Plan less on holiday. Discover more.
Seven principles we use on every trip, in the order we use them. The first one decides the destination; the third is the one that changes everything.
Start with the budget
Set the number first and let it choose the destination, rather than falling in love with a place and finding out later what it costs.
Count usable days
A 10-day trip with two travel days and a late arrival is seven usable days. Plan the seven.
Research before you go
The one step that changes everything. Opening hours, closing days and booking windows are all knowable in advance.
Book the bed on total cost
Nightly rate plus transfers plus the breakfast you would otherwise buy. The cheap room far out is rarely cheap.
Fix the immovable points
The things that sell out or only open on certain days go in the calendar first; everything else arranges itself around them.
Leave slack on purpose
An unplanned afternoon is not wasted time. It is where the trip stops being a schedule.
Keep the receipts
Write down what each thing actually cost while you are still there. It is the only way the next budget gets better.
The things we actually plan with
None of these is finished yet. They are listed because they are being built, not because they are ready — nothing here downloads anything today.
Trip budget spreadsheet
The sheet every trip on this site is planned in — flights, beds, tickets, food, with the per-person total at the bottom.
Booking timeline
A calendar that counts backwards from your departure date and tells you what to book in which week.
Family trip checklist
The pre-departure list, including the bits that only matter with a small child.
Destination research guide
How to research a place properly in one afternoon, which is step three of the method.
What a real family trip costs
Ten days in Andalusia for two people — what we booked before we left, from receipts, and what we spent once we were there.
| Item | Total | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Accommodation, 9 nights | €1,137.37 | Booked about seven weeks out |
| Monument tickets | ≈ €434 | ≈ €217 per person |
| Car hire, 3 days | €115.20 | Málaga, 1–4 January |
| Flights | €479.07 | For two, checked bags included |
| Booked before we left | ≈ €2,166 | ≈ €1,083 each — all from receipts |
| Food, souvenirs and day-to-day spending | ≈ €800 | ≈ €80 a day, from memory rather than receipts |
| Ten days, two people, all in | ≈ €2,966 | ≈ €1,483 each |
Two kinds of number, kept apart on purpose. Everything above the subtotal is a figure we can show you a receipt for. The daily spending below it is not — it is what we remember averaging on food, coffee, tickets bought on the day and things we carried home, and it is rounded to the nearest ten euros a day. We would rather label it than quietly fold it into the total.
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