No wonder most people want to go out more, but how can they save money and live a fulfilling life at home? I read on the Internet a few days ago that most millennials are willing to give up Tim Hortons, Netflix, shopping and hockey to travel. So, what would you give up in order to travel the world. Here Are Some Best Money Saving Tips To Save Money For Travel That Helps You.
How To Save Money For Travel
Here Are Some Best Tips To Save Money For Travel :
Before I became full-time travel bloggers, we had full-time jobs, mortgage payments and bills to deal with every month. I don’t know if you know it, but we traveled for almost ten years before we decided to become a blogger.
Before we spoke on the Internet, we had traveled to 40 countries while taking care of our career and life in Canada. Many of our friends and family think we are strange, we waste our retirement life on travel. but it is not the truth. In fact, we were prepared for retirement early in our careers, and apart from our many years of travel and starting our travel blog, we never used our savings. Instead, we save retirement savings and bill payment by spending as much money as possible on travel. These are the tips we found that can help us save more money for our next trip.
1. Track Spending
When saving money for travel it is really important to know what you are spending your money on.I can’t stress this enough, pay attention to where your money is going when budgeting for travel. Sit down and start making a list of where you spend every single penny each month. Be diligent and don’t let anything slide by.
Perhaps you stop every day at the corner store near the subway and grab a snack or a coffee that you could have taken from home or got at work. If you spend $5-$10 a day on little things, that’s $150-$300 a month that could have gone to travel. See how quickly money can add up?
Do you have a Netflix, Amazon Prime, and HBO Max account? Maybe you only need one. Are you still paying for TV cable? Get rid of it!
Also Read: 10 Most Important Travel Essentials You Must Carry On
2. Change Your Living Situation
If you have a house, but you have a dream to travel, you may want to sell it. That’s what we did. We knew we weren’t happy being home owners at the time homeowners, so we put it up for sale.
I remember the time that we owned that house was the most stressful time of our lives because all we wanted t do was travel. We were always worried about money and what we would do if the next movie contract didn’t come in. We felt trapped and wondered if this was going to be where we were stuck for the rest of our lives.
If you don’t want to sell your house, you may just want to start looking for a sub letter to rent your place for a year or so. I know people that have sublet their house while building equity and travel full time. They rent in other places instead of moving back home and are perfectly happy.
If you are currently renting, you may want to move to a smaller place in a cheaper neighborhood. Think of any way to cut costs. This is a relatively easy way to save money if you have larger assets like this.
3. Create A Travel Budget
How Much Should I be Saving for Travel? We have found that the best way to save for travel is to create a budget. If you ask these questions, it will help you identify how much money you’ll need to travel.
- What is your excursion budget?
- How Long are you Traveling For?
- What will your daily travel budget be?
- Are you going to be a budget traveler or mid-range?
- How much are you going to spend on a hotel nightly?
- What do you plan on spending on meals?
For example, hostels are definitely a way to keep costs down and you could easily go lower than that if you are traveling through places like South East Asia or Central America.
If you are traveling through South East Asia, you may easily be able to budget $50 – $100 a day. That means you will need $10k – $20k for a six-month trip.
Not including flights – We talk below about using rewards credit cards to help you save on flights.
So in conclusion, if you want to travel within one year and you need $15k for a six-month trip, you will need to put away $1250 per month if you start from zero. But don’t worry, you won’t have to start from zero, we’re going to show you ways to find money.
- Make sure to check out our tips on How to Travel on a Budget.
- Check out the book How to Travel the World on $50 a Day for more ideas.
- Some people travel for much less: See How PE World Tour traveled on $2400.
Also Read: 7 Wonders Of The World
4. Cut Entertainment Costs
We used to meet friends at the bar or nightclub and spend a fortune on drinks and food. As our lifestyle changed, we started to go over to friends houses and have them over to ours. We still had a social life, but we weren’t throwing money away downtown and we were saving money towards our goal.
5. Sell Your Things
We had a garage sale to get rid of all the stuff we had bought over the past few years. We made a couple of thousand bucks on our garage sale if you can believe it. We sold everything from lawn mowers, to our Doctor Ho massager and even a knife (that we didn’t’ realize was worth so much) but a guy offered us $50 for it!
People were giving us 20 bucks for glassware sets and knick-knacks. We had so much clutter. And it felt amazing once it was all gone. Even if you don’t want to sell your house, having a garage sale will make you some extra cash while lifting the weight of all that extra clutter.
We did so well on the garage sale, we started looking for more things to sell. We sold diving gear, we sold a guitar, we sold drums. We just kept on finding things to sell! It all added up to a pretty penny that went into our travel fund and cut our monthly deposits to our travel fund in half.
Think about what you have that you don’t need, but someone else would love to have!
6. Don’t Travel On Borrowed Money
Our number one rule for traveling is to never travel on borrowed money. I know that’s not necessarily a Millennial way of thinking, but take it from us. Coming home to a mound of debt after a life-changing travel experience is not what you want to face. Debt is stressful and if you can avoid it, you’ll live a happier life.
We never left home until we were sure that our monthly bills, investment contribution, and expenses could be covered for the months we were away. Want to save more money? See these tips to getting started house sitting.
Also Read: 14 Best Travel Jobs From All Around The World
7. Set Up An Automatic Travel Fund Saving Account
Now that you know how much money you need to travel, we suggest setting up an automatic withdrawal to go into a travel savings fund. The same way that you have automatic withdrawals for your bills, your investments, and your rent. Then set up that fund and have it come out of your bank account every single month.
8. Pay Off Your Credit Cards
We have always been really good with credit cards. Holding a balance on a card stresses me out, so I pay it off every month before the due date. Don’t throw money away by paying interest on credit cards. If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t use our credit cards. We actually put everything on a credit card. It is the easiest way to track expenses. You can check your statement each month and see where your money is going. And it is the easiest way to save money for travel.
9. Get A Rewards Credit Card
One of the most expensive up-front costs for long term travel is your flights. This is where a travel rewards credit card will come in handy. But as I said above, only if you pay it off each month and are diligent about not spending more than you need.
You’d be amazed how quickly you can earn points when you buy things like groceries, toiletries, and even medication on your credit card. Rewards add up fast.
We usually have anywhere from $800 – $1000 towards travel by the end of each year. We purchase a ticket and then give Amex a call and ask them to pay it off with our rewards. (if we have enough – which we usually do because we put all expenses on it)
With a travel rewards card, you also get a sign-up bonus. Just by signing up, you could get a lot of money towards a flight. Do some research to see what card is best for you. What card offers the flight rewards you want.
- Chase Sapphire is popular in the United States and we hear it is even better than Amex.
- We use American Express most of the time, but our TD Travel Visa doesn’t have a fee and it has great travel benefits too. Our Amex offers travel rewards. We make purchases all year on it and we get rewards with each one.
10. Find Free Things to Do
When we moved downtown, we got more into rock climbing. Our one splurge was our rock climbing gym membership, and we basically became gym rats. We loved climbing and were there nearly every night during the week!
But having THAT gym membership (that we used and loved) we saved money from eating out every night and going to clubs on the weekend. We loved being at the climbing gym and that took up a lot of our time. Instead of spending a ton of money each weekend, we went camping near the crag and then went rock climbing for free.
We ended up doing a lot of fun free things like mountain biking, meeting up with the cycling club for evening rides. We took up hiking and spent our weekends exploring Niagara Glen or the Bruce Trail.
We were busy and adventurous and didn’t spend a much on anything except for snacks and maybe a park entry fee.
We Have Suggested You The Best Money Saving Tips For Travel and How To Save Money For Travel.
