Look Over My Shoulder-Stage 4

Testing My Budget

This is Part 4 of a series of articles walking you through my travel planning process — from barely an idea to reservations and actual travel. I recommend reading the articles in order beginning with the Introduction here.

Before I begin in-depth research and get my heart set on specific destinations, I need to see what parts of this ambitious itinerary I can afford.

It is time to do some preliminary research to get a ballpark idea of how much this will cost. If it is beyond my financial means, now is a good time to cut out some venues, before I get my heart set on all of them.

Getting Ready

By this point, I have created a couple documents that will make planning easier:

A spreadsheet that mostly contains data about trip costs, so I can keep a running estimate in one place. It looks something like this:

A text document (I use MS Word) with each destination in my skeleton itinerary listed in its own section.