Do you track holidays expenses as 1 big exp or split across multiple categories?

[Baguettestache]

Hi Mustachians,

I'm back from a mini trip with my girlfriend and when entering my expenses in my tracker I'm wondering... Should I track them as one big expense ("holidays") or split across different categories?

For example, let's say you go on a mountain trip and spend $80 for the train, $150 for a hotel and $30 for a meal at a restaurant.
Do you track "$80 transports", "$150 hotels" and "$30 restaurants" or "$260 - holidays"?

My reasoning is, a restaurant on holidays is a little different than a restaurant in my day-to-day life, the latter could easily be replaced with a meal at home, the former is harder to avoid. At the end of the month when I'll analyse my spendings it won't be clear why my restaurant, hotel and transport spendings went up: did I endulge more than usual or was it to be expected due to the holidays?

How do you usually handle those situations?

Thank you!

[mspym]

I bung them all under “travel” in the main budget. Sometimes I will do a bit of deeper analysis on a separate tab in my spreadsheet to get a clearer picture of what we need to plan for next time.

[deborah]

Like mspym, I bung them all under “travel”. I have a travel budget, and spend it until it’s gone, or the year ends and I get more.

[Baguettestache]

Thank you both :) I think it makes more sense as one expense rather than the split I've been doing so far. I'll change that!

[InterfaceLeader]

I track as one big pot (holidays), which is seperate from travel (which is mostly commuting and day trips), eating out, etc.

[NotJen]

It's your budget, and you can split it out any way that's helpful for you.

My budget has categories/sub-categories for "gifts", "charity", "travel", "leisure", "dining out", "groceries"; all of which my travel and holiday spending might end up under.  I don't find it helpful for me to split things out more than that.  However, if I host a meal or have a larger unavoidable restaurant trip or buy a ticket to an event with others I wouldn't normally attend, I might categorize it as a gift to keep it away from my other budget categories.

[Shamantha]

I started with detailed breakdowns between holidays and other spending, but now have only one category: Fun. This includes holidays, camping weekends, concerts, presents, dining out. It does not really matter to me whether I spend 100 on one concert ticket or two meals out with friends, or whether I spend it on a camping weekend. It all comes from the same bucket and is all not exactly necessary. As long as the overall level of "fun" money stays within the limits I have set, I am fine. Two concerts in one month? Then no city trip weekend. One week long trip to the UK by expensive ferry and B&Bs? Then only free fun for the rest of the month. Makes my bookkeeping a lot simpler.

[GilesMM]

I just move enough of the vacation restaurant charges to “vacation” to keep the monthly “restaurant” category from blowing up. Don’t track anything for any holiday. I put all goods in huge bucket called “shopping” unless for home maintenance.

[MaybeBabyMustache]

I have a travel budget, and just put it in there. I also track each trip, to see how much things cost. This helps me plan for the future & better understand the difference between types of trips (e.g. visiting family vs a flight/hotel trip, etc).

[bacchi]

I use 3 line items: travel-transportation, travel-lodging, and travel-spending (aka "everything else"). Those 3 wrap up into one category, "Travel."

[mspym]

@Shamantha i think you have convinced me to simplify my categories further - I’ll lump all the gardening and hardware expense back into the house category.

[Zikoris]

I have a main category of travel with subcategories for flights, accommodations, non-plane transportation, food, currency, activities, and misc travel (this is for things like visa fees, etc). It's not a perfect system because technically the foreign currency goes towards that other stuff as well (and I have zero interest in trying to track my cash spending in Hungarian Forints or whatever), but it's pretty decent.

[uniwelder]

I like to separate out airfare and pet sitting. This lets me look back at the vacation expense and see what could change in the future. Sometimes airfare is totally covered by points, but sometimes we pay full price. Also, we might not have pets in a few years or if there’s a house sitting exchange, then I’d like to see how that affects the total cost.

edited to add--- Airfare and pet care might seem like two weird categories, but sometimes they're more than half the cost of a vacation, so I think its very relevant.  A quick breakdown of a 2 week trip for my wife and I could be something like-- Airfare $0 or $1,200, pets $600, hotel/food/sights $500 to $2,500.

[mspym]

@uniwelder I also put kennel costs while we are travelling in our Dog category. As you say, this is an expenses specific to pet ownership not travel per se.

[GilesMM]

We put any pet boarding under Hotel.