Planning Travel with Bullet Journal

Traveling can be as stressful as it is fun. There’s a lot of work involved in planning a vacation; a lot to keep track of and keep on top of.

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I’m currently planning an overseas trip at the end of the year – my first time planning a trip – so my bullet journal has been crucial so I don’t get on the runway and realize I’ve forgotten something major.

There’s an endless amount of spread ideas for traveling for all different levels of your planning journey (such as before booking, before leaving, while on vacation and even after you’re home).

My personal planning is part way through the ‘before leaving’ stage. But here’s some spread ideas to get you started for your next trip.

Saving Goals

This is a good travel-related spread to begin your journey. Having a visual place to keep track of the money saved specifically for the vacation is not only useful but it is also motivating to color in sections each time you put some money aside. There’s no specific way to set out your saving goals, it just depends on personal preference and how many categories you’ve decided on.

My recommendation is to set up two different types: flights and accommodation (or anything you need to finance before you leave such as passports, insurance) and spending money (for while you’re on holiday). You can even break this down into much smaller, specific saving goals such as flights, accommodation, transport, food and so on – especially once you have an estimate on how much each may cost or an idea on how much you’d like to spend for each category.

Spending

I use this spread as a place to document how much I’ve spent on my trip so far (pre-leaving purchases). A similar spread idea can also be used while on vacation to document your everyday spending to ensure you’re sticking to your budget or have a record of what you’ve purchased.

So far I’ve only listed the prices so closer to the trip I will create a spread with flight and hotel details and other important information. While this spread certainly isn’t crucial, it is interesting to look back on to see how much the overall holiday cost for future reference.

Brain Dump

The basic idea of a brain dump is for it to be a place for all the to-dos with no set deadlines, thoughts, deadlines and anything else that doesn’t have a place on other spreads. I’m using it for random bits of helpful information about the country, places to visit while I’m there and so on.While first researching all the places to visit in your destination, I recommend doing this brainstorming in another notebook as you’d be surprised how many things you jot down.

Before I Go (Pre-trip To-Do)

A lot of the bullets I was wanting to include in my brain dump were related to things I had to buy or do before heading off overseas, so this spread is similar to the brain dump, however it’s targeted towards tasks that need to be completed rather than information you want to remember.

Each time you think to yourself “I need to do that before I go” or “I can’t forget to do this”, write it down on this list. And make sure to either include it in your index or mark the page somehow as you’re going to want to be able to easily access it to check up on your progress.

Some examples of other travel-related spreads I’m planning to make before leaving are:

• An itinerary – to work less as an hour-by-hour timetable of each day but more so as a rough guide to make sure I can fit in every activity I want to and don’t forget about any places.
• Important information and emergency contacts – I recommend having this information in your phone as well, however phones can be lost/broken so it’s always good to have a physical backup especially the hotel name and phone number and the emergency services if you’re traveling overseas.
• Packing list – no one wants to realize once they’re already on a plane that they forgot something important at home. I recommend including check boxes next to each item so you can check it off when packing for the start of a trip as well as packing at the end of a trip.

Have you used your bullet journal to plan a vacation before? What spread did you find the most helpful?