Travel Budget: 5 Creative Ways to Save Money For Road Trips

Travelling is a welcome break from the daily monotony, which comes around once in a while and creates wonderful memories. In fact, we spend a lot of time planning our next holiday. It stands to reason that we would also be focusing on creating a travel budget. But you need not try to save money by making drastic cuts before you set out on your vacation! In fact, with smarter travel budget plans, you can incorporate small tips and tricks into your daily life. This way, you won’t feel the pinch and your travel budget will always have more than enough for your next holiday!

Creative Ways to Set Your Travel Budget

1. Know your expenses on a daily basis – especially the little things

Budgeting is not something that can be done overnight. It requires dedicated attention and effort. The good thing is, you don’t need to take drastic measures. Starting small and tracking daily expenses is a great way to make budgeting seem easy. When you start tracking daily expenses, you’ll see how much the little things add up over time. It is, in a way, necessary to know where each penny is going. When you track for a couple of months in a dedicated manner, you can easily see what your major expenditure areas are. Once you know that, you can decide whether you want to cut back on things, and if yes, then which areas.

It seems like a simple thing but people don’t actually realize the benefit of this, and how much they can save for their travel budget, till they actually do it!

 

 

 

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2. Savings account for travel goals

An easy way to save money for your travel budget is by transferring small amounts of money to a dedicated account. Create a separate account, and transfer money to it as soon as you get paid. Before paying your rent, bills, shopping and other sundry expenses, transfer a fixed amount – however small – to your travel goals account. We’re counting on the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ philosophy. If you can’t see it, you won’t want to spend it, so this is a super easy way to save money, and your travel budget will be generously stocked before you know it! In fact, if you get an unexpected bonus or something, send it over to the travel budget account immediately. It’ll help your smart travel fund grow even faster.

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3. Save small amounts in fun ways

Traveling is super fun, and worth each effort you make saving and planning for it. Indeed, it enriches your life and adds a new dimension to your ideas and thought process. Why not make saving fun? Have a small jar for change. Every time you get change back from any exchange, put it in a jar. It doesn’t seem like much, but every 10- or 20-rupee note will add up over time, and that can become your food or shopping budget for the trip. Maybe once you make a budget, set a weekly spending limit for yourself. Whatever you haven’t spent goes straight to the travel account or saving jar. These small transfers are a super easy way to save money faster. That means more vacations more often!

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4. Expense tracking apps / budgeting sheets

We mentioned setting a budget and tracking everything you do. To make it easier, why not use dedicated apps like Mint? Or maybe you would prefer to create an excel sheet and make your own pie charts and graphs to track spending? It is important to find what works for you, and what you would like, because that’s the only way to ensure you stick to it. We know, budgeting is boring. But if you find a tracker you enjoy, you will be more likely to stick to it. After all, it’s super fun to watch your money grow. If you don’t like any of these, maybe you would be best sticking to pen and paper. Carry around a small ledger with you, and immediately jot down what you spend. It helps you be more aware of what you’re spending. In fact, this is a good thing to do in general, not just for smart travel goals.

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5. Plan a long term budget rather than a short term one

All these ways help you save money, not just for a travel budget, but generally. Indeed, that is the best way to approach this. Saving is a smart decision, and the sooner you start, the better it is for you. A long term budget with a dedicated section for travel funds will bring more peace of mind to you about your financial situation. Once you are able to stabilize your finances in this way, impromptu vacations are doable and stress-free, so that’s yet another added advantage of budgeting! The first time you sit down to track it, you might find it a little cumbersome, but over time you will get used to it, and it just becomes a part of your life. When it becomes second nature to pay attention to where your money is going, the long term goals define themselves!

We hope you learnt some fun ways to save money, and indeed, be more aware and mindful about your expenses. Do you have any tips to save money, for travel or otherwise? What is the strategy that has worked best for you? We’d love to know how you save for your trips and create budgets for yourself. Do share your experiences and tips with us in the comments below.

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