The six lines that make a weekend budget
1 · Fuel (or charging) — the only line you can calculate exactly
The formula is honest and boring: distance × consumption ÷ 100 × price per litre. A 470 km weekend in a compact at 6.2 L/100 km and €1.65/L costs about €48. That surprises people: fuel is usually only 10–15% of the real total. The planner uses your actual consumption and local price, and speaks kWh natively for EVs (public charging around €0.48/kWh makes an equivalent EV weekend roughly the same money, around €40).
2 · Food & coffee — the line everyone underestimates
Per person, per day, eating the way people actually eat on a good drive (roadside coffee, proper lunch, real dinner):
| Budget mood | Per person / day |
|---|---|
| Shoestring — bakeries, picnics, one hot meal | €28 |
| Comfort — nice lunch, proper dinner | €48 |
| Indulgent — the good restaurant, twice | €85 |
3 · Stays — priced per bed, per pitch, or not at all
Guesthouse or cabin ~€70/room, boutique hotel ~€130, design hotel or manor ~€280. Two people share a room; a crew of four needs two. A day trip zeroes this line entirely, which is why day raids feel so cheap.
The planner asks where you're sleeping, and the line follows the answer. A campsite is priced by the pitch, and your budget mood picks the tier: ~€24 for a municipal site, ~€42 for a serviced site with showers, ~€90 for a premium site or cabin, with up to four people to a pitch. Each lands at roughly a third of the room the same mood would have booked, which is the oldest true thing about camping. What that pitch needs in the boot, and what it does not, is its own guide. Sleeping in the car zeroes the line the way a day trip does, and the disclosure names what the rooms would have cost, so you can see the saving instead of taking it on trust.
4 · Experiences & extras — the memory line
Entries, rentals, ice cream, the rowboat hour, the market raid. €8–45 per person per day depending on mood. Cutting this line to zero is the classic false economy; it's the line the photos come from.
5 · Tolls & parking — small, steady, easy to forget
The planner budgets a flat €8 per day for the typical mix of town parking, the odd small toll and a viewpoint car park. It's deliberately a single honest number rather than a fake-precise table: real toll costs swing with the country and the road you choose. Big-ticket exceptions to check yourself before you commit: motorway vignettes (Austria, Switzerland, Czechia, Slovenia…), alpine tunnels, and car ferries — any of those can add €10–40 in one line, and no average predicts them.
6 · The reality buffer — 10%, always
The forgotten sunscreen, the detour that found a vineyard, the second coffee stop. Weekends improvise; budgets should expect it. The planner adds 10% of everything above and calls it what it is.
Three levers that actually move the number
- Days beat everything. A day trip deletes the stay line and half the food line; an alpine day raid can undercut a lazy staycation weekend.
- Picnic one lunch. A farm-shop picnic saves €15+ per head and is usually the better meal anyway.
- Region is a price setting. Countryside and forest weekends usually run cheaper than coast and mountain ones — room rates and parking do most of that, so it's the stay you book, not the plan, that moves this lever.
What this model is — and isn't
These are honest regional averages for Europe, not quotes. Your seaside town in August will run hotter; your off-season lakes loop will run cooler. Treat the total as a solid envelope: it should land within about 15% of what people actually spend, which is all a weekend budget ever needs to do.