What a day really costs: a budget you can keep

A trip budget usually dies on day two, when the first real receipt does not match the number someone said on the sofa. It is not that people spend wildly. It is that the number was for the wrong thing.

Three lines, not one

Split the day into what you sleep in, what you eat, and how you get around. They behave differently. The stay is decided before you go and rarely moves. Food follows the city and your mood — a market lunch and a good dinner is one number, two long dinners another. Getting around is small but daily: a metro pass, a taxi from the airport, the ferry you did not expect.

Put a number on each line, per person, per day. Then add the trip's fixed costs on top: getting there and back, the two or three tickets you book ahead. That total is the budget. The daily number is what you compare against while you are there.

Ask the city, not the internet average

"A day in Lisbon costs X" is an average of a backpacker and a honeymoon. Decide your style first — hostel and street food, a good mid-range hotel and one nice dinner a day, or the full thing — and price that. The same city is three different trips.

One check, not a spreadsheet

You do not need to log every coffee. You need one honest glance a day: are we roughly where we said? Log the things that move the number — the dinner, the tickets, the taxi — and let the small change go. If day three is over, day four has a market lunch. That is the whole system.

Pay together, settle once

Travelling with others? Do not split every bill at the table. One person pays the dinner, another the tickets, and you settle at the end with the fewest transfers. Keep a note of who paid what; the rest is arithmetic.

In Travlyo the budget is one number for the whole trip, built from your style, people and days, or set by hand. Money logs what you spend in the trip's currency and says in plain words how much is left; Settle up works out who owes whom.