1) Alright first things first, you need to establish where you're going. Usually a road trip consists of multiple friends deciding to drive to a destination of which they expect to have more fun than they could at home. The next thing would be establish at least who and how many people are going. This could cause you to need a bigger or smaller car. Having a bigger car needs more gas obviously but a bigger car with more people can be less per person then a smaller car with less people depending on the distance.
Calculate Fuel Cost
2) Next you need to figure out the days you are leaving, arriving at destination and returning home. Have some flexibility especially if this is a High School graduation road trip as parents might have conflicts. Depending on the destination would obviously have some factor as to how long you are staying there. If you are driving 4 hours and staying a week that makes sense. If your driving 20 hours across country or from Connecticut to Florida it makes no sense to only stay down a week as you could potentially be driving for 3 days.
Mileage Calculator
3) Once you figure out the dates and how long you will be down there the next thing is to budget your costs. Now a lot goes into this. For one, obviously your costs of most things will decrease for how many people are going such as gas. The more people going the less gas will cost per person. For example, if driving 20 hours or 2400 and gas is about 4.30$ a gallon and 5 people are going, it will be about 200$ giver take a little per person round trip for gas. Now this is the least expensive of the budget potentially as it can range. You also might want to spend a night at a hotel for the longer trips if needed. Otherwise you can potentially save about 100$ from driving straight through.
4) The "everything else" budget will consist of well pretty much everything else such as food, entertainment, hotels. If you are not fortunate enough to have someone to stay with or a house where you are going hotels can get pretty expensive. Most hotel rooms cannot house more than 3-4 people without being uncomfortable. Hotel prices can range from about 80$/night to up to 1000$/night. Obviously your crazy if your spending that much but believe me people do. If you are planning on staying down where you are a week and there are 4 of you your already out anywhere from abut 600$ to more. But since there are 4 people its anywhere from 150$ and up per person.
Hotels
5) Food would be the next thing to worry about for a budget. Though food is hard to budget it can be watched. If you plan on eating 3 meals a day and you do not get free breakfast at your hotel your looking at about 10-20$/meal/person depending on the place. So potentially you can be spending anywhere from 30$ and up on meals for the day per person. Multiplying that by the 7 days you are staying your looking at about 210$/per person and up for the week of food. So as of before the entertainment we are up to about 1100 giver take obviously depending on the length of the trip and the distance from destination. I am budgeting off of a 20 hour trip with 4-5 people going.
6) Entertainment might be the hardest thing to put into a budget. This all depends on where you and your friends are going. Obviously if you are going to Florida or California there are a lot more expensive things to do such as Disney World, Universal Studios, MGM, Etc. Some of those can range from 100-150$ a day which if your budgeting can get crazy. There are definitely other options than just amusement parks which have little or no cost. These include beaches, museums, parks, Etc. There are also things in-between such as bars, strip clubs, sporting events, Etc. If you are on a budget with barely any flexibility then depending on the destination I would say your best budget would be between 30-100$/day/person. I know initially your thinking jeez that could be another 700$ added to the 1100 we have but if you think about it lets say 4/7 days you spend 30$. For those 4 days you have only spend 120$ total on entertainment compared to a potential 400$. So technically you have saved 280$ from which you could spend on the remainder 3 days and still leave your vacation only spending 400$ on entertainment compared to 700$.
To sum this post up, I am not a professional when it comes to road trips this is just my opinion as i and 4 other buddies are planning our own road trip and this is the format we have planned on.
