I with the "budget while planning" folks-- Most the our major expenses are paid/accounted for in advance-- plane, car, train, hotels, major sightseeing, and I usually know metro costs will be, etc. Then we take a set amount out of the atm, and pay cash for food and such, so that keeps control of what we spend there, but we are fairly cost conscious people in our everyday lives, so that's easy. We don't tend to make many major purchases, but we don't worry about every little thing either- we always send postcards to close friends and family, and bring some small trinkets home for specific people, and usually a couple of bottles of wine from a vineyard we have visited etc.

I do keep all of the receipts, and some times we keep track of them in our travel journal and sometimes we don't, depending on how we are feeling.

But, it is a vacation, and we try to relax, not stress ourselves, and we don't make any outrageous purchases that we wouldn't make at home, so... I would rather do without another cute pair of sandals or handbag when I get home than sacrifice an amazing meal while I am on vacation.
But that's me.

What Ira said

No, I am not a planner, so I don't do a budget; I just know approximately what I will pay for hotel, flights, car. I don't track my expenditure, because I find it will only put a damper on the holiday.

If I go to the ATM and it refuses to give me money, then I know I have overdone it! I then move on to my VISA.

Basically, I am tooooo fiscally irresponsible to be allowed out on my own!

Regards Ger

I normally dont, especially now that the dollar is so low, it would depresse me just thinking about of how much this vacation is going to cost me...
I told my daughter and grandaughter to buy just simple, economical souvenirs for their friends..
I dont shop for clothes or shoes in Italy or France..especially know that I dont work anymore, I dont need sophisticate clothes and dress very comfortable...

Sort of. I get a receipt for (or write it down if none available) every purchase and add it all up when I get home.

I then keep a record for later when planning the next trip.

Once I pay for plane tickets and hotels, my expenditures on vacation are very similar to those at home. I don't really think about what I'm spending because I'm spending about the same amount for the same services as I would if I were home living my regular life. (That moderate restaurant in Rome costs the same or less than my local moderate restaurant in NYC.)

I'm not an extravagant spender at home or on vacation. I buy whatever I want, but I don't usually want to buy many things.

I do keep reciepts, but only so I can report back to Fodorites and friends on the places I've been.

Why did you ask this twice less than an hour apart?

Never! far too depressing. The only time I do is when I am on an expense acct... That being said, I easily know how much I will pay for a hotel, I have already paid for flights and trains. I then have an "allowance" for the trip and almost never go beyond this..as I want to have something left over for the next! I figure on a daily bais what my food and sightseeing budget is and have no problem living within it. Before I go, I have arough idea what the average meal cost is in a given city so it really isnt too hard.

I've already figured out about how much we'll be spending per day, and I do keep a journal, but after we track a couple of days expenses we trust our own judgement that we're not going to run out of funds, and just enjoy ourselves. Of course I may have to adopt another tactic over the next couple years as we settle into "retired" life...

Wow, some of you are super organized! I'm in the "pay now feel the pain later" category Like others have said, the major expenses like flights/hotels, are paid for in advance. After that I don't think about money - until my visa bill comes when I get home!

I am just like you whiskey "pay now, feel the pain later". But I have never really regretted the impulse buy on the postcards along the Seine River, or the teas at Whittards in London, or too many Dutch crackers. I actually wish that there are things that I bought more of

What I do when I travel is usually budget spending money for let's say 500 Euro per week, and then I'll try to use the cash to pay admissions, lunches/snacks, postcards, and even dinners sometimes. I do limit my spending at home: I reduce my trips to the malls, only catch matinee shows, cook more at home, etc.

No. I hate feeling pain while on a vacation. Having said that, and spending 10 years paying huge finance charges on credit cards, I wiped the slate clean a year or so ago on all credit cards (big bonus) and have tried the pay as you go method, so the 10 - 18% paid on credit card debt could instead be used to compensate for the falling dollar. Rather spend it on me anyway. This has worked, and I found it gives me more money to spend. Then again, we don't generally spend big bucks on fancy dinners -- we like the local places reeking with atmosphere.

I did not use to keep track of my daily expenses when I traveled. In some occasions, I thought I had lost money or overpaid for something only because the money had disappeared a lot faster than I had anticipated. In order to alleviate that feeling, in my last trip I started writing all my daily expenses down to 1 Euro. I was traveling alone and I enjoyed remembering the day every night when writing down the expenses while waiting for my dinner or afterwards. It helped quite a lot to know where the money was going and also keep to a certain budget. I had no idea so many others write down their expenses. It is great to hear that.

I am an obsessive planner so I write up an expenses list before we go. It has always been pretty accurate in the past. However, like Texasaggie, my husband is an obsessive accountant and keeping a journal on running expenses is actually an amusement for him and he reads it fondly, kinda like a diary, when we get home! We are not uptight about it though and would splurge when the urge pops up. Most of our friends are amazed and puzzled by our attention to detail, so it's good to know there's a lot more of you out there

I keep a list of spending. After Bordeau in December when I discovered that I'd spent fully 25% of the cost of my trip on alcohol and foie gras, I gave up totalling my expenditures by category.

indytravel: 25% on foie gras and alcohol is a LOT of foie gras - LOL!

I track EVERYTHING! I even keep the used metro tickets. It's a bad habit from work days when we had to submit expenses in order to get reimbursed. No receipt, no reimbursement.

It always gave me a fiendish kind of joy to submit a separate line item for a 10 cent ticket! > First we had to give the amount in the local currency, then we had to give the amount converted into US dollars. > >

I keep both a journal and a little expense book, where I record costs each day. That has become especially handy when sitting here posting on Fodors as I have often been able to tell exactly how much a meal was at a specific restaurant or exactly how much the taxi from an airport was.

I keep all this on my PDA (encrypted, password protected). You can enter expenses as you go, or from your receipts at the end of the day. Each account is separate, so you always know your balance (available credit, too). I add a separate account for Customs (you can add a transaction to two accounts at once)for filling out the form on the plane. And, you can convert each transaction from Euros to dollars as you go, even figuring in those pesky "currency conversion" fees.

Before the PDA, I'd print out a daily itinerary from my PC calendar program (one day per page) and carry just the one page, making journal entries on one side and expenditure notes on the other.

I'm with Kay, though. I take care of the major expenses from home (where practical) and calculate transport passes, museum and other entrance fees, etc., ahead of time.

Then, we have an idea of the max we care to spend on breakfast, lunch, dinner, though we typically end up having only one major meal per day and another much lighter one. And, typically we spend a little more on some and a little less on others. There's always the real steal, or the big splurge.

We don't do much shopping - that's pretty much limited to special and unique items that will remind us of our trip.

We like to pay for, or at least budget the cash, for as much as possible before leaving home, so we're not paying for the trip too long after we've returned. That way, we can get started planning the next excursion.

If you're using credit cards, it's a good idea to hang onto all your receipts until you receive your statement, just to ensure that everything is recorded correctly and there's nothing unusual. Same goes for your ATM withdrawal receipts.

I do carry a zippered plastic envelope and tuck all the various ticket stubs, business cards of hotels and restaurants, receipts, postcards, I collect along the way into it. I have often used this record to be able to answer a quesion on Fodor's.

Why worry about that and ruin the vacation I am on ? Just wait until you get home & the Visa folks are happy to bring you the bad news. I do, however, know how much cash I have (all the time) & know ahead of time how much will be spent for transportation, hotels, etc. I am seldom surprised, but we are not shoppers either.

I set up a spreadsheet with a column for each day and row for common categories (including VAT refundable and Customs Declarable).

Other rows have confirmation numbers, train and flight numbers and times, and sightseeing plans in each column.

I also keep notes at the bottom, so in a single document I have a record of the entire trip at a glance.

It just takes a moment to record each expenditure, and I have a running tally of how much more I shouldn't spend.

If you don't have Pocket Excel in a PPC or the equivalent, this doesn't apply to you.