Tracking Your Travel Data

Whether you are a full-timer or a part-timer, there are a lot of things to think about when it comes to travel. But tracking your travel data should be one of them.

I know, data–makes it sound boring, time consuming or complicated, but it doesn’t have to be!

A simple system to track a few things you may need or want to know in the future is all you need. Tracking data can help you analyze your travel habits, budget for travel, decide if memberships are beneficial, and plan for maintenance. If you plan to sell your RV someday, many buyers want to know the mileage on it, and a towable doesn’t have an odometer like a drivable does.

So first let’s talk about what data, then we will talk about how.

You’re going to want to keep it simple. Track your travel miles (Towing), where you stay & how long, what type of lodging it was and the cost of staying there.

MILES Log your start and stop mileage, then calculate the travel day

WHERE YOU STAY Log the city, state, establishment name of where you were at

TYPE OF LODGING Log the type of lodging, i.e., home, friends, hotel, campground (even break it down by type of campground if you are deciding on memberships)

NUMBER OF NIGHTS Log how many nights you stayed at that location

COST Log how much you paid for lodging (if you contributed food, or purchased goods in exchange for staying there, it’s up to you if you log it on your travel data or another line item, just be consistent)

Here’s an example of what our travel tracker data looks like from last year:

We used this same system for a few years, but since we traveled more in 2024, sometimes staying at more than one campground in a month, I wanted to add on a place for the campgrounds. I do track our reservations in our planner, but wanted a quick glance item on this spreadsheet, too. This is what that add on looks like for this year:

Having this all in one spreadsheet helps me track our information for a lot of reasons. First, I can see what our travel and camping style is, which helps me decide on memberships each year, as well as apps and other resources. It also helps us make decisions on upgrades we may want to make. A full solar set up sounds great, but since we are in the southeast where it is hot and don’t off-grid often without AC, it helps us see if it’s worth the cost of it or not. It also helps us see how often we stay places. While our travel style varies from year to year and also based on our reasons for where we are, we can still get an idea. Then when we are planning for the year, we can reflect if we liked or disliked something to adjust for future travel. We used to move very fast and do many overnight stops in a row, and plan our entire trip and reservations in advance, but found we didn’t like that. Now, we’ve adjusted our travel style to slow down, stop for longer, and plan one leg at a time. This also helped us to see what types of stays we are using and where to decide if we will use certain memberships each year.

We track mileage for taxes since we travel for work as well as for when we need maintenance. (we track our truck’s maintenance in a book in the truck, and keep records of RV maintenance in our RV folder, so if we sell them in the future, we can pass those records on).

Now let’s talk about how to track the data.

Depending on your record keeping style, you’ve got lots of options.

NOTEBOOK a small notebook to keep in your vehicle, purse, or spot in your RV can work well, just remember to jot it down every trip

DIGITAL NOTES If you are digital, create a Note in your phone, or access a cloud drive file to log. Since I don’t use an app, I don’t have one to recommend, but have no doubt there’s one out there somewhere, but it may be separate apps for each thing you track.

SPREADSHEET A Google or Excel Spreadsheet can work well so you can customize it for what you’ll use, and your organization style, similar to what I have snippets of above, which is what we use. If you want to try ours out, or create your own version from it, here’s a link to check out our free printables page and download a copy of Tracking Travel Data PDF spreadsheet. You can also check out lots of other great FREE printable resources on the page while you are there.

OUR TRAVEL PLANNER I’ll admit I am a total data and organizational nerd, but I prefer the mantra of “work smarter, not harder”, so want to simplify it as much as I can. Our first year of travel was so much information and learning about this lifestyle and keeping it all organized stressed me out. So BJ and I designed Our Travel Planner to be a consolidated, easy to use tool with everything we need for planning and record keeping in one place. Since we like to be unplugged as often as possible, we found paper-based worked best for us, and we designed it so it fits in the glove box or my purse so we always have it for scheduling if job calls come in when we aren’t at home. It’s Print On Demand through Amazon and we always have the link to the most current planner on our website, if you want to check it out, or order your copy. Here’s a link to Our Travel Planner page to see if it works for you, and to order your copy.