I just got back from a 17 day vacation! Yes, seventeen whole days away from my business, on a road trip through five states. It was a fabulous experience! I loved visiting many National Parks and National Monuments and spending time with family. One of the extra good things about it though was that I had budgeted for it in advance. I made a big payment to my credit card when I got home and paid for the whole vacation.
I’m a huge advocate of an annual budgeting process for businesses. For many years, I’ve had a budget projecting income and expenses for my business. The business budget allows me to accurately project my personal income so I can make sure my personal budget works.
For a long time though, I’ve not been doing a great job at budgeting for vacations. I’d have a vague idea of an amount that I’d like to have for a vacation budget, but it’s been mostly aspirational. When it came down to it, I’d put most of my vacation on a credit card and then hope to pay it down soon. In my real world, that didn’t happen.
The last couple of years though have been different! I’ve learned to apply the “pay yourself first” model and used some ideas from the book Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. Not only do I put a percentage of gross income aside for taxes and charitable contributions, but I also put aside a percentage of each month’s income for vacation savings.
So, when I started planning my recent road trip, I budgeted an amount that made sense to me for lodging, food, gas, and entertainment. I also budgeted for several other shorter getaways that I had planned for this year. My vacation savings grow each month so by the time I was ready to start booking lodging, the funds were there waiting.
When I tallied up what I’d spent on the recent vacation, I was within $200 of my budgeted amount for this trip. Not a bad overage on a 17 day odyssey, especially when I consider that there were some Christmas gifts for family in the mix.
I had to share this with you in hopes that you will also find it helpful for your personal and business budgeting. It’s great it you can take two weeks away from your business, but if you can have it paid for in advance, that’s even better!
Here’s to your success!