The beginning of a blog series on how to fulfill your traveling dreams when you can barely afford groceries…
It’s pretty often that I’m in a conversation regarding traveling and I hear the words: “I’ve always wanted to go there,” or “I wish I could do that!” So I feel the need to tell you that, yes, I will let you know how I budget for my trips, but that’s not the first step to becoming a traveler. At least once a year, I suggest an international trip to a friend whose immediate response is “I can’t afford it.” Yeah, honey, I can’t book a flight to Paris tomorrow and be gone for two weeks either, but what I can do is dream, plan, strategize, and budget my way to achieving my globe-trotting goals.
So, step one is prioritizing. There is a very big difference between saying you want to do something and MEANING it. So if you aren’t willing to make some sacrifices in order to travel, then I’m telling you right now you don’t want it that much. By all means, if you’re sitting there reading this and thinking “yeah I’d much rather drop $80 at the bar every weekend and I’m not going to give that up just to visit Rome for a week,” that doesn’t mean you should stop reading, but at no point am I going to reveal some big secret that makes traveling on a whim attainable for anyone but the wealthy. So ask yourself, “Do I really care to travel?”
If the answer is truly yes then good for you, let’s keep going. When prioritizing your desires, I think it’s best to write them down. Think about the order in which you want things so that you can make an appropriate timeline of how to achieve them. If you already know travel is at the top of your list, then you’re ahead of the game. Being a student or having a job full-time job will mean that you need to manage your time correctly. If you have a set amount of days you can take off, are you willing to sacrifice time with your family or friends in order to use that time to travel? That’s a question you need to think about early on. I’ve found the best way for me to plan trips is to outline the places I would like to go about a year in advance, no planning needed, just a statement to the universe. In 2019 I want to go to _________. (Personally, I’m hoping to plan two big trips in 2019: Portugal for 7-9 days and Spain for 7-9 days, with a couple days of intra-Europe travel).
Depending on where I am, or intend to be, financially within the year, I start laying more concrete plans 3-6 months before the date I want to travel. This is the first step to budgeting. Once you have an idea of where you want to go and when you want to go, that’s when the legitimate planning can commence. If you want to travel internationally, I highly recommend going for at least 7 days depending on travel time. I have 15 PTO days this year and so my trips will probably be between 7-9 days because I’ll take 5 days off from work and then use the weekends on both ends for the “getting there and back,” stages of my trip.
You also need to consider opportunity cost. I think this analysis plays a bigger role with stateside travel, i.e. should I drive vs. fly? Should I leave on a weekend when traffic time is longer or plane tickets are usually more expensive or should I leave during the week? Can I drive during the night to maximize the daylight hours I have in my desired location? Should I buy the cheap plane ticket with the longer lay-over or pay a little more for a nonstop flight? I’ll dig deeper in to this once we really get in to budgeting but it’s always something that should be in the back of your mind when you’re planning any sort of trip.
So, we are about to walk in to 2019 and you need to stop and think…
- Is traveling a top priority for me this year?
- If the answer to that is yes, where do I want to go?
- Depending on the location of the trip, how long can I afford to stay?
- Traveling can be a big undertaking so at what point in the year will I be able to take off from work or school and still have had time to do some budgeting so I can afford this trip?
Once you can answer all these questions for yourself, or you at least have a decent idea, then it’s time to start thinking about the budgeting process…
I’ll tell you how I budget for stateside and international trips in the next post.
–XOXO MaiaElizabeth