A lot of my friends and some colleagues have asked me how much my past trips cost. I do not have data from my North-East trip. Back then, I was piggybacking on Nandi and kept passive tab on the expenses.
I had computed the cost of my Kerala trip after I had completed it. For three of us (me, mom and sister), I had spend about 27000 INR. This was significantly lower than a guided trip that one of my colleagues had done via some agency. Not to mention, we had lavishly spent on food. Lunches and dinners were always at some top rated TripAdvisor restaurant.
When I did my Vietnam trip with Nandy, I used a different approach towards tracking expenses. Since there was a conversion fee and a fee on each ATM withdrawal, we tried to minimise our transactions with the bank. In the end, this is how I had settled the expenses with my fellow travellers –
Sadly, this was exactly how I had tracked our finances. It doesn’t say much but my individual expenditure was about 53,000 INR.
When I had embarked on my Himachal trip, I made a point to note down my expenses in categories. These were, transport, food and supply, lodging and miscellaneous. A standard monthly planner template on my Mac came pretty handy in tracking cash exchanges. The spreadsheet looked like this –
There were a few places where I had used my credit card to pay for stuff. Tracking them from my December and January statements was easy. I had spent about 33,500 INR. Here is a summary, rounded off to hundreds –
Transport : 5500
Food+Supply+Extras: 10700
Stay: 7500
Flight tickets: 9800
As I undertake more trips, I am sure I would become more adept at tracking my finances.