Welcome to our last post in our How We Afford to Travel series! Throughout the last few months we have talked about how we afford to travel, specifically about how we don’t have debt, how we budget, how we save money and today we are going to be talking about how we prioritize and dream.

Prioritizing

We have mentioned prioritizing in our last few posts and podcasts but it really is a key way that we afford to travel. So many people tell us that they can’t afford to travel, they just can’t do it. And these people are generally making more money than we are! So how do we do it? We make it important. If traveling isn’t as important to you, that’s fine! But there is probably something else that is important to you that you are prioritizing. Even if you don’t think there is, if you take a look at your budget you will probably see where most of your money is going.

Since traveling and having experiences is important to us and our family, we prioritize it in our budget and when we are saving money. We do this by putting money into our travel budget each month and we have a goal to travel somewhere (even if it is close!) at least once a month. Since we have set those goals, we then make them happen. We sacrifice time for other things and how we spend our money in order to accomplish those goals. For example, we don’t eat out very much (if at all!) when we are home. By not eating out, we are saving money that can then go towards our travels. We also live in an affordable place that doesn’t eat too much of our monthly budget giving us more money to spend on travel. We also have a pretty tight grocery budget where we buy things that are on sale and stock up on items at their lowest price so we aren’t always running to the store and paying full price for food.

Dreaming

Having big dreams has allowed us to afford to travel. Sounds counterintuitive right? Well, by having those big dreams, we set big goals and have something to work towards and accomplish. We also have a long list of all the places we would like to go. That way when deals come up on plane tickets or accommodations at one of those destinations, we can plan a trip to go there! Because we have already set aside money to travel, we can easily plan those trips for a fraction of their regular cost when a deal comes up.

That wraps up our series on How We Afford to Travel. If you have any other tips or ideas about how you afford to travel, leave them in the comments below.

Thanks to Dino Reichmuth on Unsplash for the title image.