Budget a Real Trip
Plan a trip your family could actually afford, and prove the numbers.
2 weeks🔢 Math🧭 Life Skills✏️ Writing
What you need
- internet access for prices
- a spreadsheet or paper
Nothing to buy and nothing to print — if you do not have one of these, swap it for whatever you do have.
The steps
Day 1
Set the constraint
Agree a budget ceiling with an adult. Everything else follows from it.
🔢 Write the number down
Day 2
The big three
Price travel, accommodation and food. Real quotes, with the date you found them.
📊 Make a chart or table
Day 4
The rest
Add everything else — tickets, transfers, one unexpected thing.
📊 Make a chart or table
Day 6
Contingency
Add 10% for things going wrong. Explain why that line exists.
🔢 Write the number down
Say this: “Every real budget has this line. Ones without it are wrong, not lean.”
Day 8
Under or over
Are you under the ceiling? If not, cut something and say what.
✍️ Write a few sentences
Day 10
Pitch it
One page: where, when, what it costs, why it is worth it.
✍️ Write a few sentences
How to score it
You score this, not us. Pick the description that actually matches what they did.
Sourcing
- 1. Made-up prices
- 2. Some real prices
- 3. All real prices
- 4. All real prices with the date they were quoted
Completeness
- 1. Travel only
- 2. Travel and stay
- 3. All major costs
- 4. All major costs plus contingency
Argument
- 1. Listed numbers
- 2. Explained the total
- 3. Explained the total and the cuts
- 4. Made a case an adult would actually consider
With more than one child
Each child budgets one day of the trip and they merge the totals.
What goes in the portfolio
A full budget with real quoted prices, a total, a contingency line, and a one-page pitch.