Documenting contact costs

Journeys, overnight stays, meals, admission tickets: contact costs add up quietly. If you only start gathering them at the end of the year, you will not find half of them.

Published on 7 September 2026

Which costs arise in the first place

The list is longer than it feels in everyday life. If you regularly collect your child and bring them back, you do not pay one item but many small ones.

• Journeys: fuel, train tickets, tolls, parking, occasionally a hire car
• Overnight stays when the distance is too far for a single day
• Meals on the road and during the time your child is with you
• Admission tickets, swimming pool, cinema, outings
• Things you buy twice because they are needed in both homes: clothes, toothbrush, pyjamas, toys
• A bigger flat than you would need for yourself alone, so that your child has a bed

Each item on its own looks harmless. Added up over a year, it comes to a figure that surprises many contact parents the first time they see it.

Journeys: kilometres instead of gut feeling

Journeys are the biggest item and at the same time the one that is recorded least often. A fuel receipt says that you filled up. It does not say what for.

So record the journey, not just the receipt: date, outward and return trip separately, kilometres driven, purpose. At 400 kilometres each way and a contact time every two weeks, that adds up to more than 20,000 kilometres a year. You will not be able to explain that figure to anyone later if you did not write it down as you went.

If you travel by train, save the ticket the same day. Digital tickets disappear from the app as soon as the journey is over. A photo takes five seconds and survives any change of provider.

Receipts you will be missing later

What is missing is almost always missing for the same reason: the receipt was there, but nobody assigned it to a contact time. A till receipt from 4 September is of little use if nobody remembers any more that the contact time ran from 3 to 7 September.

The ones most often missing later:

• Fuel receipts, because they get left in the car and fade
• Digital train tickets, because they disappear from the app after the journey
• Accommodation, because the confirmation gets lost among the adverts in your inbox
• Small amounts under ten euros, because individually they do not seem worth the effort

Thermal paper is the real problem here. Till receipts are often no longer legible after one to two years. A photo straight after paying solves that for good.

When money is tight

Documenting helps you keep track. It does not lower the costs. If little is left for the weekend after the journey and a second household, you will find ten ideas for under ten euros in the guide Contact on a small budget, along with the Ferienpass and Familienpass (your municipality's holiday and family discount passes).

Staying organised without a paper pile

You do not need an accounting system. You need a habit that still works on a Sunday evening after a 400-kilometre drive home.

Three things are enough: photograph the receipt as soon as you have it in your hand. Check the date and amount while taking the photo, not later. Assign the receipt to the contact time it belongs to.

If you keep that up, at the end of the year you have a chronology instead of a shoebox. And if someone one day asks what contact cost you, the answer is a figure with receipts behind it, not an estimate.

Further reading