Planning a family vacation? You’re not alone. According to various reports, almost 100 million Americans will be leaving their homes this year to re-energize and perhaps catch a breath of fresh air. Wherever you’re headed, now is the perfect time to start saving for that trip.Thankfully, you don’t need to be a financial whiz. If you’ve determined the full cost of the trip, as well as the amount of time you’ve got to prepare, the following tips will help you raise the required budget in record time.
1. Set up a separate savings account
You’ve probably heard this tip a thousand times. Setting up a separate savings account, specifically for an upcoming trip, allows you to keep better track of the funds. Ensure to review the account regularly, say once every week, to keep yourself motivated.
2. Make periodic contributions
Consider making weekly contributions. If you can put something in the account daily, that would work even better. It doesn’t matter how you make the deposits. You can write checks for yourself, transfer funds between accounts, etc. Just make sure you’re contributing regularly.
3. Sign up for travel rewards credit cards
According to NerdWallet, one of the easiest ways to afford a vacation is by using travel rewards credit cards for everyday purchases that you’d be making anyway. In a recent study, the company found that within 12 months of signing up for the card, users get on average $901 in free flights and hotels.
4. Scale back on leisurely expenses
Since you want to put aside as much money as possible, this should be the time when you also cut back on leisurely expenses. Those $50 bills spent on movies and other forms of entertainment must now go toward savings. If you can put yourself in that mindset for just three months, you could end up saving hundreds of dollars.
5. Cook at home
We’ve been made to believe that Starbucks makes the best coffee. So, perhaps you’ve formed a habit of picking up a cappuccino on your way to work. If you can cut back and instead make your own coffee and cook your own food at home, you stand to save another few hundred within months.
6. Don’t lose that change
This tip may not raise a lot of money in the end, but collecting change is another shrewd way to put up extra cash. It gets better; instead of doing it on your own, you can use an app like Acorns which automatically rounds off your credit card spending to the nearest dollar and collects the change in a separate account!
7. Pick up a side hustle
Ultimately, you may also have to break extra sweat to generate more income which can go toward the vacation. Fortunately, there are endless activities that can earn you solid cash within a couple of months. These include selling unwanted goods, renting out a spare room, teaching classes online, and so forth.
8. Get paid on the vacation
Yes, you can be paid to go on a vacation! Of course, it might involve doing some work while you’re there, but when all is said and done, you’ll likely be paid more than enough to cover the cost of the whole trip. For instance, one company was paying vacationers $20,000 to explore Canada! Awesome, right? Here are a few ways to make money on your vacation.Remember you don’t need to implement all these tips. Just three or four would earn you more than enough money for a vacation of a lifetime!
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