Trip financial planning spreadsheet
 

Hello everyone,
I put together an Excel spreadsheet on my site to use for trip financial planning (trip cost and savings calculations). I hope it will be useful for someone. Please, let me know what you think.

Motorcycle Trip Financial Planner | The Adventure Motorcycle Blog

Very nice! You could make this more accessibly by making it into a Google Doc.

I'm going to use this for my trip.

Thanks!

Hi Atlas,

Thanks for the comments! Unfortunately Google docs (like Zoho) does not cooperate with Excel's charts and graphs. You can, however, download the file and upload it to your Google docs account. Functionally it should work, it just doesn't look as nice and the charts don't show up.

I've also been told it works fairly well in OpenOffice (a free alternative to Excel).

Love your blog BTW! I've been drooling over your Utah pics. One of these days I've gotta make it out west.

wow this spreadsheet is awesome

WQF,

OMG I went back to the page and just saw the Zoho things that displays the spreadsheet. It didn't load for me the first time for some reason. In the mean time I was converting it to a Google Doc. Here's mine:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...M6tqOQfvHHzPaw

I pretty much copied what you did (didn't feel like calculating the interest stuff). This really is a VERY nice resource. I am all about trying to quantify as much as I can. I know it will all go to hell on the road, but that's half the fun! I've just started to take a realistic look at what it will take to make it to TDF and back, and this has opened my eyes to the kind of saving I will have to do.

Thanks for posting this! If I have any additional ideas I will post back here.

Glad you liked my pics of Utah. There really are some amazing sights out there.

Just a quick update. I just put up version 4 on my site which includes added functionality for "2 bike" planning.

A very useful little tool, thank you for sharing that with us, and the link to your blog as very interesting and full of good information
Thanks

Thanks WQFTruckster ! That is fantastic, a fair number of hours have gone into that to get it working the way it does !

And yes it works very well in open office (2.4)

thanks for sharing !

:thumbup1:

Yup. It was fun though. I love Excel. I'm such a nerd :) Glad to hear others are finding it useful!

Thats a great spreadsheet. I often mess around working the true cost of things with Excel but that is one well polished spreadsheet. Love it! :thumbup1:

How did you manage to prevent row/columns from "unhiding"?
Nice tool though...

Here are some data points from my trip:

http://www.nohorizons.net/Pages/RTW%20costs.htm

Great work
 

Thanks for putting that together.

Hi Mombassa, I'm not sure I understand your question. If you right click on a column or row, you can hide it. I've never had a problem with them unhiding. I also locked the non-user changeable cells in the sheet to prevent accidental changing, but I don't think this locks the "hiding". Let me know if that doesn't answer your question.

Wow, that's a detailed cost list you have there! That puts my sheet to shame.

It seems a lot of the options are greyed out in the Excel. Maybe a version issue? I still run 2002. Yeah, I worked a while on those costs. It was basically my budget that I updated with actuals as time went by. I like your approach, as mine is not variable to the extent yours is.

I believe the options are greyed out because the sheet is "protected". If you are interested in unlocking the sheet to modify it for your own needs, then send me a PM and I will give you the password. It was created with Office 2003, so I wouldn't think 2002 should be a problem.

Ok, figured as much. No password needed. Cheers. :thumbup1:

Excellent! Thanks for doing this!

wow, that's a great reference. Thanks for sharing :thumbup1:

Good start...
Don't forget to include a..."readjustment allowance"

This allowance should allow you a period of re-adjustment without work. I spent three months after a 1 year trip.

@WQFTruckster Great work - thanks for sharing!

Nick
:thumbup1:

Thanks for sharing, well done. Really appreciate it

Hello! I found this topic and was very happy, but the joy was short, as the link is no longer working. Does anybody have a version of that file and cares to share it?

Hello,

My blog is out of commission, but you can still access the files through my dropbox account:

[EDIT] See post #30 for updated links [/EDIT]

Any value in blue can be user modified, including adding additional maintenance items. Also, if you hover over any cell with a red triangle in the upper corner there is a description that pops up.

If you are proficient in excel and want to modify it, the password to unprotect the sheets is "adventure". As long as you give credit where credit is due, feel free to copy, modify for your own use, etc. Enjoy!
__________________

Many many thanks!

Sorry, double post

Did you get it ?
Hope it's working good??!:clap:

Got it, thanks. The hard part is done, now for the easy part - saving money for the big trip! :online2long:

just found it
 

Very handy, thanks very much for all your hard work:thumbup1:

Hi,

the links in post #23 don't work for me. Do you have the files posted anywhere else?

Thanks
Steve

Standard version here.

Metric version here.

:Beach:

Sorry about the dead links, I moved them to my new site. SeanF has the updated ones above. Thanks!

I've been working on a costs spreadsheet myself for my blog. I just posted an entry about it here:

Atlas Rider � Post Topic � Motorcycle Touring Expenses For Those BIG Trips

Direct links to the Google Docs and Excel sheet can be found here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...HS3Rnbnc&hl=en

and

http://www.atlasrider.com/files/Moto...ngExpenses.xls

Hi folks
Just thought it might be useful advice for some of you.......
Spredsheets etc. can be excellent tools for cost planning. However my own experience (and the experience of other travellers I know) tells me that when you have arrived at your final figure you should realistically add on approximately 30% to your total.
Trust me, there WILL be lots of extra costs you didn't budget for or think of and nothing goes exactly to plan when you combine bikes/money/travel etc. Fuel may be more expensive than you thought or you might simply use more of it, your accomodation might be higher than anticipated, you might have to pay someone to repair your bike, you might drink more beer or eat more than you thought....the list is endless. There's no worse feeling than being hundreds or thousands of miles away from home and finding that you have to scrape every penny because something unexpected happened.

And if it DOES go to plan then your extra planning will mean that you'll have some cash left over when you get home!!

Chris

Great, thanks

Sweet! Score of the day. Thanks for sharing. This is a great template.

:D

Coincidence?
 

I got into work this morning and thought to myself...well, it's been 7 months since the end of our trip and I've been working for 2 months again...all I can think of is another trip. I was thinking, I'll play around with budget/cost etc and this post was on top of the list 'recently read'.

Must be a sign...:mchappy:

Great tool! Thanks for posting.

Only to bad those "total amount" figures have to be represented by those green little papers with famous people faces on 'em. I wish I could pay up with Monopoly money.

great help!

Thx
 

Great work and thanks a lot - a big help in the planning phase!