Passively Save For Your Next Trip
The biggest barrier as to why people don’t travel more is the cost. They always have a destination in mind — they know they can get time off from work or school —but they don’t know if they have or want to spend the money.
There are two reasons why this is. The first is that people are under the impression that travel is expensive. But as I’ve wrote about before, the only type of expensive travel is expensive travel. They are bountiful ways to make travel more affordable and destinations to visit where you can make $10 stretch forever.
The second reason is that travel is perceived to be a luxury. And while that is true in some aspects, it should also be treated like an expense. Just another item that you must budget into your everyday expenses.
I think many people see an awesome destination on Instagram and think “I want to go there this summer.” Aside from maybe looking at plane tickets, the planning for that trip stop there and is only brought up again when summer time arrives and it’s time to start booking the trip.
Travel expenses should be an everyday action — not a once a year dip into your savings.
If you saved $35 a week, you’d have $1,560 for your trip — more than enough for a one week trip to basically anywhere in the world.
If you stopped drinking coffee for a year, you’d have $2,008 for your trip. Okay, maybe that’s unrealistic (we need our coffee). What if you only drank 50% of the coffee you drank now? You’d have $1004 — a perfect budget for any U.S. trip. Or how about 50% of the coffee and save just $10 a week? $1,524.
The point is, treat travel like any other weekly or monthly expense and you’ll find that it’s easier and more affordable to save for travel than you previously thought. In order to save, you either have to cut out an expense or make saving an expense.
The beauty of it is, with modern-day technology, you don’t have to manually put a $10 bill in your piggy bank every week. Finance apps will do it all for you, my favorite of the bunch being one called Qapital.
You signup for the app, connect your bank account, and voilà, you’re ready to save. What I love about Qapital (this is not a sponsored article) is the amount of “saving rules” they offer. I’ve used the “save and forget” rule to save for my past 4 trips, saving $25 every week.
Screenshot of a Qapital notification
Not only do apps like these make saving more efficient and easier, it does it for you without you even thinking about. If you price your rules correctly (depending on how fast you want to save for your next trip) you won’t even feel the amounts leaving your bank account.
The other benefit is that even if you do feel the financial impact of $20, $30, or $100 leaving your bank account each week, you know where it is. It’s stored safely in your Qapital account, ready to be used at the appropriate time.
At least from personal experience, seeing a larger number on my account causes me to feel more at ease with my spending. I might justify a $20 lunch, or new AirPods, or more expensive shoes. But when my bank account number is low, I have to make an active effort to watch what I spend.
Saving each week causes your bank account number to be a little lower, causing you to be more self-aware of your everyday spending habits and unable to spend the money that you know you want to save for travel.
Putting small amounts of money aside every week paired with not spending money on small commodities you don’t really need is the key to being able to afford more travel. You won’t feel much a difference from your spending habits, but the saving goes a long way.
At the end of the day, being able to effectively save is probably the biggest factor in the amount someone travels, and by treating travel as a weekly expense rather than a one time dip into your savings account, you can drastically reduce the unwillingness to pay for a trip.
I’d love to see where you’re off to next — hit me up on Instagram to connect!