8 Ways To Save Money For Travel

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Are you looking to save money for a vacation? You may want to travel across the country or even around the world. You might be driving, going by plane, staying locally, or staying at an exotic hotel.

Whatever your vacation plans may be, it’s a sound idea to find ways to save money so that you can best enjoy your trip. 

Saving money can be challenging at times, but in this article, we’ll discuss how to save for your upcoming vacation. 

Travel is exciting, especially if you’re going on a nice vacation. You may be going with a loved one, your family, or your friends. By saving money throughout the year, you’ll be able to enjoy your trip even more.

Let’s jump right in.

How Much Should You Save For A Vacation?

You’ll first want to determine how much you need to save for your upcoming vacation. Let’s look at some possible expenses that you may incur.

• Round-trip airfare
• Hotel
• Rented car or other modes of transportation
• Food
• Gifts and souvenirs
• Activities

If you’re taking unpaid time off for work, it also makes sense to save enough money to cover the amount of pay you’re not earning. 

Additionally, if you have someone watching your pets or keeping an eye on your house, make sure to add those costs to the total amount that you need to save for your upcoming vacation.

Once you’ve created a vacation budget and determined how much money you’ll need for your trip, you can map out a savings plan. 

By saving in advance, you’ll be less likely to overspend and go into debt while traveling. Next, we’ll get into different ways you can save up for the amount you need. 

1. Open a Separate Savings Account to Save For Your Vacation

When saving money for an upcoming vacation, opening a separate savings account often makes sense. 

By doing so, you can fully separate your travel fund from your other savings. That way, you can transfer money and plan out how much you need to save each month to reach the anticipated cost of your upcoming trip.

One bank to open a travel fund at is CIT Bank.

CIT Bank offers high-yield savings, money market, CDs, and custodial accounts designed to help you maximize your personal finances.

View your rates here.

Once you have a separate bank account created for your travel plans, you can set up automatic transfers from your checking account to the new travel account so that you can save money without having to think. 

Check out this guide on how to automate your finances.

2. Get a Credit Card with Travel Rewards

Some credit cards give fantastic travel rewards whenever you use them to make a purchase. Travel rewards may include points that can be redeemed for:

• Discounts on airfare
• Discounts on hotel arrangements
• Gift cards at restaurants
• Special access to exclusive events

Additionally, travel rewards cards often grant extra reward points when you use your credit card on travel expenses and dining out.

By using your travel card throughout the year, you’ll earn points that will make your upcoming vacation plans more affordable. 

This is similar to saving money on travel in that you are saving money on the actual trip by redeeming cash back, gift cards, or discounted airfare that you earned by spending money elsewhere.

3. Save for Travel By Lower Your Living Expenses

Lowering your monthly expenses will help you save money as you’ll have more money available to you at the end of each month. Here are some excellent ways you can lower expenses to start saving money for your next trip.

• Negotiate your cable/internet bill: Many providers will lower your monthly bill to their introductory rate if you call them and negotiate. You can also reduce your service package if you feel like you’re paying for channels or speeds you don’t need.
• Negotiate your auto insurance bill: Check out The Zebra and look up competitors’ auto insurance rates. If you find one better than yours, call up your provider and ask if they’ll match it. If they don’t, you could consider switching to the less expensive provider. 
• Reduce your mobile phone plan: If you’re not using all of your phone’s features, such as unlimited data, downgrade your plan, or, if possible, go to a provider with a better rate. Alternatively, if your phone is older and you have insurance on it, consider dropping the insurance. This can save you between $10 and $15 per month on average.
• Cancel subscriptions that you aren’t using: Consider ditching subscriptions that you aren’t using. This includes games, gym memberships, subscription boxes, and services that you may not use as much as you used to.

Use the app Trim to negotiate your bills automatically. This app is great if you don’t want to go through the hassle of dealing with your service providers. 

Trim is “mostly free” to use as you pay a small percentage of the total amount of money that it saves for you.

4. Cut Back on Spending to Save More Money For A Trip

If you regularly shop on online stores like Amazon, consider deleting your credit card information from those sites to make it more difficult to impulse spend. The more you save throughout the year, the more money you’ll have available for vacation.

Having a blast on vacation or travel, in general, makes for wonderful memories for yourself and whoever you go with. Be frugal throughout the year to maximize your savings.

One excellent way to save cash is to eat out less. 

If, for example, you spend $20 for a meal once a week while you’re out, you could save $1,040 in 12 months for skipping that one meal each week. This money can then be applied for airfare, hotel, or activities on your next trip.

You could also do a “Save a day” challenge and put a day into your vacation account. Don’t forget, saving $5 a day will net you $1,825 at the end of one full year. 

Live far below your means to maximize your savings rate. This can be practical not just for saving for a vacation but also for getting out of debt and saving for a big purchase, such as a house or college for your kids.

5. Develop Good Savings Habits

Here are some other ways to save money for vacation and other big travel plans.

Go Out Less

Like eating out less, if you go out to bars, clubs, movies, and other activities, consider spending an extra day at home. 

It’s great to have fun out and about, but if you’re saving for an amazing trip, it makes sense to save money by reducing other activities. 

This is especially true if you’re going on a long trip or traveling to multiple destinations where arrangements may be expensive.

Quit The Gym and Workout at Home

Going to the gym can definitely be motivating to help you work out, but many gyms not only cost a lot per month, but you may be tempted to buy additional things while at the gym, such as sports drinks. 

Ditching the gym can save you loads of money, and you can get a similar workout at home with weights and a collapsable bench. 

Ask yourself if you’re fully utilizing the gym, and then determine how much you’d save by canceling. Is the money saved worth it? Will this money be considerable in helping you save for your upcoming travel plans?

Stop Shopping Online as Much

Shopping online is easy, which has its pros and cons. 

One way to eliminate the urge to shop as much online is to delete all of your credit card information from every online site you frequently buy from. 

By deleting your credit card information, you’ll make it tougher for you to impulse purchase something. 

By keeping your travel plans in mind and making it harder to shop online, you’ll stop buying things you don’t need and save more money. Check out this article for tips to curb impulse spending.

Quit Expensive Habits

Expensive habits like smoking cigarettes and drinking too frequently get expensive fast. 

Not only that, but they aren’t healthy. 

Cut back or give up smoking and reduce how much you drink. Not only will this promote better health, but you’ll save a ton of money for other things in life, including going away on vacation.

Do Free Activities

Finding low-cost and free activities to do for fun will save you and your family lots of money. There are activities for every occasion that don’t require you to spend. Here is an article on over a dozen low-cost or free activities that you can do for fun.

6. Get a Side Hustle to Make Money For Vacation

A side hustle can be a great way to earn extra money for a vacation or general travel. 

Side hustles can be something you do a few hours a week, or it can be something you do an hour or two a day, depending on how much you’re looking to earn and how much time you have available.

One low-effort side hustle you can do to earn a few dollars a day is filling out online surveys. Websites like Swagbucks or Survey Junkie are a great place to start. 

With Swagbucks, you can earn money every day by filling out surveys and completing offers. 

You can also earn money by shopping at local stores and using the Swagbucks cashback feature. This feature also works at online retailers. 

Use this link to get started with Swagbucks today, and read our Swagbucks review to learn how to maximize your earnings.

Survey Junkie is more simple, and you can earn money from filling out surveys primarily. There are also focus groups and product testing that can earn you money, but this is less common. 

Use this link to get started with Survey Junkie and read our Survey Junkie review for more information.

7. Travel During the Week

Traveling during the week is often much less expensive than traveling on weekends. Airfare is often the least expensive on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so if you’re planning on doing a week of travel, consider traveling from Wednesday to the following Tuesday.

While flight prices vary, you can often save up to 40% off airfare by flying on a Tuesday or Wednesday versus flying on a Saturday. 

Traveling during the week also makes for less traffic if you’re driving. If you drive during the day, many people are at work, meaning the roads are clearer. Less traffic means less time spent driving, which may not save you a lot of money, but it’ll get you to your destination quicker and give you more time to enjoy your trip.

8. Travel During Off-Peak Season

Prices on airfare, hotels, and activities can often be much lower during off-peak seasons. Not only can it be more affordable to travel when your destination is less popular, but you may also have more availability to do fun activities due to fewer reservations. 

It’s possible to save up to, if not over 50% on some hotels and accommodations when you travel in the quiet season. 

This alone allows you to either spend less on your trip or allocate trip money for other fun activities instead of spending so much on staying at the hotel or resort.

If you have flexibility in when you can travel, this is quite a way to save money on travel expenses.

Wrapping It Up

In this article, we went over several ways to save money for travel and vacations. We also touched on a few ways to save money while booking your trip. 

Vacations are fun and exciting though sometimes costly. 

When you take time to come up with a savings plan for your trips, you’ll be able to enjoy your stay more, knowing you saved ahead of time instead of going into debt to cover expenses.

Where do you want to travel next?