Pinay Traveller Recommends #7: Saving Travel Money: funding your passion for travel

How do you save the money to travel? Here are 10 tips to help you out. Via Saving Travel Money: funding your passion for travel.

Oh, if only money grew on trees.

But it doesn’t. Most of us have to save to support our passion for travel. It’s not easy but it’s not that hard either. Start by establishing a travel budget; know how much you need to save. Then, develop a plan to get the money for that budget. These tips on saving travel money will help you get there.

10 tips to Save Travel Money.

1. Set up an automatic withdrawal from your regular account and send the money to a dedicated travel account. Would you miss $20 a week? That adds up to $1040 a year — enough for a single person to do something fun for a week or maybe more depending on your taste. If you tend toward more luxury travel, hopefully your budget can handle more each week.

2. Don’t think you can afford $20 a week? Make and bring your lunch, go back to regular coffee rather than lattes, walk or cycle rather than drive or take transit. Each of these changes are actually healthy lifestyle choices and will easily save $20 a week. All three could save you $60 a week. (Achieve this and you’re a better person than I.)

3. Buy with a credit card that has no annual fee and offers cash back on purchases. Pay the card off in full every month and don’t shop at a more expensive store just to get the reimbursement. Add your cash back to your travel fund.

4. Use the library for your reading needs and to borrow travel guides. For short trips of a month or less, its usually worth borrowing guides and maps from the library to take with you. This can save upwards of $30. While you’re there you can borrow a couple of DVDs and save another $10 a week on entertainment.

5. Drop your long distance package from your phone bill and use Skype. It may even make sense to eliminate your home phone completely. You’ll have to do the math on that one.

6. Dine out at lunch rather than dinner — especially at fine restaurants. The quality will be the same but the cost will be much lower.

7. Know how you react in an impulse buy situation. Some people are stopped by seeing cash leave their hands, others by the prospect of using a credit card. Carry whichever form of money you are less likely to use.

8. In the same vein, have a “spend no change” policy. It will add up nicely in a jar, especially true in Canada where there are $1 and $2 coins. They add up fast.

9. Sell your unneeded stuff on Craig’s List. It’s amazing what you can sell and it’s cash right into your pocket. Sell a bunch of stuff at once to be efficient with your time.

10. Track your spending. Just by knowing how much you’re spending and where, you will spend less. I can almost guarantee it.

There are countless other ways to save money on your mortgage, electricity, entertainment expenses… In my mind, these are ways to live within your means generally. Here I have concentrated on simple things that will result in more money in your pocket at the end of every week or month. Money that can be put in a separate account and spent traveling. I hope it helps.