How to Prepare for a Vacation

Vacations can be a whole lot of fun! But you know what's not fun? Being unprepared for the cost of a vacation. Vacations are wonderful, but make sure you're financially prepared for them. The last thing you want to do is come back home to debt just because you went overboard on a trip.

Pre-trip Financial Checklist

• Evaluate your finances and make sure that going on a vacation is the right move for you at this point in time. Make certain how much you have to allocate towards the trip and understand what you can afford to designate towards “extra expenses”.
• Set a realistic budget – Try to account for almost everything you’ll do throughout the course of the trip. Although it’s near impossible to account for every single expense, we can at least try to factor in how much we’ll spend on food and day time activities by way of estimation.
• Review your available savings – Always try to keep vacation savings and emergency fund savings separate! You don’t want to dip into from the other. Separation is a good way to keep yourself in check to make sure you don’t go over budget.
• Make sure you have a credit card that doesn’t charge for foreign transaction fees if you are visiting foreign countries. This one will wreck your vacation quickly if you don’t prepare for it and plan on using a credit card.
• Inform your bank about the trip so that you have access to all available financial products.

What’s the Best Way to Save Up for a Vacation?

Set specific savings goals! The best way to achieve your savings goal is by focusing on a specific number in your mind and doing your utmost to achieve that specific goal. Once you have a goal in mind you’ll be able to see approximately how long It’ll take to achieve it as time passes. Some consumers like to use automated savings but this isn’t the only way to go about achieving this goal!

What the Best Way to Protect Travel Savings from Impulse Spending?

Sometimes we you are your own worst enemy! Having restraint is the best way to protect yourself from impulse spending but otherwise a good tactic is to slowly remove the impulses little by little. If you notice you spend a lot of time doing browsing shopping websites at night, remove the temptation and you’ll be all the better for it!

Some consumers like to create a waiting period before they make a kind of purchase. So, if you have a cart filled, wait a day to make the purchase. Before you know it, you may have forgotten about the purchase the next day and you either completely avoid that purchase or worst-case scenario you bought yourself some time.

What’s the Best Way to Balance Spending Between Vacations and Normal Spending?

Balancing spending with long-term goals is an important part of being a financially stable adult. We all need to balance short term satisfaction with our life goals, this is just a natural part of life. Some are better at balancing than others. If you find yourself being one of those that can’t balance too well, by mindful of it and try to adjust with that knowledge of self. Practicing mindfulness and engaged budgeting will help you achieve your goals and help you find balance until it becomes more natural to you. Feel free to use our budgeting calculator to get you started in the right direction.

Tips for Getting Started on a Vacation Fund.

There are some apps and strategies but the easiest method is to get started by using a travel reward credit card. A good way to force yourself to save for a vacation is via rewards credit cards. Once you’ve built up enough rewards you’ll already