How to Save Money for a Vacation When You Have Student Loans to Pay

How do you go about saving money when you have student loans to pay? Forming the habit of saving is not the easiest thing in the world. In fact, a majority of people would have to get into debt to solve a $1,000 emergency.

When people are so bad at saving, motivating yourself to stand out of the pack and actually take control of your finances so you can do the things you love is a mark of achievement. If you love to travel, you can put aside enough money to take an elaborate vacation every year if you start saving early. Deliberately putting aside money for travel will see you stack a significant amount of money pretty fast. You can also try to refinance student loans so you get a better rate and can pay less each month, adding your savings to your travel budget.

Here are some ways to save money for a vacation if you also have student loans to pay.

Find a Roommate

If you are just a few years out of college and live in a big city, finding a roommate to share living costs with may be one of the smartest financial decisions you can make. In a city where a good apartment costs north of $1,500 per month, having a roommate will see you save at least $750 per month off the bat if you split the rent equally with your roommate.

A good vacation can cost as low as $1,500. Two months of rent savings will see you comfortably fund your vacation. You can use the rest of the savings to aggressively pay off your student loans.

Pay Yourself First

The whole concept of paying yourself first revolves around being able to direct money into your savings account automatically as soon as money is credited into your normal account.

Automating your savings will remove a lot of the thinking surrounding savings and get you into more doing. Planning and thinking about saving money won’t grow your vacations savings account. Only proactively depositing money into the account will make it grow.

You can instruct your bank to automatically deduct a given percentage of your pay and deposit it into your vacation savings account. Having such a system will be far more effective than doing it manually every time you receive your paycheck.

Find a Side-Hustle

We live in a side hustle economy. This could mean using sa stockbrokers to invest some of your money, working a second job or setting up an Etsy account to sell your creations on. To depend on one source of income in 2017 and beyond is to cut yourself short. The internet provides the average person lots of opportunities to sell their skills.

Whether you love writing, drawing, graphic design or coding, there are several online marketplaces teeming with prospective clients looking for someone like you to hire. One such site is UpWork. If you don’t want to use job boards such as UpWork, you can email companies directly and offer your freelancing services directly to them.

If you are in full-time employment, you can do the jobs in the morning before you go to work or late in the evening after work. You can even teach kids online with a bachelor’s degree and create your own schedule. You will end up with a consistent and reliable income stream that can fund your passions and help you pay off your student loans fast.

Use Visuals to Motivate Yourself to Save

Saving when there is no clear reward insight can be hard. To motivate yourself to save for your vacation, have a collage of beautiful pictures of the vacation spot you plan to visit so you are always motivated to save every time you look at it.

The collage can contain pictures of the couples-only resort you’ll be staying in, pictures of the attractions you’ll visit, and pictures of calming white sandy beaches and turquoise blue waters.

Save for Other Things Too

If you want something done, give it to a busy person. In the same vein, if you were to bet on someone to save for a vacation, bet on the person who is also saving for other things such as retirement. Saving is a habit and those who’ve formed the habit of putting money aside for future use will find it easier to save for a vacation.

By forming the habit of saving, you will find it easier to put money aside for future activities with vacation being just one of those activities. The habit of saving is one of the most important financial habits you will form in your working life. It might even be the most important as far as personal finance is concerned.

Don’t Buy on Credit

Before you clear you student loans, it doesn’t make sense to pile on more debt and spend years repairing bad credit. If you can’t pay for anything in cash at this point in time, it is likely that you just can’t afford it. Damaging your credit is not something you want to be doing. If you’re in a situation where you really need to get your credit health back on track then you may want to consider these credit sesame reviews which detail how you can get free credit scoring and credit reporting to reinstate it.

Piling on more debt over your student loans will only mean that you get yourself into more monthly commitments that will demand a cut off your paycheck. It is not worth it when you can survive without most of the things that you would normally service using credit such as a new car or new furniture.