085 Practical Ways to Save Money for Vacation
Do you feel like you don’t have enough money to travel? Does it seem overwhelming to start saving money for your dream trip? Today Danielle Desir from The Thought Card joins Lisa to share many of her practical tips for saving money for vacations. There are many gems like “treat travel as a bill” and “you are always saving for a trip” plus many more insights. Learn how you can set up travel savings accounts, what apps are great for saving money, and how to shift your mindset to feel excited about budgeting for travel.
Ready to start saving money for your next trip?
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“Treat travel as a bill.”
Tips for Saving Money for Travel
Have the mindset that you are always saving for another trip.
Treat travel as a bill.
Automatically have money moved to a travel savings account when each paycheck arrives.
Include travel as a line item on your budget. Adding to the travel fund is non-negotiable.
Tips for automation in adding to your travel savings accounts
If possible, set up an auto draw to a travel savings account with your employer so that you never see that money enter a different account.
If you can’t set it up with an employer, see up an automatic transfer to occur with your bank right after each paycheck is posted.
Consider setting up a long-term trip savings account and a short-term trip saving account.
Use the long-term trip savings account for bigger, bucket list trips. Set a goal for how much you will need and watch the money grow each month.
The short-term trip savings account money is used for road trips, weekend getaways, quick opportunities that come up with friends, etc.
No goal amount is needed for the short-term account. Just keep adding to it every pay period so that money will always be there when you need it.
If you use online banking, change the name of the account to the trip you are saving for. This just changes the account name you see when you login, it won’t make an official change with the bank. It will be more fun to watch your “Japan 2021” account grow than just an account titled with a bunch of numbers.
Money-Saving Words of Wisdom
Make saving for travel a natural part of your lifestyle.
Travel is a need.
Use reverse budgeting. For example, if you have $200 budgeted for your electric bill but the bill comes in at $150, move the extra $50 right over to your travel savings account.
No amount is too small to save.
Budgeting is a tool for financial freedom. Don’t avoid budgeting, embrace it!
There’s nothing wrong with taking a long time to save money for something big.
Know your travel style. What areas of travel do you most value? First-class airfare, food, experiences, luxury, tours, etc. Budget with those values in mind.
Favorite Travel Saving Apps and Websites
Acorns. This app lets you invest spare change from your daily purchases. This will not be the primary source for saving but it will be a great way to have little bits of money daily add up to some great spending cash for your next adventure.
Digit. This helps you organize money and track savings.
Secretflying.com. Danielle likes to use this site to get a price base for flights. Then as she watches flights, she knows when a good deal becomes available.
Thriftytraveler.com. An excellent place to look for flight deals, ways to use credit card points. and to watch Delta Sky Miles.
Thank you to Danielle Desir for joining me for this episode of the podcast. As you can see from listening to this episode, Danielle is a talented author, podcaster, and content creator at the Thought Card with many great money-saving ideas. You can reach out to her on her website or send her a message on Instagram or Facebook. You can find her books Affording Travel and Traveling with a Full-time Job on Amazon.