How to Find the Money to Take Your Dream Trip
- Ms. World
- May 31
- 7 min read
I'm in my home city right now planning for my next trip, and that's why I thought this would be a good time to talk to you about creating a travel budget. More specifically, we're going to talk about how to design a budget and where to find the money to travel.
We're going to begin at the beginning with getting together the money you need to travel to your dream destination.
Travel? Who, Me?
I found out that actually, I can afford to travel.
And you can, too.
For a long time, I thought traveling to a different continent or going to the other side of the world was just way too expensive. I thought traveling to Europe or Asia from the U.S. was something only for rich people.
Well, it's not. And it shouldn't be. So, I was playing on my phone one day and thought, how expensive is it to travel, really? I realized that I had never actually looked up the cost of a plane ticket, a hotel room in Europe, how much does food cost in, say, Paris. I didn't really know the answer to the question. I just thought in my head, oh well, it's a lot of money. It's beyond what I can afford.
Well that particular day, I looked it up. How much does it cost to spend a week in London? How much does it cost to fly to Europe? I got on some hotel sites. I started doing research. And I found out that actually, I can afford to travel.
I didn't win the lottery. I don't play the lottery. I just started doing the research. And that's your next step. You've taken step one. You're here, so you're thinking about traveling. So now the next thing you're going to do is figure out your travel budget and how to find the money to travel. And that's what we're going to talk about in more detail.
Creating Your Travel Budget
So, the first part of creating your budget for your dream trip is establishing a baseline. You're going to need a few pieces of basic information to do this.
Number 1, where are you going to go?
Clearly, this is the most important decision and it's going to determine your budget. Where are you going?
Now, you can go wherever you want in the world if you budget smart enough but if you want to go somewhere more expensive, somewhere like Paris or London or another really popular tourist city, things are going to cost more.
Transportation around the city, food, hotels, visiting attractions, it's going to be more expensive in big, popular cities in very rich nations than if you go to a country where the cost of living is lower, like Costa Rica or India or, if you want to go to Europe, someplace like Croatia or Estonia.
So, decide where you want to go. Once you have a place or maybe a few places in mind, you can establish that baseline idea we talked about earlier.
You're going to go on a couple of websites and look up the cost of plane tickets to your dream destination or destinations. Don't worry about getting specific with the dates, just get an idea of what a round trip ticket will cost, so you have a working idea.
Make a note of that information. Now, hit up whatever search engine you use, which is probably Google, and ask how much it costs to vacation for one week in that destination. This will give you a rough idea of the average cost.
We're still not getting specific right now, we're just getting a baseline idea, because you can shorten the trip to less than a week to make it more budget friendly (and there are tricks I can teach you to reduce the airfare and other costs, too). So, just get a working idea of how much the average person spends on a week in your destination.
When you have those two pieces of information, the cost of your plane ticket and the average cost of a week's vacation in your dream destination, you're ready to really start fine-tuning your budget and you're getting closer and closer to actually taking that trip.
When you add the two numbers together, you have an idea of the money you will need to make this trip happen. Now, you need to answer the following questions:
Do you have that amount to spend right now?
If you can cut a few hundred dollars off that total, will you have enough then?
How much money do you need to put aside every month or every week for six months to reach that baseline amount?
How much do you need to set aside to reach it in a year?
You know how much you make and hopefully you know about how much you spend in a month, and you know how much money you have in your savings, if you have any savings. No judgement. I'm not good at saving money, so no shade here.
If you don't have any savings and setting money aside regularly is a challenge, that's fine. We can still find the money.
Show Me the Money
Start with your monthly payments. One of the things I did to put some extra money in my bank account was to go through every single one of my subscriptions. We're talking about Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, things like Instacart, I had a Planet Fitness subscription I wasn't using.
Look at your bank statement. Look at your PayPal history. Look at your Google Pay, your credit cards, audit yourself. Find out exactly what you are paying for every month and what it costs.
There may be services you can downgrade. When I did it, I changed every streaming service I had to include commercials to lower the cost of all of them. I got rid of stiff I wasn't using and I checked for deals and bundles.
For instance, I had an Instacart subscription and a subscription to Peacock. Don't judge me. Well, I found out that Instacart offers a free subscription io Peacock. And now, I'm saving $5.99 a month.
Make small changes, and they will add up.
You might be able to cut a hundred or even a couple hundred dollars a month by auditing yourself like this. I cut my budget by almost $200 a month. Traveling became much more possible as soon as I did this.
Another way to find money to travel is through your taxes. This is where I found the money for my adventures, so I know this works.
If you pay taxes through the year, you should get a tax return around spring every year. Make the decision to spend this on traveling and use this to fund your dream trip. Use every single possible deduction to get more from your return and commit the whole amount to traveling.
Another thing you're going to look at is any bad habits you might have. We all have them and honestly, sometimes you've earned that fancy coffee drink, that pizza night, that thing from your Amazon wishlist. You work hard, you do a ton of stuff, you deserve those little treats.
But you also deserve to see the world and experience life and take a dream trip.
So, I want you to go back into your bank accounts, your Google pay, your PayPal and Venmo. Look at the last 3 months and write down your regular expenses. Not your bills or rent or mortgage, but your other costs.
Are you taking a lot of Ubers when you could ride a bus or subway? Are you buying lunch most days when you could bring something cheaper from home? Are you surprised by how much you're spending at Amazon or on fast food or on stuff from the store?
You can always brew coffee at home or challenge yourself to make a different sandwich for lunch for a month. Sometimes, all you need to do to put more money in your pocket is just change up some of your habits.
When you write it down and see how much you're spending in black and white, you will see where you can make some changes and you will start growing your travel budget.
Taking the Next Steps
So, now you have a baseline idea of where you want to go and what it will cost. You've audited your finances to find extra money. You've figured out how much of your tax return you can use for traveling.
This will give you a working idea of how much money you can start putting toward your trip. Once you've got that, you can start to build a comprehensive budget and figure out what you're going to spend and where that money will come from.
Once you have some good ideas about where you want to go, what it will cost and your overall financial situation, it's time to build a real trip budget. There's really only one way to do this, and that's research.
Get a good idea of when you want to travel. It's going to be much cheaper if you choose to go in the off season. For most destinations, that means don't go in summer.
From June to the end of August, things are going to be more expensive...and I do mean everything. Plane flights, accommodations, food, travel within cities, attractions, all of this costs more during the peak travel season.
So, my advice is to go during what's known as the shoulder season, which means spring or fall. I take my trips in April, because that's one of the cheapest months to fly.
Once you've got your destination and you know when you want to go, start getting serious about looking for flights and accommodations, because these are going to be your big expenses.
The earlier you book, the more you will save. You can also look for bundle deals that may be more affordable. Look at all your options while you're researching, so you know what you're going to spend on the big costs.
The Cost of Travel
When it comes to the rest of your travel budget, start with the idea that you're going to spend $100 to $200 a day per person. There are lots of ways to lower this number, but start here because there are going to be extra costs and you want those covered as well. So, use this number to determine how long your trip will be.
Doing this will give you a strong Idea of what your final budget for your dream trip will look like. There are lots of very affordable places you can go to spend less money per day and there are many budget tricks that I use to lower costs. Some of the major things to keep in mind are:
Use public transport. Cabs can be a huge expense.
Look for rentals as well as hotels because sometimes these are more budget friendly.
Don't be afraid of street food, local grocery stores and markets. You can find lots of budget friendly food this way. Eating at restaurants for every meal is going to wreck your budget.
I am breaking down a lot of different ways you can save money while traveling in my upcoming posts, so make sure to come back, so you can keep traveling without spending a lot of money.
Now, Voyager, sail forth to seek and find.
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