt I'm
just a beginner traveller and also I was much better at keeping up with this at the beginning
than I was by the end of the trip it's just like a New Year's resolution okay after all these
disclaimers all in all I spent about two thousand one hundred and fifty dollars that includes all
my pre-departure expenses like the backpack and the travel insurance but not the medical
expenses because again supposedly I will get that back but yeah I really like this system and I'm
really excited to use it on other trips now that I feel more comfortable with it more confident maybe
I won't forget to track things next time anything my system is a good system and you want to try it
you can obviously make this format yourself it's pretty simple but I also created a downloadable
template that you can use so that you can start off with a foundation and then customize it for
the specific kind of trip that you're taking I think this kind of format is especially helpful
for longer trips where you're visiting multiple cities because each city has different costs and
so you're gonna want to budget differently for each city you can download this spreadsheet from
the link in the description you'll just have to put in your email and then you'll instantly get a
link to it I hope the spreadsheet helps you I hope the video helps you I hope you're having a good
day please give this video a like and subscribe to my channel and I'll see you next week bye