How to Budget for a Big Day Out

Pick your number first, before you pick the plan. Decide what the whole day is allowed to cost, all in, and then build a day that fits it. Working the other way round, adding things up until you flinch, is how a good day out turns into a fortnight of quiet regret.

The number does not have to be big. It has to be decided, and it has to include the parts nobody budgets for, because that is where almost all the damage happens.

One Number, All In

Set a single figure and treat it as the cost of going out, not the cost of the main thing. A Dreamworx ticket is one line of five, and the other four are where a day quietly gets expensive. Whatever you land on, your number covers getting there, food, drinks and getting home.

Write it down somewhere you will see it. A number in your head drifts upwards all week. A number in your notes does not.

What You'll Spend

A big day out breaks into five parts, and four of them get forgotten:

• The main thing. Whatever you are actually going for. Usually the only part anyone plans for.
• Getting there. Fuel and parking, or fares for everyone going.
• Food. Eating properly beforehand, which is cheaper than eating badly in the middle.
• Drinks. The one that moves most, and the one rounds make unpredictable.
• Getting home. Always the most expensive hour of the day and always the least planned.

Add them up honestly before the day rather than reconstructing them afterwards. If the total comes in over your number, the fix is nearly always in the travel and the timings rather than in going without.

Getting Home Is the Real Cost

Late transport is where budgets go. A taxi at one in the morning costs a multiple of the same journey at nine, and if the group splits up you can end up paying for two of them.

The cheapest fix is finishing earlier. A day that starts in the afternoon and ends in the evening puts you on normal transport at normal prices, which is one of the quiet advantages of daytime clubbing over a late night. Dreamworx at Digital runs that way, so the journey home is an ordinary fare rather than a one in the morning one.

If you are out late anyway, agree the way home before you go out, and agree who is in which car. Sorting it at half past midnight in the cold costs money every single time.

Eat Before, Not During

A proper meal before you go out is the best value item on the whole list. It costs less than eating in the middle of a busy day, it makes the drinks go further, and it turns the end of the night into a taxi rather than a hunt for food.

If eating out is part of the day, make it the early one. The same meal is cheaper and much calmer at five than it is at nine.

Rounds, and How to Get Out of Them

Rounds in a group of six will cost you more than buying your own, because the pace of the round is set by whoever drinks fastest and most expensively.

You have two decent options. Agree at the start that everyone buys their own, which is entirely normal now and nobody minds. Or run a kitty: everyone puts the same in, one person holds it, and when it is gone it is gone. A kitty is fairer and it stops the arithmetic completely.

Save For It Without Noticing

Move the money out of your current account the week you agree the date. A small standing order into a separate pot means the day is paid for before it arrives, and on the day itself you are spending money you have already parted with.

Paying up front for whatever can be paid up front helps for the same reason. What is left in your pocket is genuinely spending money, and you can spend it without doing sums.

What Is Worth Paying For

• Not driving. Whoever drives does not really get the day.
• Getting home comfortably, and together.
• Eating properly, early.
• Anything that saves you queuing for an hour of a day you are already paying for.

What Is Not

A new outfit for one day. Rounds you did not want. Late food you will not remember. A cab home on your own because you fell out with someone about all three.

Set your number, tell whoever you are going with what it is, and spend it on the parts of the day you will still be talking about in a month.