If you are interested in traveling but don’t know where to start on your current budget, you’ve come to the right place. I’ll show you two easy ways for saving money towards your next dream vacation!
Yes, I travel for free most of the time. Other than paying a minuscule amount of money for taxes and fees my flights are usually covered. However, I do still save money for travel for sightseeing, dinners, activities and other expenses. So instead of saving money for airfare, that money is now “me” money! You chose if this money will be for travel or expenses, either way it’s always good to save some extra money.
Before you embark on using these techniques for travel, be sure to spend a little time paying down any credit card debt and putting some money away for unexpected emergencies and your retirement. These techniques are especially valuable if you have trouble saving money.
Your own Daily Tip Jar
These two steps involve setting up your “daily tip jar”. If you’re tipping everyone else for their services how about you start tipping yourself. Set up an empty jar and put a dollar in it a day. I’m talking about each and every day. Instead of paying for the absurdly overpriced java at Starbucks, how about a more modestly priced coffee anywhere else. Instead of going out and grabbing breakfast before work, how about making something at home instead. At the end of a year you would have saved up $365, after two or three years you’d have enough to get you some place really nice.
The second easy way to save up will get you there a lot quicker. It takes a little more work but luckily it starts off easy, the same way as the previous step.
Here you’ll only save once a week, at the end of the week. Therefore you are only putting money in 52 times a year, for the 52 weeks of the year.
Week one you’ll start off putting away $1. Week two you would put away $2. Week 3, $3 and so on. Easy right? Thus you are only saving $52 max a week and that’s at the end of the year.
Travel Tip Jar
This idea is not new and has been floated around the Internet, especially Pinterest several times, more commonly known as the 52 week challenge. I don’t know where it originated but the image I found was from http://lifeasyouliveit.blogspot.com/2013/04/52-week-money-challenge.html
Using this second technique, at the end of the year you will have just shy of $1400. $1,378 to be exact! Not really chump change anymore.
What I don’t like is the idea of having to put in $52 during the holidays when money is already tight. So instead you can reverse the concept and start week one by saving $52 and working your way down until you’re only putting away $1 for the last week of the year.
For those of you who are a little better at saving already I’d say try this way. Then when you’re winding down and still have some extra money you can stick that in too and have even more by year’s end.
I’ve used this technique since January and have successfully saved enough spending money for my 3 week trip to Australia.
If you’d like, you can also jump around week to week depending on how much you can save a week but it gets a little difficult to keep up with. I’ve made my own excel file you can print out and use or tape to your jar. I’ll add this in a couple of weeks as I don’t have excel on this computer yet. Email me if you’re interested using the form below. [contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Website’ type=’url’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]
Of course in today’s age it’s probably easier to do this all online in your own bank account instead of a jar. Do it however you’d like to, the point is start putting money away now. Pay off your debt and start saving money to see the world!
Pretty easy enough, right? Do you have any tips to start saving money?