How are people able to afford to travel so much ? (easy, crowded)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This! I usually start to book a trip a year (or more for certain European trips) in advance. I pay deposits, and begin to book things like museum tickets and ground transportation as plans begin to solidify. For example, as soon as I can, I will be booking Eurostar tickets for next year, as the closer you get, the more expensive they get. So I pay for many things in advance. For next years vacation, by the time we get there I'll have less than $1500 in expenses that I still need to pay for--most of that are meals. I don't count grocery store food (we're renting a flat) as we'd be buying that if we were staying home.
This is how I do it. Train tickets can be very cheap. I booked Rome-Venice on Italotreno last month for $20.
My trip starts Sept 23 and most Euopean rails book 91 days out. Today, at 91 days out I booked Copenhagen to Berlin train tickets for $50. In 4 days when the 91 day window opens I will book Berlin-Paris and in 8 days week, Paris-Milan.
I pay off one hotel one month, another one the next. I'll buy Louve and Ufizzi tickets in advance. My goal is to only have to need spending money when I get there.
Im like some others, am big on travel. I sometimes get questioned why I travel so much when people always see me all over the map. It's mainly U.S but having a job that requires me to travel a few weeks every few months helps with building hotel points. When people can't or don't travel I wonder why not because it's so easy to do it. This is why:
Hotel points- staying at hotels every now and then you can build serious hotel points. There was recently one for the IHG properties (holiday inn) where staying a combined 10 nights or so awarded you 100,000 hotel points. That's at least 5 free night & there's always on going promos that can really rack up your acct balance. Opening up a credit card too often hotels award you with points. Marriott gave me about 50,000 and every years I'm awarded a free night valued at least $200.
If you don't stay at hotels enough to earn, airline programs are great too. Southwest has one that awards 50,000 points which is good for about 2 round trip flights when opening a credit card. They always send promos to earn even more. I signed up for an electric provider and they sent over 10,000 points just for signing up and using electricity through them.
Just some of these small things can make your travel plans much cheaper. Flights are often not too expensive depending on the season, neither are hotels if searching on the right sites and your demands for 5 star aren't necessary.
Also, I don't care to eat at expensive restaurants or spend tons of cash on touristy things when visiting. So many cheap great experiences.
It's just a matter of finding ways and being creative in saving money but many don't care to do this. they'd rather just fork out $2,000 so they don't have to worry about planning anything.
How do people afford to travel? for many they go into debt, not a good idea, for others they put travel above other pleasures. You can ask the same about how do people afford to drive expensive cars? it is their passion or where they want to put their money, other people choose to live in larger homes.
Travel doesn't have to cost a fortune. It takes some planning. You decide how much you can afford for your next vacation; from there you decide what will work. It might be a road trip, staying at run of the mill hotels and motels: it might be renting a cabin or a home for a week or it might be a cruise or an all inclusive. There are vacations in almost everyone's pocket book allowance unless you are barely able to survive. Then you have to depend on visiting Grandma, but that can be a disaster.
I travel as regularly as I can afford, and sometimes it doesn't mean leaving the country or continent. It really boils down to priorities, money management and a few manipulation tricks.
My husband and I likely fall into the medium range for society. We just returned from a few weeks vacation in Hawaii. We travel more than all of our friends but our priorities are different. For one, we both have newer, nice cars. However, we make sure we pay more each month to pay said cars off. So one car is paid off, while we have only one car payment now. We eat healthy, but we are not extreme on everything we purchase. We rarely go out to dinner, movies, bars, so on. We are not short changing ourselves, as it really just isn't something that we care to do anyway. My husband can work out for free at his work, so no gym membership. I chase our kids, have a somewhat physical job and use the park behind our house to stay fit. We have a basic cable package and by referring a few friends we also get discounts each month. We have medium of the road internet as well.
Our house we purchased about 10 years ago. We bought the biggest house we could afford in our personal budget. We could have financed much more, but we knew what we would be comfortable with. We made a wise investment in a solid house that needed updates, but was big enough to grown into. Needless to say, our house is a liquid asset and we have great equity in it.
Credit cards.. are the devil. We have one credit card and we only put things on there which are large purchases that we want to collect travel miles for. However the key is, we only use the credit card if we actually have the money in our account to pay for the item(s) before interest is applied.
Our home is comfortable with nice things, but it is no where near show room status.. even when spotless. I am fine with everything I have in my home, it is comfortable, and classic, but nothing is expensive. I do not get my nails done, I do them myself as I am willing and able. Frankly I prefer it that way. I do not dye my hair, so I do not have regular maintenance required.
Taking all of that into consideration, it is priorities. I have friends with house cleaners, two different gym memberships, movie channels, hit up the nail and hair salon regular, so on. That all adds up.. and to me, it adds up to a RT flight somewhere.
Vacationing on a budget has some rules:
1. Vacation when the price is right, not when the time is right for you. My last hawaii trip last year and the year before.. I paid $243 RT to Maui, and then $323 RT to Maui. That is a steal, but welcome to visiting Hawaii in the fall.
2. Do not be particular on where. You can have a general idea.. but if you limit yourself you are going to miss out on some deals. Last fall I knew we were going to go somewhere warm and tropical.. but where? My husband had a scheduled week off, and I searched air in various locations to find the best RT deals combined with lodging. As much as I wanted to return to Hawaii.. I didnt rule out south of the boarder, Florida, or the Caribbean.
3. Off season. I can not express this enough! If you have a specific place you want to go.. find out when their off season is and plan your travel around then.
5. Rewards/eNewsLetters - again.. these are HUGE. I hate junk mail, and eNewsletters. But in the name of travel these things are gold. They let you know when flight prices are going to drop, there are special deals, so on. Plus when you sign up for air miles (not the credit card) you sometimes get incentives. When I signed up for Hawaiian Airlines. They gave me $50 off my next flight I booked.. for everyone in booking. Well, two adults and two children is $200 in savings! Plus, registering your debit/credit card you can earn miles towards purchases. Eventually earning enough points for a free one way, or RT ticket.
6. Airline Credit Cards - these are great if you can handle a credit card properly. Buying your ticket with your CC from that specific airline can result in HUGE bonuses. Not to mention the incentives they offer. For those on the West Coast, I suggest Alaska Airlines. They have hands down the best incentives. They have an annual companion fly voucher for $100. That means if you want to fly to.. Cancun/Hawaii and the fare is $600, you are going to pay $100 for your partners ticket.. plus the taxes and fees. Intl' flights range right around $100, where domestic flights are closer to $50. Instead of paying $1200 for two tickets.. you just paid $800.. score! We used to have an Alaska CC as we would go to Mexico a few times a year. At least once a year (back when the companion voucher was only $50) we would fly the both of us down for under $500.
7. Get to know price patterns - If you really want to go to Hawaii and you know that low season is the fall (after Iron Man), pay attention to the price patterns. I typically buy in early August, for late October. The fares tend to drop and that handy newsletter I signed up for will let me know when they are offering deals during that time.
8. Fly on off days - Look at the monthly option or pick +/- 3 days option. This will allow you to pick the cheapest days to travel. Mon-Mon, Tues - Tues typically work out nicely for cheaper flights. Being flexible is so big when trying to score a sweet deal on air travel.
9. Avoid resorts - try vrbo.com , homeaway.com or airbandb.com - you will sometimes find places in resorts, but usually condo's, apartments, studios, or private homes. These usually give you a huge discount. You are not paying for all the additional staff that goes into staying at a nice hotel or resort.
10. Get a place with a kitchen - yes.. avoid the luxury of going out and make your own food. Coscto and Walmart are EVERYWHERE. So.. plan out your meals, buy what you need and cook your own food! Pack lunches to go when you are leaving for the day. There is a HUGE savings in not dining out for every meal or even half of your meals.
11. Keep things in perspective - If you are going somewhere with nice weather.. consider how much time you are going to stay in your room. If you plan on showering and sleeping there, but nothing more. Then don't splurge on a fancy place that ultimately you just want to impress your friends with. Get a privately owned place. After all, you are only sleeping and showering there. If you are are not going to spend a lot of time there, what is the point?
12. Become a credit card churner. I wont go into details, you can google it and see how it applies to travel, but suffice to say.. people can get a lot of flights in being diligent in credit card churning.
13. Intl' Travel - Have you ever noticed that people in the UK can fly to Greece, or Italy for like $100. But if you book a flight from JFK to UK to elsewhere it cost an arm and a leg? If you are not overly particular and are feeling adventurous.. Book your flight over seas to whatever airport is the cheapest per your date. Then.. once you get there, find a cheap flight out to somewhere else you want to go. Buying your flights there can save you a big chunk of change. Furthermore, when you book your flight home, fly out of a different airport. Just find whatever is cheapest. You may find flying into the UK is $400, and Paris is $700. But you want to go to Cannes. Book it to UK, hang out a day or two and then catch a flight to whatever gets you closest to Cannes. Flying home may be cheapest from Venice. Well fabulous, book your travel to get to Venice from there. Having a start point and an end point, both being your cheapest options will free up money to travel around and do whatever. If you are not up tight and need 5 stars for your lodging. You can find all sorts of lovely places to stay for super cheap last min!
Anyway... traveling (without it being a job requirement) is easy and possible. It might mean waiting for the free upgrade on your cell phone, or not getting new wheels for your car, or cutting down your cable bill, or finding ways to get to the gym cheaper. As a single person, if you can cut back bills $100 each month. That is $1200 for travel a year. I bought 3 RT tickets to Hawaii for roughly $700 and paid $350 for lodging for a week, and $200 for a rental car for a week. Not counting food, that is $1250.. for THREE people to Hawaii. I cooked all my own food and probably even with going out still spent under $200, feeding myself, my two kids and sometimes my friend who came along. If I can do it for 3.. you can easily do it for 1.
PS - another good site - www.vacations2go (togo).com (I can't remember if it is the number or not.. but great deals there too).
If I made that much money, I'd be traveling all the time. As it is, my checks don't have much leftover after paying bills & rent for travel or even clothes shopping, what have you. It's not easy to travel when you don't make that much. I'm finally getting to Nicaragua this year after wanting to go for years & years & the only way I was able to do it was using my credit card to book the flight & hotel. I know people say don't go into debt or use your credit cards but when it's the best option, that's what I'm going to use. Also, if you're single it's a lot harder to save money for trips. Dual incomes always comes in handy whether it's paying the bills or paying for a vacation.
I work 15 hours a week. Grant my husband pays all of the bills, I am the one that pays for travel, for 4 people. Plus I pay for incidental or dining out.. if we decide to do so. I honestly do not make much each month after taxes. However, travel is important enough for me.. that I don't spent money on typical "girl" things.. nails, hair, new spendy shoes, and pricey clothes. Essentially 100% of the money my husband makes goes to paying our bills, and some into savings. Therefore my money is for anything that falls under "want" not need. Having two young children and one with special needs is expensive. However, we still manage to make trips each year. Sometimes its a road trip out of state, or across the state, but we also manage to go to Hawaii. Last year me and the kids went to Hawaii twice, my husband once, plus we took a road trip to San Fran, as well as spent probably 5 weeks all together in Central Oregon. That doesn't include a night at the beach in the hotel, or a night in a hotel in Seattle, or who knows where else I took my kids. I take them often, whether dad can go or not. My job as I mentioned is very few hours and "ok" pay for what I do. My kids are my priority, my job is just "fun" and extra money so I can travel. Until this past spring when I was asked to work more. I probably only made annually $3000-$4000. So if you take school clothes, dining out, random things here and there, gas in my car, oil changes in my car.. so on... that really doesn't leave me with THAT much for all of the traveling I noted above. Nor am I feeding one mouth, but 3-4. Trust me.. it is ALL about priorities. Finding a way to save, traveling when its cheap, and figuring out what it is in your vacation that you "need" vs "want". I stay in nice places, or with friends.. always places that are clean and safe. Those same rules of need/want I apply to my daily life. Which is what allows me to travel.
Have goal, and make the changes needed in your budget to allow for saving. In many cases calling to cancel services of a phone, internet, cable lead to retention services and you can often get bills lowered by doing so. Not always effective and this is something I learned through default.. but cut out the morning run to starbucks, or lunch at the sub shop. Sounds lame to give up daily luxuries.. but is it that lame if you desire to travel and can't afford to do it? Again.. priorities.. The difference between dreams and reality.
Now that we are retired and living on a fixed income, which I refer to as a broken income, our source of travel money comes from a small pet sitting business hubby has. He sometimes makes $500.00 or more in a week, other times nothing, but whatever he makes we call our stash and cash fund. It is kept separate and used for travel plus we use some of the funds we are forced to withdraw from our IRAs. Between the two we have enough to enjoy a couple vacations a year and a few short trips.
I travel as regularly as I can afford, and sometimes it doesn't mean leaving the country or continent. It really boils down to priorities, money management and a few manipulation tricks.
My husband and I likely fall into the medium range for society. We just returned from a few weeks vacation in Hawaii. We travel more than all of our friends but our priorities are different. For one, we both have newer, nice cars. However, we make sure we pay more each month to pay said cars off. So one car is paid off, while we have only one car payment now. We eat healthy, but we are not extreme on everything we purchase. We rarely go out to dinner, movies, bars, so on. We are not short changing ourselves, as it really just isn't something that we care to do anyway. My husband can work out for free at his work, so no gym membership. I chase our kids, have a somewhat physical job and use the park behind our house to stay fit. We have a basic cable package and by referring a few friends we also get discounts each month. We have medium of the road internet as well.
Our house we purchased about 10 years ago. We bought the biggest house we could afford in our personal budget. We could have financed much more, but we knew what we would be comfortable with. We made a wise investment in a solid house that needed updates, but was big enough to grown into. Needless to say, our house is a liquid asset and we have great equity in it.
Credit cards.. are the devil. We have one credit card and we only put things on there which are large purchases that we want to collect travel miles for. However the key is, we only use the credit card if we actually have the money in our account to pay for the item(s) before interest is applied.
Our home is comfortable with nice things, but it is no where near show room status.. even when spotless. I am fine with everything I have in my home, it is comfortable, and classic, but nothing is expensive. I do not get my nails done, I do them myself as I am willing and able. Frankly I prefer it that way. I do not dye my hair, so I do not have regular maintenance required.
Taking all of that into consideration, it is priorities. I have friends with house cleaners, two different gym memberships, movie channels, hit up the nail and hair salon regular, so on. That all adds up.. and to me, it adds up to a RT flight somewhere.
Vacationing on a budget has some rules:
1. Vacation when the price is right, not when the time is right for you. My last hawaii trip last year and the year before.. I paid $243 RT to Maui, and then $323 RT to Maui. That is a steal, but welcome to visiting Hawaii in the fall.
2. Do not be particular on where. You can have a general idea.. but if you limit yourself you are going to miss out on some deals. Last fall I knew we were going to go somewhere warm and tropical.. but where? My husband had a scheduled week off, and I searched air in various locations to find the best RT deals combined with lodging. As much as I wanted to return to Hawaii.. I didnt rule out south of the boarder, Florida, or the Caribbean.
3. Off season. I can not express this enough! If you have a specific place you want to go.. find out when their off season is and plan your travel around then.
5. Rewards/eNewsLetters - again.. these are HUGE. I hate junk mail, and eNewsletters. But in the name of travel these things are gold. They let you know when flight prices are going to drop, there are special deals, so on. Plus when you sign up for air miles (not the credit card) you sometimes get incentives. When I signed up for Hawaiian Airlines. They gave me $50 off my next flight I booked.. for everyone in booking. Well, two adults and two children is $200 in savings! Plus, registering your debit/credit card you can earn miles towards purchases. Eventually earning enough points for a free one way, or RT ticket.
6. Airline Credit Cards - these are great if you can handle a credit card properly. Buying your ticket with your CC from that specific airline can result in HUGE bonuses. Not to mention the incentives they offer. For those on the West Coast, I suggest Alaska Airlines. They have hands down the best incentives. They have an annual companion fly voucher for $100. That means if you want to fly to.. Cancun/Hawaii and the fare is $600, you are going to pay $100 for your partners ticket.. plus the taxes and fees. Intl' flights range right around $100, where domestic flights are closer to $50. Instead of paying $1200 for two tickets.. you just paid $800.. score! We used to have an Alaska CC as we would go to Mexico a few times a year. At least once a year (back when the companion voucher was only $50) we would fly the both of us down for under $500.
7. Get to know price patterns - If you really want to go to Hawaii and you know that low season is the fall (after Iron Man), pay attention to the price patterns. I typically buy in early August, for late October. The fares tend to drop and that handy newsletter I signed up for will let me know when they are offering deals during that time.
8. Fly on off days - Look at the monthly option or pick +/- 3 days option. This will allow you to pick the cheapest days to travel. Mon-Mon, Tues - Tues typically work out nicely for cheaper flights. Being flexible is so big when trying to score a sweet deal on air travel.
9. Avoid resorts - try vrbo.com , homeaway.com or airbandb.com - you will sometimes find places in resorts, but usually condo's, apartments, studios, or private homes. These usually give you a huge discount. You are not paying for all the additional staff that goes into staying at a nice hotel or resort.
10. Get a place with a kitchen - yes.. avoid the luxury of going out and make your own food. Coscto and Walmart are EVERYWHERE. So.. plan out your meals, buy what you need and cook your own food! Pack lunches to go when you are leaving for the day. There is a HUGE savings in not dining out for every meal or even half of your meals.
11. Keep things in perspective - If you are going somewhere with nice weather.. consider how much time you are going to stay in your room. If you plan on showering and sleeping there, but nothing more. Then don't splurge on a fancy place that ultimately you just want to impress your friends with. Get a privately owned place. After all, you are only sleeping and showering there. If you are are not going to spend a lot of time there, what is the point?
12. Become a credit card churner. I wont go into details, you can google it and see how it applies to travel, but suffice to say.. people can get a lot of flights in being diligent in credit card churning.
13. Intl' Travel - Have you ever noticed that people in the UK can fly to Greece, or Italy for like $100. But if you book a flight from JFK to UK to elsewhere it cost an arm and a leg? If you are not overly particular and are feeling adventurous.. Book your flight over seas to whatever airport is the cheapest per your date. Then.. once you get there, find a cheap flight out to somewhere else you want to go. Buying your flights there can save you a big chunk of change. Furthermore, when you book your flight home, fly out of a different airport. Just find whatever is cheapest. You may find flying into the UK is $400, and Paris is $700. But you want to go to Cannes. Book it to UK, hang out a day or two and then catch a flight to whatever gets you closest to Cannes. Flying home may be cheapest from Venice. Well fabulous, book your travel to get to Venice from there. Having a start point and an end point, both being your cheapest options will free up money to travel around and do whatever. If you are not up tight and need 5 stars for your lodging. You can find all sorts of lovely places to stay for super cheap last min!
Anyway... traveling (without it being a job requirement) is easy and possible. It might mean waiting for the free upgrade on your cell phone, or not getting new wheels for your car, or cutting down your cable bill, or finding ways to get to the gym cheaper. As a single person, if you can cut back bills $100 each month. That is $1200 for travel a year. I bought 3 RT tickets to Hawaii for roughly $700 and paid $350 for lodging for a week, and $200 for a rental car for a week. Not counting food, that is $1250.. for THREE people to Hawaii. I cooked all my own food and probably even with going out still spent under $200, feeding myself, my two kids and sometimes my friend who came along. If I can do it for 3.. you can easily do it for 1.
PS - another good site - www.vacations2go (togo).com (I can't remember if it is the number or not.. but great deals there too).
I know this is an old post, but I had to respond. Trust me, it leaves this American aghast, too. Luckily, at the hospital I work at, 4 weeks of vacation time is what I get and I just started 6 months ago. Yet at my boyfriend's work he gets 1 week. Ugh. I also love to travel and made my first international trip at 2 years old.
Where I work most people travel a lot. It generally is a good meeting conversation starter, "So what trip are you taking this year?" Everyone has a trip booked already. I always feel awkward because I haven't taken a vacation in years. Sometimes I just make up something because I am in the severe minority on the traveling. It is very important to them and a big part of their lives so when I don't have something already booked, people are shocked! lol.
Part of it I admit is I have spent money on material things. We relocated out of state a while back and we had to sell everything we owned basically to make the move, so it was a lot of replacing things once we got settled. We also bought a house. I am an animal lover and with that comes additional cost of boarding animals (we don't have anyone to look after them) so that prohibits us from going places. The people I work with go on very nice vacations, expensive places and I started to wonder how in the heck they do it. I started paying attention and as others have already said it basically boils down to what someone feels is a priority.
A large portion of my co-workers don't own homes yet. Instead of down payments they took vacations. Many at work are surprised I own a home and this isn't my first house. Some don't have children, some don't take their children with them. My boss who is a single mother of two never takes her kids on vacation with her. She leaves them with relatives and travels alone. I can imagine that is a major savings. One woman I work with who is pretty young went to Paris and Ireland in one year. I later found out she has no car, lives in a tiny studio apartment in a horrible part of town. Another co-worker has a relative that works for an airline and gives him tickets for standby all the time. Each person makes it happen by whatever sacrifices they are willing to make.
I'm pretty much tired of the material now and want to travel more so my priorities are changing. I can't really seem myself not taking my child though, I would enjoy sharing the experience more than going alone but then of course that costs more.
Where I work most people travel a lot. It generally is a good meeting conversation starter, "So what trip are you taking this year?" Everyone has a trip booked already. I always feel awkward because I haven't taken a vacation in years. Sometimes I just make up something because I am in the severe minority on the traveling. It is very important to them and a big part of their lives so when I don't have something already booked, people are shocked! lol.
Part of it I admit is I have spent money on material things. We relocated out of state a while back and we had to sell everything we owned basically to make the move, so it was a lot of replacing things once we got settled. We also bought a house. I am an animal lover and with that comes additional cost of boarding animals (we don't have anyone to look after them) so that prohibits us from going places. The people I work with go on very nice vacations, expensive places and I started to wonder how in the heck they do it. I started paying attention and as others have already said it basically boils down to what someone feels is a priority.
A large portion of my co-workers don't own homes yet. Instead of down payments they took vacations. Many at work are surprised I own a home and this isn't my first house. Some don't have children, some don't take their children with them. My boss who is a single mother of two never takes her kids on vacation with her. She leaves them with relatives and travels alone. I can imagine that is a major savings. One woman I work with who is pretty young went to Paris and Ireland in one year. I later found out she has no car, lives in a tiny studio apartment in a horrible part of town. Another co-worker has a relative that works for an airline and gives him tickets for standby all the time. Each person makes it happen by whatever sacrifices they are willing to make.
I'm pretty much tired of the material now and want to travel more so my priorities are changing. I can't really seem myself not taking my child though, I would enjoy sharing the experience more than going alone but then of course that costs more.
A hint as to the animals--ask the vet techs at your vet's office if they would be willing to pet sit. We found a great pet sitter that way, she came by in the morning before work, right after work, and then again later in the evening. had another who actually stayed at the house. It was a lot cheaper than boarding would have been, and the animals were in their normal surroundings and not exposed to the diseases other animals can carry. Win-Win for everyone.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Travel Tips - You can travel too!
