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Road trips are a cost-effective and adventurous alternative to flying to a destination. While I personally choose to fly most places, road trips are a great way to see the country-side and plan stops at points of interest along the way to your destination.
I've previously shared tips on how to plan a road trip and discussed the importance of creating a budget. In this article, we're diving deeper into how to budget for a road trip. Yes, we're talking about what nobody wants to talk about: money. Budgeting is key to planning a trip that you can enjoy without stressing about extra costs piling up. While road trips are typically cost-effective, you can end up planning a Rolls Royce of road trips when you really intended to plan a Honda of road trips.
In this article, I’ll give you the 6 steps you need to successfully plan a road trip budget. I’ll be using a road trip from Dallas to the Grand Canyon as a real-world example.
1/ estimate how much gas you’ll use
What I like to do is start by planning how much I’ll spend on gas to and from my destination by using Gas Buddy. Using their “Plan Your Trip” tool, you can estimate how much it will cost in gas to get to and from your destination - or to Dallas and from the Grand Canyon in our example.
Plugging in the destination and vehicle information (2015 Toyota Rav4 XLE AWD), Gas Buddy calculates the roundtrip gas total as $192.58. Between the gas needed to just get to and from Dallas and the gas that will be used driving around the Grand Canyon, I’ll round up my gas budget. I like to be more conservative when I’m budgeting, so in this case, I’d estimate gas will cost me $225. I’ll assume that I will use about another $25+ in gas, or about another full tank of gas.
Gas budget = $225
2/ estimate how much accommodations will cost
Unless your road trip is one you can do in a day, it’s likely you’ll need overnight accommodations along your route. When planning where you’ll stay, there are two scenarios you need to plan for: accommodations along your route and accommodations at your final destination.
Along the route: there and back
The best way to budget for lodging is to plan your stops along the way so you know what cities you’ll be staying overnight. Whether you’re planning on staying at Motel 6, Holiday Inn, or the Hilton, pre-booking lodging online before your trip may help you save money... especially if you’re planning on staying overnight in bigger cities. Even if you don’t pre-book online and choose to drive as far as you can before stopping for the night, it’s helpful to know about how much you’ll be spending on a hotel while you’re on the road.
Picking a spot to stop overnight can be tricky, especially if you're not familiar with the route and points of interests along the way. Fortunately, there are some pretty cool road trip apps available to make finding points of interest a breeze.
If you’re looking for a deal (which I normally am), using an online travel agency (OTA) like Priceline, Booking.com, or Hotels.com is also a way to find hotels at discounted rates.Whether you’re set on booking a specific branded hotel or you don’t care where you stay, OTAs are a great place to compare prices, hotels, amenities, and more.
On a road trip from Dallas to the Grand Canyon, there are a few points of interest or cities along the way you can stay. Albuquerque is a unique city on the route that is about 9.5 - 10 hours from Dalas and about 6 hours from the Grand Canyon, making it a great overnight stopping point. It’s also a great stopping point if you want to explore a new city before going to the Grand Canyon. I’m a big fan of Priceline (and their Express Deals!) for booking accommodations. Hotel prices will vary depending on the dates you’re staying, availability, and more, so your budget may be higher or lower depending on seasonality and how close to the date you’re booking. My threshold for budgeting for an overnight stay at a hotel on a road trip is $125. So, I’ll budget $250 total for the way there and back.
Accommodations - along the route budget: $225
Final destination
You’ll want to book your lodging at your final destination well in advance. Popular destinations book up quickly, so it’s best to start planning where you’ll be staying a few months in advance.
There are a few tips for saving money on lodging, but the biggest tip is to stay at hotels outside of major cities and on the outskirts of your final destination. Using the Grand Canyon example, lodging inside the park is likely more expensive than lodging outside. You may save hundreds of dollars per night on lodging if you’re willing to stay in a town farther away from the park and drive in each day.
Also, if you’re going somewhere with more than four people, it may be more cost effective to book a house or condo through Airbnb or Vrbo. Booking a house or condo is usually not only cheaper for groups, but you can also save money on food (access to a kitchen). However, since this trip is to the Grand Canyon, I may want to stay at a unique property, like in an RV or a Yurt. For this example, we’ll assume I want to stay in a unique property.
Searching for properties on Airbnb, I found a cool Yurt (showers are questionable) that I would likely choose to stay in. If I assume I’m spending 5 nights at the property in June, my price would be $871 total.
Accommodations - Final Destination: $871
Total accommodations budget: $1,100
3/ choose your food and drinks wisely
When I’m traveling, I’m usually all for the cheap food and drinks. I normally don’t go somewhere for the food, so spending hundreds of dollars on dining out isn’t usually in my budget. Whether eating lots of regional food is a priority to you or not, the best way to budget for food and drinks is to set yourself a daily limit. If you plan to eat out every meal, you may choose to budget on the conservative side and give yourself a $100/day allotment. If you’re like me and want to spend your money on experiences (I’m good with groceries and runs to the liquor store with an occasional night out for dinner and drinks), it’s probably safe to cut your budget in half or $50/day.
Food + drink budget: $250-$500
4/ plan for experiences
Like planning for accommodations, planning for experiences is likely twofold. Planning for experiences long the route and at the final destination.
Along the route: overnight stop
No matter where your road trip takes you, it’s unrealistic to expect that once you get there everything will be free. You’re going to want to do things and experience things that will cost money. National Parks charge entry fees, there may be a cool zip line that you want to do, or maybe there’s a city walking tour you’re really jazzed about. Whatever your forte, proper budgeting requires researching what you want to do at your final destination or along your route.
In our example, the first night of road tripping is staying in Albuquerque. In this case, I’d likely take a half day or more exploring Albuquerque. The Sandia Peak is a great spot to visit, so I’d likely plan on either driving up to the peak or taking the tram. I’m about experiences when I’m traveling, so I’d choose to take the tram up to the peak. Tramway tickets can only be purchased 24 hours in advance. Assuming I can secure a ticket, the cost is $30 round trip.
I’m also a Breaking Bad fan, so I’d likely choose to do the Breaking Bad RV Tour (yes, you get in an RV and ride around Albuquerque to the different filming spots). The cost of the tour is $75. For the sake of budgeting, I’ll round up and assume I’ll spend $125 on experiences along the route.
Experience budget - along the route: $125
Final destination
The second piece to budgeting for experiences is what you’ll do at the destination. If your budget is limitless, you may choose to book activities every day. But, if you’re like me (and most people), you’ll have to choose what experiences you’ll spend your money on.
While horseback riding through the Grand Canyon, skydiving over the Grand Canyon, and taking a white water rafting tour in the Grand Canyon sound amazing, those activities probably won’t make it in my budget. My ‘experiences’ budget would probably go towards park entry fees and buying tickets for the skywalk. Yes, that’s very touristy of me, but give me a break, the last time I was at the Grand Canyon was in 2000 when I was 9 years old (no sky walk then).
Passes to the park are $35 per day for up to 7 days. And, tickets for the skywalk are $60 per person. You can buy different packages for the skywalk; however, I would choose the package that didn’t come with some of the extra amenities, like dinner, to save some money.
The rest of the time I would choose to spend driving and hiking to points of interest using All Trials and the Grand Canyon National Park website. So, if you like to do more experiences, you may need to increase your budget from the $100 that I have allocated.
Experience budget - final destination: $100
Total experience budget: $225
5/ leave room for unexpected costs
This is probably the least budgeted for category because there won’t be unexpected costs if you plan correctly, right? Wrong. Always plan for unexpected costs and expenses… these surprises are part of traveling and road tripping. Nothing ever goes as planned, so the best thing you can do is plan for the unexpected as best as possible. Whether it’s a flat tire, a speeding ticket, or you unexpectedly blow your hotel or food budget, having a safety net built into your budget is always a good idea.
Since I like to be conservative with my budget, normally I plan for $25/night in unexpected costs. So in our example, I’m taking 1 night to travel to the Grand Canyon, staying 5 nights at the Grand Canyon, and will take 1 night to travel back to Dallas - so 7 nights, totalling $175 in unexpected costs.
Unexpected costs budget: $175
6/ putting your budget together
Let’s recap real quick. Here are all the budget categories and the estimated cost. Remember, this is solely based on the example of a road trip from Dallas to the Grand Canyon.
Total gas budget: $225
Total accommodations budget: $1,100
Total food + drink budget: $250-$500
Total experiences budget: $225
Total unexpected costs budget: $175
Total budget: $1,975 — $2,225
Remember, this isn’t factoring in another person on the trip. So, the total budget is reflecting what it would cost one person. If two people go on the road trip, the gas and accommodations budget can be cut in half.
Conclusion
Whether you’re planning a solo road trip or hitting the road with a friend (or two) this budget outline is a starting point to make sure you’re planning a road trip that is both affordable and fun.