Try This Method to Save Up For Your Next Trip

 

Saving up for a trip is not always easy especially when there's only so much wiggle room in your finances and you got to squeeze every cent to make it. I always found myself in that tight spot when I was still constantly looking and planning for my next destination. I was only lucky when I got to go for business trips. 

I am in no way, shape or form a financial advisor but this is an average person's method to make things work. I've tried a lot of ways to manage what I can in order to fund my travels but this one worked its absolute best for me each time. I think of this as "saving by category". Not only does it help me have a very specific target, it also gives me something to look forward and celebrate whenever I finish a category.

You might want to try this out for yourself if you haven't done already.

1. Plan out your itinerary in specific detail

Plan Yoda Plan GIFfrom Plan GIFs

This is essential in order to categorise your travel funds. You have to identify your trip down to the expenses and conversion rates if you are travelling abroad. This takes a lot of research but once you get this out of the way, everything else in the planning stage will just fall into place - plus, you get an organised itinerary at hand!

You can change this according to your needs, but here are the categories that I almost always use when making a detailed itinerary:

• General activity category. My options include:
• Air travel - this covers airfare
• Government fees - travel tax and airport taxes
• Land travel - cab fare going to and leaving from the airport, any land transportation in destination country
• Experience - tour fees, entrance fees
• Shopping - souvenirs and personal shopping budget
• Food - all meals and drinks
• Date and time of activity
• Name of activity - Note which activities can be booked online and which ones you need to pay in cash.
• Accomodation - hotels
• Cost in your currency
• Cost in your destination's currency (optional) 
• Notes (optional)

With regards to the costs, make sure you add in 5-10% of what you found on the internet just to give an allowance to currency lost and price changes from the day of your planning to the day that you actually pay for it.

2. Get the total cost per category

In my list above, my categories are in bold letters. The next step would be to take the general cost per category. You can subcategorise if you think this narrowing them down would help you.

3. Prioritise your categories

Now that you have categorised and determine the actual costs, it is time to prioritise which ones you save for first. My rule of thumb is that I save for the expenses that often change prices like airfare and hotel. This is how I prioritise the rest (list is from the most to the least):

• Price changes/rises fast and/or when closer to date of travel
• Airfare
• Hotel
• Activities that can and need to be booked online
• Things that need to be paid for in cash
• Government fees
• Land travel
• Experiences that need to be paid for in cash (including tips)
• Shopping
• Food

The ones that can be paid for in cash should be the last category because you don't really need to have the money until you need to exchange them to your destination's currency which is usually done days or even hours before your trip.

4. Save up according to priorities

Sailor Moon Piggy Bank GIFfrom Sailor Moon GIFs

This can be the most difficult part of it all because this is actually taking all the planning into action. Once you've saved up enough money to pay for your highest priority (in this case, it's the airfare), you can start booking your flight according to how long you realistically identified that you'll need to save up for the rest. It would help if you have a consistent goal to add to your travel fund to identify your time frame. For example, you have Php 1,000 to add to your travel funds per month. You then divide the total cost of your trip plus an extra time in case there are other home expenses. This way, you can pinpoint which month of a specific year your can make the trip.

I hope this helps!