Travel is on almost everyone's wish list, whether it's an overseas trip, a beach vacation, a road trip, camping, or a week at a cottage. Downtime is such an important part of our well-being and vacation money is understandably important.
Ideally, we can fully revel in our vacations, enjoying every day we are away seeing new things, relaxing, and being with the people we like the most. Sometimes though, vacations can leave us feeling financially stressed because let's face it - traveling is expensive. Our travel spending can also be influenced by the carefree feeling we get while on vacation and the desire to splurge in the moment and worry about it later.
Indulge with restraint
Although your vacation is indeed a time to indulge a little, there are things we can do to keep the money part of vacations in check and help us avoid that cringy feeling we get when we have to look at our credit card balance when we get home.
Here are some things that I've found to help me feel good about my vacation spending.
Save up for your travel. By setting aside money throughout the year for a trip, you will know that you can afford it and that this money is meant to be spent on FUN and won’t compromise your financial situation for months afterward.
Set a budget. Budget? On vacation? What a total buzzkill! Well, it’s not so much a strict budget as just having a sense of how much you want to spend every day. This helps you avoid too much YOLO spending.
Find ways to save money. There is a myriad of ways you can spend less without compromising enjoyment. Spend more on what really makes you happy and go cheap on things that don’t.
Ways to keep it feeling good
I just returned from a 12-day trip to France with my two sons. We had an amazing time. Unlike some of my past vacations, where I spent with abandon, I happily reviewed my credit card statement, tallied up the amount I spent, and felt really good about it. I’m quite sure my children would say that they didn’t lack for anything on this trip, despite my “spend with conscious choice” rather than "spend with abandon" approach.
In my blog post, I offer three ways that I reduced my trip costs: renting modest apartments through AirBnB, eating some of our meals in our apartment, and using public transit. Where did I spend with abandon? On museums, monuments, galleries and any other place we wanted to visit, on coffee (because you must sip café au lait at a little round table on the sidewalk whenever possible while in France), and toll roads to reduce our driving time.
My point in all of this is that vacations can be fully enjoyed even while employing some money-saving tactics. This trip for the three of us cost me about $8,000 all in. We spent at least $1,500 less by doing these simple things, without compromising the trip. Traveling this way makes me feel better about going again in the future because it’s not overwhelmingly expensive.
So where to next?
Take care of yourself (and your money),
Anita Bruinsma
Clarity Personal Finance
