Sabbatical Travel Fund Tracker

A holiday fund asks one question: can we afford the trip? A sabbatical fund has to answer a harder one: how many months of travel does the money actually cover, once the months without a salary are paid for? This tracker builds the real fund need, projects the fund to your start date, and prints the runway — the months your money lasts — against the months you planned.

The Disney World Vacation Budget Planner in this shop counts a fund down to a single trip. This tracker is for the longer leave: months of travel, part of it unpaid, where the fund has to cover the trip and the income hole at the same time.

The sample (a 6-month plan: 2 months paid leave, 4 unpaid) is honest in all three directions. The unpaid-leave shortfall is the single biggest need line — $5,600.00, more than the whole six-month stay line ($5,400.00) — because rent and bills at home do not pause when the salary does. The fund reaches its $16,700.00 target 2.0 months AFTER the planned start at the sample’s savings rate. And the runway comes to 5.4 months against 6 planned: SHORT by 0.6 months, printed in the verdict, not rounded into good news.

HOW IT WORKS
– ‘Monthly Burn & Need’: your monthly burn while travelling (stay, food, transport, other — sample $1,850.00 a month) multiplied by the travel months, plus the shortfall line (unpaid months x your monthly shortfall). The total is the fund you actually need — $16,700.00 on the sample.
– ‘Fund & Runway’: saved so far + monthly contribution x the whole months between your typed check date and your typed start date = the projected fund; months to target at your rate, with the timing printed (2.0 months late on the sample).
– The runway reserves the shortfall first — usable fund = projected fund minus the shortfall — then divides by the monthly burn. Verdict: SHORT or COVERED, with the gap in months.

WHAT’S INSIDE
– A fund-need build where unpaid leave is a costed line, not an afterthought (sample need: $16,700.00)
– A departure projection from typed dates only — no hidden ‘today’ anywhere in the file
– A runway figure in months (5.4 on the sample) with a SHORT / COVERED verdict against your plan
– The biggest need line named in print — the income shortfall, not the travel
– Plus the standard Expense Log, zero-based Monthly Budget, Dashboard and Monthly Summary tabs

Every figure — savings rate, burn, shortfall, dates — is an example setting you type. The tracker recommends nothing; it shows what your numbers do.

How it works: the seven tabs are Start Here (your settings + step-by-step), the two feature tabs, Expense Log, Monthly Budget (zero-based), Dashboard and Monthly Summary. Yellow cells are the only places you type — every yellow value is your own entry. Formula cells are locked (password: sheetdaily, disclosed on the Start Here tab) and every formula is error-wrapped, so an untouched sheet reads blank instead of showing error codes. Instant download, ready for Excel and Google Sheets.

A note on the sample data: every price and date in this workbook is example data, typed in by hand to show you how the sheet behaves. Replace it with your own.