If you have wanderlust like me, dreaming about travel is just not enough. Every time I see or hear a plane flying overhead, I wonder where it’s off to and why I’m not on it. And then I remember that the contents of my wallet only permit me to travel out the road and back home, LOL.
On a serious note though, travel is not as unachievable as some of us may think and if you’ve ever been on a plane – even if it landed in Tobago – it’s an exhilarating experience to say the least. With these five creative ways to save you’ll be travelling in no time!
1. Start a Travel Account.
You can open a Savings Account with your bank and transfer/deposit money into it occasionally. For those who may struggle with commitment issues (talking about discipline to save here guys, LOL) you can do a Standing Order which is basically an automated funds transfer of a set amount to the account. This could be on a weekly or monthly basis, but it is totally dependent on you.
You’ll have to decide on the amount you’d like to send to the account and how frequently you’d like to do so. If you have a good relationship with your bank, you can ask them to put a hold on the account so that you would not be allowed to withdraw your funds from it until you’ve reached a certain threshold. This is definitely a great way to save for travel and a cool alternative instead of taking out a travel loan which is a hassle to repay after de-stressing on your vacay.
2. Reduce Your Bills
First you must determine your needs vs. your wants. When you do so, you’ll realize that some of the things you have you don’t really need and probably could live without them which means you can SAVE! For example, do you really need cable TV anymore? Hear me out. Most of the shows you watch are available on the Internet. I’m absolutely positive about that because that’s where I view all of my favourite shows.
So one less bill for me means savings of $200+ TT per month (which is just about the cost for a basic cable package). We could negotiate with ourselves a bit here because savings means sacrifice sometimes. So maybe when you’ve accomplished your travel savings goal, you could reconnect your cable. So that’s two rewards for yourself after you’ve saved. A vacation and cable T.V! How about that?
3. Do a savings challenge!
We live in an era where there’s a social media challenge for everything. Pinterest is filled with a lot of budget/saving challenges that you can use to start saving such as the Five Dollar Savings challenge, which basically compels you to save $5.00 every time you come across a five dollar bill (you might want to make it a $20 TT bill to account for currency conversion). Find out more about it here
4. Book A Funcation With Road Trip TT
If you didn’t already know, I’m informing you that Road Trip TT offers loads of fun travel packages to other countries that includes meals, airfare, accommodation and bomb activities too! You might be asking, how is this helping me to save though? Here’s the thing guys, Road Trip TT offers payment plans with their travel packages so paying for your vacation in parts is just like saving up to it! Probably even better, because this way you can’t decide that you’re going to use the money you’ve saved for something else. You’re going on that vacation!
5. Set up a clear jar on your desk.
I know that sounds weird, but put a clear jar on your work desk and label it “Vacation Fund”. When you have spare change from buying lunch you can throw it in there. You probably will see more money than you’ve actually put in because some of your kind co-workers may generously add to the jar when they can – without you asking. This works well if you’re saving aside from this jar and the contents of the jar will come in handy for extra spending money for your vacation.
What creative saving tips do you have for travel?
