Planning For a Summer Vacation: How to Achieve Travel Goals

One of my main personal goals for 2019 is to travel more. I have always loved the idea of traveling and seeing new places, but often lacked the resources to do so. Like many people, being able to afford travel has always been my biggest barrier in preventing me from doing so. 

But since tackling most of my student loan debt over the past year, I’m really focused on dedicating more time and resources to my travel goals. For most people, summer is their main season for travel, so if you are planning a big trip this year, now is the time to really start planning and saving (if you haven’t already!). 

As part of my ongoing partnership with member-owned credit union BECU, I am excited to share some tips that are helping me effectively save for travel in 2019 and beyond.

Set Savings-Specific Goals

First and foremost, as with any goal, it is important to be as specific as possible. If there is a specific trip you know you want to take, look up travel packages and accommodation price points so you can determine a ballpark amount for how much you’ll need to save for your trip. Make sure you factor in milestones such as wanting to book your flight by a certain date, or wanting to book a hotel or Airbnb by a certain timeframe. Once you have all this information, you can create a savings schedule. 

Start with the total you want to save in mind, then factor in the dates you plan to book. From there, divide your total by the number of months you have until you plan to book (or take) your trip so you know exactly how much money you need to save each month, and you know when you’ll need to have certain amounts saved to cover expenses before taking off.

Create A Separate Travel Funds Account

The next step you want to take when saving for travel is to have a place for your savings to go. If you leave it all in one account (especially an account that you spend from), it can be easy to dip into your savings, derailing your progress. BECU’s online banking system makes it really easy to quickly create a separate account specifically for travel savings. You can also name your accounts, so I recommend labeling the account “Travel Savings” so you can quickly see where you’re at at-a-glance and can keep your travel funds separate from your spending money.

Additionally, BECU’s online banking tool allows you to create recurring automatic transfers, so you can transfer money to your savings account on a recurring basis to help you reach your travel savings goals. Automatic transfers have always played a huge role in helping me reach my savings goals. I found that when I relied on manually transferring money into savings, it wouldn’t happen because I would either forget or spend the money in other ways. By making savings automatic, my travel savings goals have been much more attainable because I don’t have to remember to move savings around, and am not tempted to spend what I could be saving for travel.

Trim Expenses Where You Can, and Allocate to Travel Savings

If you’re working with a modest budget like I am, you may need to reallocate money from other places to go towards your travel expenses. When I set my goal to travel more in 2019, I went through my budget looking for ways to trim excess money where I could. I found I could save a bit on my cell phone bill and car insurance by making some minor adjustments and canceled a few subscriptions I was no longer using (or wasn’t using often enough to make the cost worth it). From there, I totaled up the amount of money saved each month and set up a direct transfer into savings for this amount, helping me grow my travel savings without even missing the money from my budget.

Your Turn:

• Do you have any travel plans for 2019?
• What are your tips for saving for summer travel?

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by BECU. All opinions are my own.