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TOP 5 ULTIMATE TRAVEL SAVINGS TIPS
AUGUST 25, 2020 — FIRST PUBLISHED January 20, 2020
Are you interested in saving more money for travel? Like saving for anything, it can be tough at first finding the discipline to set aside money as we often have so many other priorities that come first. Mortgages, rent, student loans, credit cards, gas, grocery costs, eating out—it’s like this whole money suck that never seems to end. But with patience, discipline, and a dedicated focus to long-term goals, it’s absolutely possible to start piling up money for travel starting right now.
You might also be interested in 20 Real Ways to Save for Travel in 2020, our expanded list of strategies for paying down debt and starting a travel fund.
Below are our Top Five Ultimate Travel Savings Tips to help you start seeing real results FAST. And these aren’t just travel savings tips. These are tried and true methods that will help you ditch debt and become a better saver for the rest of your life.
AUTOMATE YOUR SAVINGS
This is the most important lesson anyone can learn in order to become a better saver. Open secondary savings accounts, including one for travel, and have a portion of your paycheck automatically deposited to that account every pay period. Any bank or credit union can set this up for you, but it can be helpful to also use automated savings apps like Acorns and Digit. We currently have $100 every two weeks headed straight into our travel savings account which we try to reserve for our bigger trips. Maybe your goal is to save up for a multi-thousand dollar family vacation to a far away destination, or perhaps you just want to take more weekend trips. Either way, you’ll have a growing pile of dollars that you can access instead of doing what many of us have been guilty of—charging it to a credit card.
price-compare monthly expenses
Review anything and everything that’s a monthly expense and find out if there’s another company or option to help you reduce or eliminate that expense entirely. This includes things like a gym membership, which can be a great place to start if you’re trying to get a savings going. After living a year in Denver, we switched our insurance company, cell phone carrier, and internet service provider which ended up saving us over $150/month. Another thing that can really help is changing the payment date for these services if available. Check if this available for your state.
Why does this help? We found our tightest time of the month to be right at the beginning when rent and several other payments were all getting sucked out of our checking at the same moment. Many cell phone carriers, insurance, and even lenders like credit card providers will allow you to change the payment date to better fit your schedule.
So let’s say you’re down to your last $200 after said bill-paying spree, you’re probably not going to feel like you can set any of those dollars aside. After all, you have other things to pay for like gas and food. Switch a few payment due dates and maybe instead you’ll have $500 free and clear for the next few weeks. You’ll still have to pay those extra bills later on in the month, of course, but for now it might make it easier to set a few hundred of those dollars away in a savings account.
Cut yOUR VICES IN HALF.
First of all, we aren’t suggesting not having a vice or two. We live in Denver where marijuana is 100% legal, and we love craft cocktails. But the simple fact is that the regular use of these vices, whatever they are, can add up to hundreds of dollars per month. Add in a latte or a lunch each day and you could be spending over $100 per week without realizing it.
Step one: Track your spending on vices for the previous month. Literally comb through your bank transactions and add it all up. If you use cash, well, damn, that’ll be a harder thing unless you’ve kept perfect receipts. But whatever your method, it can be eye-opening to see the sometimes “holy shit” number that this spending adds up to. And we get it, many of us have rigorous hell schedules, and vices can definitely help with the de-stressing.
Step two: If the number you’ve arrived to makes you cringe (it sometimes does for us), consider setting a budget for half of this number and don’t go over it. Also, consider buying your vices in bulk. I know this sounds like the wrong advice perhaps, but if you’re going to consume, at least be smart about it. My best friend buys his vodka in the largest bottles and at a case discount. And even things like e-cigarettes can be ordered online at half the cost of hitting up the gas station.
SELL YOUR shit.
That’s right; we said it. It’s time to ditch those things you no longer use, and we want you to be painfully honest about it. Unless it has serious sentimental value, we recommend selling everything you haven’t touched in the last six months. The exercise bike in the basement, the electric guitar in the back of your closet, extra furniture, kids toys (ok, donate those), if it’s collecting dust, Let. It. Go. And in their place you’ll have some extra cash that can kickstart your travel savings account. Not to mention, your living space will be less cluttered and probably easier to clean.
MOVE.
For most of us living here in the United States, nothing represents a bigger chunk of our monthly expenses than housing. Are you in a situation where you can take on a roommate? Can you move in with a relative for a short stint? Can you downsize and take on a cheaper mortgage or rent payment? If you can, this could return hundreds of dollars per month to your cash flow. And yes, we know, it’s probably the most aggressive suggestion on this list. But if your goal is to travel more or, like us, become location independent, lessening what you spend on housing can make a very real and sizable impact.
Not that we need to do basic math for you, but if you can somehow shave $500 from your housing payment through creative things like renting a room, refinancing your mortgage, finding a roommate, or getting a smaller apartment, that will give you $6,000 per year that you were either overpaying or didn’t realize you could save. That’s $30,000 in five years!
