Split the budget into four buckets: flights, accommodation, food, activities. Set a number for each before you book anything. Then add 20% as a buffer and treat that 20% as real money, not imaginary money.

The Four Buckets With Realistic Ranges

Flights: for a Western European city break from the UK, budget £80-£160 return per person for reasonable dates booked a few weeks out. Eastern Europe (Prague, Budapest, Krakow, Warsaw) comes in at £60-£120. These are not the cheapest possible prices. They are sustainable, realistic, no-panic prices.

Accommodation: Western European cities (Amsterdam, Paris, Barcelona) run £100-£180 per night for a decent central hotel for two. Eastern European cities run £60-£100. If you go below these numbers, you're usually trading something meaningful: location, cleanliness, quality of sleep. Budget the realistic amount, not the aspirational amount.

Food: in Western Europe, budget £50-£70 per person per day to eat well. That's a good sit-down lunch, a proper dinner, coffees, and a couple of drinks. In Eastern Europe, £30-£45 per person per day gets you the same quality. Street food and markets lower this. Fine dining raises it.

Activities: most great city break activities are cheap or free. Walking, markets, parks, viewpoints. Budget £30-£50 per person per day to cover one paid attraction, a museum, or a boat trip.

The Hidden Costs

Airport transfers. Luggage fees if you're flying budget. Museum entry that adds up faster than expected. A round of drinks at a rooftop bar. Taxis when you're tired. These are the costs that erode the budget without feeling like decisions.

The fix is simple: estimate them in advance and add them to the relevant bucket rather than leaving them as a vague overflow.

Buffer the 20%

After you've set your four buckets and added the hidden costs, add 20% to the total. This is not a reward fund. It's a real part of the budget. It covers the exceptional dinner, the last-minute ticket to something you didn't plan for, the nicer cocktail bar on the last night. If you don't spend it, that's a bonus. But it should exist as a number in your plan, not as a vague sense that there's a bit more if you need it.

The Post-Trip Audit

Once. Do this once, after your first properly budgeted trip. Compare what you planned to spend against what you actually spent. Identify the category that went over. Adjust the relevant bucket for next time. This one exercise produces better budget estimates than anything else, because it's based on how you actually behave rather than how you imagine you'll behave. After one audit, you'll know your real numbers.