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Trips

Travel budget calculator

The mistake that wrecks a travel budget is mixing currencies — converting the flights as though you paid for them in baht. This keeps the two apart: daily costs in the destination currency, flights and insurance in yours.

The trip

days

Daily costs are multiplied. One-time costs are not — enter those as a total.

Destination units per 1 of your home currency. If 1 dollar buys 36 baht, enter 36. Check today’s rate before you go.

In the destination currency.

Currency

Changes the symbol on your figures. It does not convert them — there is no exchange rate here.

One-time costs, in your home currency.

%

10 to 15% is a common choice. It covers the taxi you did not plan and the day the rate moves.

Total trip cost, in your currency

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Daily spend, converted

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One-time costs

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All-in per day

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This calculator needs JavaScript to recalculate. The figures above are a worked example, and every assumption behind them is written out below.

What this assumes

You supply the exchange rate; nothing is fetched. That is deliberate. A cached rate is a wrong rate wearing the authority of a live one, and you will pay your card’s rate plus a spread anyway rather than the mid-market figure any free source returns. A number you typed, and know the age of, is more useful.

Daily costs are multiplied by travellers; one-time costs are not, so enter flights as the total for everyone.

The buffer is applied to everything, including the flights you have already booked. If you would rather buffer only the variable part, enter the flights after seeing the subtotal.

Two currencies, kept apart

Your accommodation is quoted in the local currency; your flights were charged in yours. Converting both, or neither, is how a trip budget ends up out by a factor of thirty. The arithmetic here converts the daily side only, then adds the one-time costs at face value.

Why the buffer is not padding

Trips overrun for structural reasons, not because people are careless: the airport transfer nobody counted, the day it rained and you did an indoor thing that cost money, the meal out on the last night. Ten per cent is the difference between coming home on budget and coming home slightly ashamed.

A moving exchange rate is the other half. If your rate shifts 5% while you are away, every daily cost moves with it.

A note on what our app does here

TLDR Money is single-currency — you pick one at signup and it does not convert. That is a deliberate product decision rather than a gap, and it means the app is not the right tool for tracking a trip in a second currency as you go. This calculator is for planning the trip before you leave; be aware of the limit before assuming the app continues the job.

Common questions

How do I budget for a trip in a foreign currency?
Estimate daily costs in the local currency, because that is how they will be quoted to you, and convert the whole daily figure once. Keep one-time costs — flights, insurance, visas — in your own currency, since that is what you were charged. Then add 10 to 15% for the things that are not on any list.
How much should I budget per day?
It varies more by country than by traveller. The reliable method is to price your actual accommodation for two or three nights, look up typical meal costs, and build the figure from those rather than from a per-day average someone else published.
Why do I have to enter the exchange rate myself?
Because a fetched rate would be either stale or a live third-party call from your browser, and because you will not receive the mid-market rate anyway — your card adds a spread. A rate you looked up and know the age of is more honest than one presented with false precision.
Does TLDR Money track spending in multiple currencies?
No. The app uses one currency per account, chosen at signup, with no conversion. That is a deliberate decision rather than a missing feature, and it means the app will not follow a trip into a second currency.

The app this comes from

The budget is the easy half

The hard half is the fortnight afterwards, when the trip has quietly rearranged your month. A spending log is what makes that visible before the statement does.

Not out yet. TLDR Money International is in build for the United States and the United Kingdom first, on iPhone and Android. There is nothing to download and nothing to sign up to — when there is, this page will say so.

Last reviewed 20 August 2026. The arithmetic behind this page is covered by automated tests that run on every deploy.