Going on a trip is an exciting opportunity to have an adventure and enjoy a nice vacation. However, anyone who’s ever gone on a trip before can tell you that traveling doesn’t come for free. Between the airfare, paying for hotels, and covering food and entertainment, it can quickly start to add up.
Saving up for your trip will help you ensure you have enough to do all the activities you’d like, and live comfortably during your time without any stress. Whether you’ve already booked your trip, or you’re hoping to do so soon, here are some of the best tips for saving for a trip.
Get a Part Time Job
If you already have a full-time job, you might want to consider getting an extra job. Yes, it will require a lot of working hours, and you may be exhausted. However, if the goal is saving up money for your trip, then it’s worth working hard before you leave.
You could get a job unloading freight, or working for a rideshare service. You could even do babysitting which is a way to work evening hours if your job is during the day. Put all of your earnings into a special vacation fund, and be strict about not touching this money for anything else other than travel.
Open a Savings Account
Opening a savings account is a great way to ensure that whatever money you earn will grow thanks to interest. This will also ensure that your funds for travel stay separate from your regular savings and checking accounts. If you mix them together, you might get confused, or worse, be tempted to spend your vacation savings on your day-to-day expenses.
While you’re at it, consider starting an automated savings program with your regular checking account. This will automatically deduct a fixed amount every month that goes straight into the account of your choice. There are also “round up” options available with many banks. In other words, if you go to the store and buy something for $10.87, it will round up to the next number, and put the remaining $0.13 into your savings account.
Although this may not seem like a very big amount, when you add this up over the course of the month from every purchase, you can save a considerable amount of money. The best part is, you hardly even see it leave your account since it’s so small!
Cut Out Unnecessary Expenses
Take a good look at your purchase history and notice if there’s anything that you could realistically live without. Things like gym memberships you never use, or eating out just a few too many times in a restaurant could probably be eliminated.
Even though it’s more fun to treat yourself more often, you can stay motivated by reminding yourself that even though you’re restricting yourself now, it’s for the purpose of being able to enjoy a wonderful vacation later.
This will help keep you motivated and avoid giving in to temptation prematurely. Whatever the amount is of the expenses you’ve cut out of your spending, put the equivalent of that amount into your savings. This can be a nice little boost, and put you one step closer to meeting your vacation savings goals.
