BootsnAll Travel Community

It is a hard long road to save the money you need to fund a long trip.
"Nothing worthwhile comes easy"

I left my job last year hoping that this time this year I would have enough to travel. Sadly I don't. I had the "I'll start tomorrow" attitude. And tomorrow never came. I just kept spending and thinking that next pay I'll start.

With that my current job isn't paying enough for me to save the money I need. I also should be getting a 2nd job behind a bar to help out with the money and the need to go out on a weekend.
Thinking 20K AUD then travel as long as it lasts me. Get a basic RTW ticket and make my way around. I'm about 12 months off my goal departure date.

So what does one do to keep motivated? I currently read as much as I can, watch movies on travel or movies that show places that I want to travel too.

My post is more to find out from you what your challenges were on your way to your trip, what you sacrificed, how you saved, what you did to keep yourself motivated and anything else that can help.

You could put it on your credit card. Work while you travel maybe.


Donovan

I'm hoping to have US$20,000 for my RTW trip, which I want to take within 4-5 years (a long way off, I know). As for what I'm doing:

-I'm paying off all my debts. Right now, I owe ~$400 to Dell for a computer I got last year, and I have ~$1400 on my Visa card. Since those accrue interest, I'm paying them off as best I can. I should have Dell paid off by the end of next month, and I hope to have the Visa paid well before the end of the year. I've been making regular payments to both every month, and once I pay them off I intend to make the same monthly payments into my savings.
-I owe my parents ~$2500 for my car. I send my dad $150/month, but obviously I pay no interest. Likewise, once this is paid off, I will keep making transfering the same amounts monthly to my savings.
-I opened a high-interest savings account that now has a 4.25% APY. Compared to most banks' APYs (~.50%), it's huge. I currently have a nice bit of money in it, and I have an automatic transfer from my checking of $50/week. For those wondering why I don't use this to just pay off my Visa card immediately, I may have a sizeable medical expense coming up, so I want to have it in case that turns out to be true.
-I enrolled in my bank's program which rounds up all debit card purchases to the next whole dollar amount. The difference is put in my bank savings account, and the bank will match these amounts up to $250 a year. So it encourages extra savings AND I get some "free" money.
-Any bonuses I get go right into savings. I am eligible for a bonus every month, and it sometimes is quite nice...
-I'm cutting out a lot of expenses. I was spending $8-10 a day just on lunch. I now limit myself to $5/day MAX for lunch. I have been bringing my lunch more and more. I only buy used CDs anyway (FU, RIAA!), and now I only buy used books at Powell's.
-I've cut drinking to a minimum. I've never been a lush or anything, but drinking really is expensive. If I'm going out to a bar, I will limit myself to 1-2 drinks, and the drinks can't be more than $4. It's better for my health, too! For home use, it's Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's!
-For birthdays/Xmas, I'm requesting gifts of cash. Since it's all going to my Travel Fund, it feels a lot less lame than the normal requests for money.
-COUPONS. They add up!

I don't know if these help, as I'm probably in a much different work/income situation than you. But it's what I'm doing at the moment.

When I can't travel I plan. I research the places that I want to go, read books, movies. I'm also very big on understanding the history of the places that I am visiting. But then I also think that as hard as it can be sometimes you souldn't try to concentrate soley on your trip. It makes me too excited and edgy. Therefore I try to throw myself into my job, and other small projects I make for myself. Sometimes this helps, sometimes not.

If you have 5 years to save you should have no problem getting the trip you want for even a minimum amount of savings per month. I treat my trip money as a another bill I have to pay. It's a bill that costs almost twice my rent each month, but it gets paid. Its amazing how fast it adds up as well. I've only been really saving for not quite six months and I've got about 12k. I want to spend a lot of time in Europe, so I have a long ways to go.

When I was saving I worked out what my daily budget was going to be while I was away, and then every time I paid some more money into my savings I could go home and tick off another day (or days) that I'd be away on a calender I got. I found that so helpful. Instead of thinking "oh, that cd's only a tenner, it won't make that big a difference" or "it's only one night out" I'd think "if I don't buy the cd and I don't go out tonight I can tick off a couple more days!" It just made the total amount I was aiming to save (about £6000) seem that much more achievable and put all my spending into perspective.

Before I went traveling for the first time on a RWT I found It extremely hard to save. All my friends were going out on the weekends and I was dragged along and before I knew it I'd spent around £100 by Monday morning plus the fact that I was smoking and spending silly amounts of money on clothes that I didn't need! This went on for months!
My girlfriend told me that when the time came she would leave without me if I did not have enough money. I tried hard to save and just about got there. I had a super tight budget and regret not being more self disciplined.
I am currently planning to go away once more (possibly forever) and this time I am finding it alot easier as I am fully aware of the consequences. There is so much more I can do with a great big pile of money!
I don't have to worry about a girlfriend this time round so I will have much more freedom to do weird and wonderful things I never did before. That is all the motivation I need!


I would say do what you have to and learn from your mistakes BUT! Just remember how much more fun and how much more interesting your journey will be with more funds.

quote:

Originally posted by happytraveller:
When I was saving I worked out what my daily budget was going to be while I was away, and then every time I paid some more money into my savings I could go home and tick off another day (or days) that I'd be away on a calender I got. I found that so helpful. Instead of thinking "oh, that cd's only a tenner, it won't make that big a difference" or "it's only one night out" I'd think "if I don't buy the cd and I don't go out tonight I can tick off a couple more days!" It just made the total amount I was aiming to save (about £6000) seem that much more achievable and put all my spending into perspective.

I love this idea! I just figred out that I have enough for the first 217 days of my trip! What I haven't figured out yet is how long it is going to be for!

To be honest, quite aside the travel motivation, I found that keeping obsessive track of my money and watching my savings graph creep steadily upwards was motivation in itself. But that's just me, I guess I really am nothing more than a greedy, money obsessed bastard.

Whygo is really good for the travel motivation side of things.

ive been over here in nz trying to save and pay off debts for about 10 months now. wow its been hard, the first say 7 months where a blow out. every thing that got saved has disapered eather to booze or bad luck. but now with a new job and a new flat im doing well, have to take it one day at a time you know. im sous chef at a ireish restrant and just earned myself a two doller an hour rais. the really nice thing about this place is i eat all my meals there for free, so my while living in a cheap single room close to work, almost my intire paycheck goes to the bank. ive gotten myself down to "extensive forced poveraty mode" witch is where i like to be when saving for a big trip. but its hard because im still trying to pay off close to 9k worth of debt from my 18 months of not working and traveling before i got here to new zealand.
im in the middle of a two week trip around the south island to kinda recharge my bateries before i hit work hard again, i find it helps remind me why i work so hard.
like others have said i do a lot of resurch on where i will be going, tons of reading. and just throw myself into my job. pick up as much over time as posible (sometimes as much as an extra 30 hours a week) and just simplify every thing, ive been sleeping on the floor for the last 3 months so save the 40 bucks it would cost me to buy a bed.
its all about sacrifice.

budgeting while saving is key!
Figure out how much you make per month and how much your necessary expenses are, ie: rent, electricity, water, cable,phone etc. see if there are any bills or services you don't need...for example- maybe you can lower your cable bill by getting less channels, maybe lower your rent by staying in a smaller place or having more roommates, maybe move back home (if it's possible and knowing it's temporary makes a difference)

Be willing to make temporary sacrifices to help you SAVE and leave sooner.

track where and what your spending so you can make changes..
I have a monthly clothing budget so I know once I spend the amount, I can't spend anymore until the next month. once you know where you're spending, it's easier to save.

one thing that has been VERY helpful is creating an online savings account, www.emigrantdirect.com, which links up to your brick and mortar bank account.(you earn more interest than a regular bank, right now it's 5.25%) you can do automatic withdrawls every month or do it on your own. once I put the money in the account, I think of it as if it doesn't exist. The best part is watching the interest accumulate every month.

ways to make extra money- babysitting, housesitting/petsitting, dog walking etc. put fliers up or post on a message board, such as craigslist.