Posted on: July 22, 2019 Posted by: Owen Coughlin Comments: 0

The economy is up and so are vacations. To that end, this year, over 100,000,000 families in the United States are going to leave their homes for a few days to find rest and relaxation.

Is your family going to be among them?

If you answered no to that question, we’re willing to bet that the issue is money and there’s certainly no shame in that. The average vacation for a family of four costs roughly $4,500 and let’s face it, most people don’t have that kind of cash just lying around.

Almost everybody that goes on the vacation of their dreams has to save up for it. If you’re not 100% sure how to save money for travel in a way that doesn’t mean completely ruin your lifestyle, we’ve got 11 great solutions for you that can put your vacation dreams on the fast track to becoming your vacation reality.

1. Open Up a Vacation Savings Account

In order to save money for travel, you’re going to need a place to put the money that you’re stocking up on. Contrary to popular belief, the best place to put that money is not under your mattress.

Effective savers understand the value of interest. Interest at high, predictable rates can be found in a high-yield savings account.

Skeptical of the idea that a savings account can afford you the kind of interest that would really make an impact on your savings goals? Think again!

There are free savings accounts that you can opt into right now that offer 2.3% interest and above!

2. Make Plans and Then Strategize Cheaper Alternatives

The weekend is coming up… What are you going to do?

On the one hand, you could go to an arcade in the afternoon, head out to dinner, grab a drink and then watch a movie. On the other hand, you could go for a free walk around the park, head to the market and pick up something fun to munch on, make an event out of prepping dinner, eat and then watch a movie on Netflix.

The first-weekend plan that we suggested will easily run you over $100.00. The second set of plans will run you under $20.00.

Just like that, you’ve saved $80.00 for your vacation and still enjoyed a great evening.

3. Find Easy Ways to Cut Back

When you save money for travel, you don’t have to make it so you’re suffering in order to scrape together pennies. We’re willing to bet that there are a number of ways that you can cut back on your expenses that you wouldn’t feel at all.

Paying for Netflix? Borrow your friend’s account instead and put those $12.00 per month into your savings account.

Paying for the gym? Buy a weight-set and workout at home or use the free gym equipment that’s available at a number of parks.

Every $10.00 to $15.00 that you can move into your vacation savings account each month can make a huge difference.

4. Quit Expensive Habits

We’re looking at you with this one smokers. If you’re burning through $10.00 per day smoking or partaking in any other vice, stop. Chances are, whatever you’re doing isn’t good for you and you’re seriously puffing away the chance to spend a week with your family at Disney World.

We get that quitting habits can be hard. The effort that you put into quitting and even the professional help that you might hire to help you quit is well worth the investment when you consider all of the money that you’ll save over the course of your life.

5. Pick Up a Side Hustle

The best way to increase your savings is often to make more money. People’s favorite way to make additional cash these days is to pick up a lucrative side-hustle.

Great side hustle options include driving for Uber/Lyft, doing food deliveries, pet sitting, babysitting, and any number of other things that you can do at your leisure for some extra cash.

Just think, if you drove nights for Uber for just 3-weeks, you’d likely be able to pay for your whole vacation.

6. Ask for More Hours at Work

If your 9 to 5 job has more hours to give, claim those hours. Not only is working extra hours at a job that you know how to do easier than adopting a side-hustle, but if you work over 8 hours in a given day at a single place of employment, you’ll start raking in “time and a half” which makes your hourly pay stretch a lot further.

Not every job offers overtime opportunities so don’t feel bad if this doesn’t seem like a possibility for you. You never know what is available until you ask though, so sit down with our manager and see what they think.

7. Sell Your Old Stuff

You might have a whole family vacation sitting in your garage right now. Seriously… All of that junk that you have lying around might be worth some serious money at a yard sale or online.

We know people that sell Louis Vuitton bags that they don’t use anymore or bags that they find at thrift shops and make thousands of extra dollars.

Who knows where that old ping-pong table, baseball glove, computer monitor, etc. could get you?

8. Rent a Room

Real estate prices in America are way up which is making a whole sect of the population desperate to find affordable housing.

That spare room that you have in today’s market could be worth $600.00 – $800.00 per month! Maybe, even more, depending on where you live.

We get that it can be a little bit strange to have a stranger living in your house. The person that you have moved in to save money for travel doesn’t have to be a stranger though!

See if a cousin, friend or co-worker is looking for a place to live that’ll enable them to save a few bucks. You’d be surprised by how many people might be interested in being your roommate for a little while.

9. Start Leveraging a Rewards Credit Card

People make thousands of dollars every year by shopping. We know that sounds a little counterintuitive but it’s true.

They do this by making their purchases using rewards credit cards.

Rewards credit cards pay the people that use them 1% or more on every purchase that they make. If you spend a lot of money over the course of a year, you could easily wind up with $1000.00+ dollars in rewards that you can redeem for travel, hotel rooms or cold hard cash.

10. Buy in Bulk

We can’t advise you to save money by cutting back on groceries. After all, you’ve got to eat to be able to live long enough to enjoy that vacation that you’re saving up for.

What we can recommend to you though is to take your business to a grocer that lets you buy in bulk for less money.

The most commonplace that people achieve this end is at Costco but maybe you have another cheap grocer nearby that offers special deals if you buy multiples of the same product.

Bulk-buying will cost you a little bit of extra money upfront but will save you hundreds of dollars on your grocery expenses over the course of the year.

11. Make Saving Fun

The more fun that saving money for travel is, the more inclined that you and the rest of your family members are going to be to do it.

Our advice is to create fun activities and challenges around saving money to make things seem less burdensome.

For example, start a text ring and have people send a message bragging about how much money they saved when they choose to opt for a cheaper version of something (ex: “I just put $2.00 in our vacation fund by opting to not supersize my lunch!)”.

Little things like that can go a long way in getting people interested in saving money and in keeping them engaged until you’ve put together the money that you need to go on vacation!

Closing Out Our How to Save Money for Travel Advice

Travel is expensive and consequently, the idea of saving money to travel to the tune of thousands of dollars might seem out of the reach for some families.

If you follow our advice though, our team is confident that you’ll eventually save money for travel and go on the vacation that you deserve!

Looking for more fun tips on travel, vacations and more? If you are, read more of the informative content on our blog!

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