Cost saving is vital to kickstarting your travel goals and Tife shares really solid tips in this article. Tife is an aspiring Nomad and the number one question she gets is “how do you afford to travel”? To answer that, she strongly believes that anyone with monthly income can afford to travel. All you need is setting realistic goals and planning towards them! Read 5 tips on saving towards travel.
Everybody I know wants to travel. However, most don’t think they can afford it yet despite being employed or having a steady source of income. As for me, I honestly don’t think there is a perfect time to start exploring the world. Start where you are and with what you have.
The truth is travel costs money! You need to know and settle that with yourself. My friends often wonder how I can afford all these trips. Well, I’ll be sharing some tips that have helped me and many others so you know they’re tested and trusted. Hopefully my friends read this so they can stop asking me JAMB questions and pack their bags already. Lol!
5 COST-SAVING TRAVEL TIPS
1. Have your Travel goals, decide on when and where e.g. I want to visit Ghana and Morocco this year or I want to visit South Africa for summer or Greece in December. Write the goals down somewhere you can see it often enough so it serves as a constant reminder and hopefully spurs you to action.
2. Have a plan and start as soon as you set your goal. Your plan includes travel cost to that destination, visa requirements, insurance, accommodation and duration. Depending on the destination, you can determine how best to get there; if you have an option to go by road to save considerably more, then opt for that over flying especially to nearby destinations. Sometimes, you’ll find that the road trip is a worthy experience all in itself. You may reach out to two or three travel companies to help with these figures if you don’t know how to go about your research.
3. Open a savings account or a money market instrument specifically for travel and decide the percentage of your income that will go into that account on a regular basis, preferably monthly. There are so many platforms and Fintech products now that offer better rates than the bank. Basically, put the money you set aside for travel to work for you. So, if you want to travel in December you can start saving from January. There’s really no reason why you can’t go on a holiday at least once a year if travel is your thing and you have a source of income. Some of the platforms I use include Mysavings and AxaMansard Money Market.
4. Be disciplined. Saving towards a goal takes discipline. You have to deny yourself of some luxuries to accommodate your wanderlust. e.g as much as I’d like, I can’t afford retail therapy because travelling is a priority. I have dresses from 4 years ago that are still in good shape – I’m glad I didn’t compromise on quality then because it’s still serving purpose till now. I’m not saying there aren’t times I give in and buy a piece or two. But that’s as far as it gets. Another option is thrifting, it’s a great way to cut back expenses on clothing, shoes and bags. I thrift a lot on bags and I can’t even lie. Cut back on things that you spend more than you need to on. If you’re the type that goes clubbing every Friday, reduce it to one Friday in a month. If you check your lifestyle and you’re being honest with yourself, you’ll see more ways in which you can cut back on spending so you have more money to set aside.
5. Start saving for your next trip while on your current trip. It’s easy, you’ve saved enough to go on your trip plus pocket money. But who says you must spend all your pocket money? You can take say $1000 on a trip but decide you’ll only spend $650 – $800. So the change will be put towards the next trip. Again discipline is important here because you’ll see things to buy, food you’d like to try or sights you’ll like to see.
BONUS TIP
Don’t be one of those people that think if you haven’t been to U.S, U.K or Dubai, you haven’t travelled. There are about 200 countries in the world, don’t limit yourself to only a couple.
I hope you find these tips helpful, if you ever try any or all of them and you smash your travel goal(s), do let me know. It’s what I do and I’ll be visiting my 4th country soon. That’s in addition to the many tourist locations I have visited in my country. It’s not a lot but it is a delightful journey and I am glad to be living it every step of the way.
