Before, During, and After: Getting Better Control of Your Vacation Finances
If you plan on getting away on a lengthy travel excursion that will benefit you and your loved ones and give extra meaning to life, there is a common misconception that traveling is incredibly expensive. When it comes to saving up to go traveling it's about making sure that you have better money management in specific areas. These include saving up before you go, budgeting during your travels, and making sure that you avoid financial stress afterward. Traveling is instantly gratifying, but if we spend more time being worried about our finances this will always eat away at the back of our minds. Let’s show you some approaches to make sure that you have financial control before, during, and after your travels.
Preparing to Travel
The toughest thing in preparing for our travels is making sure that we have enough money to ensure we benefit while traversing the world. This means that, first of all, you've got to understand what you want to achieve from your vacation. For example:
Do you want to have a greater knowledge of other cultures and customs?
Are you looking to get away and relax?
Are you planning a long-term excursion around the world?
These three different questions are so simple but will make you think differently about your vacation and your savings. While many people think that travel is an expensive hobby, the fact is that you can do a few things before you get away to make sure you have the appropriate finances:
Tracking Your Spending
This is the most important tool; going through your accounts to look at your finances down to the dollar will give you better insight into how to cut back. So many people make the mistake of thinking there's no need to track their expenses because they actually know what they are spending their money on.
We can all find that we're still being debited for a service that we haven't used in months, if not years! If you have been spending money on Apple services and products, https://setapp.com/how-to/check-apple-purchase-history can show you what you have been purchasing in recent months or years.
When you start tracking your expenses, you are going to understand where you can cut back or eliminate your spending. As simple as this is, it's amazing how many people don't do it.
Being a Ruthless Budgeter
You need to budget your trip but you also need to make sure that you budget your life as well. Working out how much your trip is going to cost will depend on where you want to travel, as well as how thrifty you want to be.
If you are going on a long-term excursion, the more money the better. If you're backpacking you should aim for around $9,000 or $10,000 before leaving. The great thing is there are plenty of budget calculators online to help you out, such as http://www.youcandealwithit.com/borrowers/calculators-and-resources/calculators/budget-calculator.shtml.
Develop Money Saving Habits
There are a wide variety of habits that can help you here, for example, cooking for yourself instead of eating out and walking to work instead of taking public transport.
During Your Vacation
Ensuring you save money during your travels is partly about preparing before you go, but also understanding what you can do to make it a far more financially feasible vacation. You can plan your trip in advance and create a timeline to help you go from one place to the next so you can save more money. You may want to elongate your travels by traveling by bus instead of plane or train, but you may want to think about the following:
N26 Perks
N26 Smart is a premium membership bank account that covers a number of money management tools. Members of N26 can have a number of curated perks to help them enjoy special discounts. There are plenty of other perks available but this is why you need to do some preparation beforehand.
Saying Local
When you stay in one area for a longer period of time, you can save on your travel expenses. Lots of people have barely discovered what's on their own doorstep, and while this doesn't sound so exciting if you are looking for ways to cut back on your expenses you might want to start locally to capture that feeling of being on vacation.
Having Travel Insurance
This is critical because it can cover you for any issues that occur when you are on vacation, such as luggage delays, flights canceled or delayed, and medical issues.
After Your Vacation
Your vacation can be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Therefore, lots of people feel like they should spend as much money as humanly possible and worry about the fallout later on. This is fine in theory, but you could come back to a lot of debt that may take years to pay off. You can think that it's worth your while because you've had all those great memories to look back on while paying off debt, but paying off debt can be a very long and lonesome road.
This is why going back to a simpler way of life can be a big shock to the system, but is an essential one. When you are looking at paying off your debts after your vacation, ensuring you have a better handle on how you are going to pay everything back will make a significant difference. If you are more than happy to get into a lot of debt while you are on vacation or traveling the world, you will have to be prepared to spend a few years getting back to a more reasonable financial position.
There are many debt management plans and ways to pay off debts out there, such as the debt snowball method, but if you don't want to come back after an amazing vacation to a mountain of money problems there are ways for you to stay in control of your finances. One way to make that easier is to speak to experts at Manulife Wealth for financial and investment advice.