How to save money for vacation

Saving for vacation is much like rearranging your ‘money behavior’ to accommodate your desires. When a lot of people think about taking a holiday, they mostly don’t assume that they should save from what they have earned. Rather, the first line of thought when contemplating how to save money for travel lies in expanding their income exponentially, to fund their travel needs.

It may be more strategic to first think about using a budget tool, before an increment technique. After the former option has been explored, then you can look into ways of growing your income portfolio to save up for your trip. It should be the applicable analogy used to complete the money that your current income can’t fill.

Before you arrive at the point of gathering your money, you may want to guide your subconscious and conscious money behavior with a map. In practicing how to save money for travel, you should create a budget map that will double as a planning guide. This planning guide should contain clear estimates for:

Your tentative or preferred holiday dates

Your timeline or duration for vacation

Your chosen holiday destination

Your cumulative spending budget for the trip.

Steps to take when saving for a vacation.

Spending more time planning your holiday money and less time executing your holiday money.

When saving for a vacation, you should aim to spend 70% of your time writing out what each dollar of your money will be spent on. In this way, you should target spending less time — ideally about 30% of your time — actualizing your holiday budget. Not only will this ideology help you reach your credit goals faster, but it can also even help you discover trip-related estimates for your destination to help you save on cost. Ideally, when your preferred destination is less traveled, you are susceptible to more deals, therefore, being able to save on cost. So, the question you should be asking is: At what time of the year is it convenient to get a booking for your holiday destination?

Low engagement vs. peak time work schedules.

Learning how to save money for a trip means developing the ability to estimate a damage-proof timeline to be absent from work and home. Most people choose to holiday during low-engagement periods, so they do not miss out on peak-time advantages. This involves creating room to influence your work portfolio by choosing when to work and when to take time off work for a trip. This means that work-related emergencies will not upset your holiday plans, and even if they do, you can tweak the effects on your money. By planning your holiday money and leave dates early, a buffer is created to help you, your colleagues, and your clients, to adjust expectations accordingly. For instance, some organizations make team members publish their desired holiday dates at the beginning of each year. This is one sure way to keep your travel plans stable.

Destination first, Budget next.

While saving for a vacation, it may be wiser to choose your destination first before setting a budget. I recommend this line of action for two reasons. Firstly, if a holiday is your way of rewarding yourself for a job well done, then it means you should choose a place you love. After choosing a holiday destination, next, research the cost of your tour package. Most people holiday during the summer months. The weather in temperate zones and the academic calendar in many parts of the world, make summer a travel-dense time. You can save money by holidaying before or after summer when there isn’t a vacation rush. This is a great idea if you work in academia, don’t live in a temperate zone, or if you don’t have kids who need to be on break from school in order to holiday with you.

Budgeting as a shield for protecting your credit.

While the exact budget figure may not come to mind as you save money for your trip, it is wise to start with an estimated spending cost. Based on the money you earn per year, you can de-compost your pay into a ‘daily save’. To put this in context, taking a trip to Aruba for one week in August 2022, should cost about $5000. This means you’d have to save approximately $14 for 365 days, to save enough money for a holiday in Aruba. If you do not save up to your $5000 credit estimate, then you can reduce the budget to accommodate only the core cost of your vacation. To achieve this, eliminate “wants” while on vacation and pay for “needs” only.

Four practical tips on how to save money for travel.

Interrogate spending habits with money.

One of the best ways to interrogate spending habits with money is through your bank statement. Most banks send you a monthly financial statement with summaries on how much you are spending and what you are spending your money on. For instance, you can learn through reading your financial statements over three months that you are spending the most money at supermarkets and grocery stores. With this data in hand, you should put on a researcher’s hat and probe to find where the grocery stores get their supplies and how much less they pay for buying in bulk. You can replicate this behavior in your money lifestyle. Consequently, instead of making one weekly trip to the supermarket for spending $150 on groceries, you could be making one monthly trip to the wholesale market to spend $200 on groceries. In this way, you will save $400 each month. By extension, this move will help to save extra hours for work, relax or do something else when you boycott regular travel to the grocery store.

Set up a dedicated savings account to compartmentalize your money.

Asides from interrogating your lifestyle and sacrificing small pleasures, like retail therapy, to save for your vacation; you should set up a dedicated savings account. This account will host all the money stored from your lifestyle changes and spending sacrifices. For some people, it is easier to give their bank a standing order to move a certain amount of money, at a certain time each month. This creates third-party insurance in helping them to save money for their vacation.

However, always remember that it is the discipline of imbibing a ‘vacation save’ culture that counts. Whatever method of banking your money can work for you. This is the case whether you decide to keep the money at your local bank in an account that generates 3% credit interest monthly, or whether you wrap the money in a piece of cloth and stuff it in your mattress!

Turn your junk into another person’s luck.

In saving for a vacation, you can declutter your life and sell items you no longer need. For some women, as a rule, if they haven’t worn a dress in six months it has to leave their closet. It may not be wise to keep room for things you do not use frequently. Instead, you should consider investing energy and resources in things that function regularly in your life. The term “spring cleaning” elucidates this fact too well, and it can be applied to help you save money for vacation.

Every other month, you should take out the time to sort through your home and workspace for irrelevant items. If you wash them up, clean them properly (and maybe even add the packaging or box in which they arrived), you could retail these items online through social media — Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. You can also advertise unused items on websites like jiji.ng and ebay.com. Also, try word-of-mouth advertising to neighbors, friends, and church members.

Due to the economic shift of the world after the COVID-19 hit, many people are looking to save money by spending less for obtaining quality. Second-hand items are doing quite well in commercial markets right now. To demonstrate how bizarre decluttering your life can get, it is possible to cut your 45-inch long hair and sell it for a part of your holiday budget!

Earning extra money in the new gig economy.

Thanks to COVID-19, the world has adopted remote work. What this means is, commercial spaces are borderless and the gig economy is booming. Freelancing your time and skills while keeping a physical 9 to 5 job is almost the norm in 2021. This new normal presents an opportunity for you to find creative ways to save money for travel. You can monetize your skills and resources for extra money to fill up your ‘save box’.

Some people would choose a vacation over a Ferrari any day, and if you are in this demographic, then you can use the tested tips and tricks above to begin your journey of intentionality as you save money for your next vacation.