ways to save money for your next trip

I often hear people tell me that travel is too expensive and I don’t really get it. Expensive is a term that means something different to everyone because it’s based on what we value. I don’t value $60,000 vehicles and, to me, they’re expensive but others do value them and therefore they’re affordable. See where I’m going here? If you’re finding it hard to save money for travel, the first thing you need to do is value it.

Tangible Ways to Save For Your Next Trip:

Cut Back on Eating Out

The next time you don’t feel like cooking, do it, then take the money you were going to spend on eating out and put it away in your savings account. This is hard at first because eating out gives us that instant gratification that we so willingly spend our money on but once you see your savings account start to add up this will get easier.

Limit Weekends at the Bar

$200 for a weekend out? No problem. $200 for a plane ticket? Expensive. Doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. You don’t have to completely limit your time out with friends but like I said, what do you value more: drinking with your friends on the weekend or seeing the world? Instead of going out every weekend, maybe cut back to 2 weekends a month and put the other 2 weekends’ worth of money into your savings account.

Make a Decision on What’s More Important: Material Items or Experiences?

Do you need the latest iPhone? Does that Pinterest home renovation have to be done right now? Is it necessary to get a new wardrobe with every season’s change? If you’re struggling to keep up with the Jones’ stop comparing yourself and start reminding yourself what you’re saving for. It doesn’t matter if you have a picture-perfect life on the outside if you’re not truly happy on the inside. What’s more important to you?

Start a Side Hustle

What are you good at? What are you passionate about? Turn it into an income stream to support your travel dreams. Depending on what kind of business you decided to start, you could end up partnering with a company that actually gives you the opportunity to earn free trips while simultaneously making money towards your dream destinations. Win-win!

There are tons of different ways to save money. You could do the $5 bill method where you don’t spend any $5 bills and instead save them. You could do the Dave Ramsey Envelope Method to make sure you don’t go over budget. You can do whatever works for you but the important thing is that you actually find something that does work for you.

I realize this probably isn’t the blog post filled with the answers that everyone wanted to read. We all want solutions that are simple and easy. We want to make no changes in our lives and click a magic button that makes money appear to us that we can spend on travel but unfortunately, that’s just not the case. Nothing changes if nothing changes. If you can’t afford to travel with your current lifestyle and you want to be able to, you have to make changes.