42: Maximize Your Vacation Fun Without Sacrificing Savings

Hello everyone, my name is Carolyn. Welcome to the Saving for Your First Home podcast. I am the CEO of the Financial Moment. We offer money coaching for those who are ready and willing to make financial changes in their lives. For the most of us, there comes a point in time where we think to ourselves it would be really nice to own property, but it sometimes can feel like a pipe dream and not very easily obtainable. So I created this podcast to give you all the information and tools you need to take the steps forward toward home ownership. Take it from me my husband and I started our lives together, working part-time jobs with a young child. Fast forward, through many hiccups and failures, we stepped our feet into our very first home. For us it was a pile of dirt, but eventually our family home was built on that dirt. Now we are in the midst of growing our investment property portfolio. I created the savings for your first home podcast to give you easy, actionable tools for you to do the same. If you have that same gut feeling that I did and want to create a life for yourself and your growing family, but don't know where to start, you are in the right place. Let's do this. Welcome back to the Saving for Your First Home podcast. I'm Carolyn, your money coach. So it's finally June, which means we're at the halfway point through 2023. Can you believe that? Now I looked back to see what was the very first episode of 2023 and it was tips to prepare for a recession. So that's kind of gloom and doom. But now that we're in June, what do you think? Are we fully in a recession? We can acknowledge that the interest rates are definitely higher than they were a year ago. We can acknowledge that the cost of living is definitely higher, with food and gas and all the other things. But what is uncharacteristic about this time is that the unemployment rate is holding steady. So, as of April, it was 5%, which is unchanged in Canada since December of 2022. So what does that mean for us on a day-to-day basis? We know that things are more highly priced and we know our incomes are pretty much the same. So how do we manage and cope? Last week, we talked about hitting the grocery stores and making some changes to the way we shop. That may put a little bit more money in our pockets, but now, as we go into the summer, a lot of people have the itch to travel. So I thought I'd talk about how you can budget and stay on track but still enjoy vacations with family and friends. So for me, i'm a bit of a dreamer, so I'd like to pick where I want to go first before thinking about the budget. And I wouldn't recommend that, because if you're picking some exotic place, your budget as much as you'd love to go there, it's just not going to be realistic for you. So I suggest we flip the script and start with the budget first. Now there's some really awesome websites and apps that you can use and you plug in the approximate time that you want to go. So let's say we're talking about summer vacation. We can plug in the month of July or August or June or September and just leave the destination open And it will give you a listing of all the places you can go and how much the flights would be for each individual destination. So if you know what your budget is, then you can just go to that range and you can see all the places that you can go to for that price range. So that is if you're not picky about your destination. The one I like to use is called trip.ca and I will link it in the show notes for you. It's a great way to search in a different method. Most of the time, we kind of know the week that we're getting time off, work, we know how much we want to spend and we know the destination, and then we go make a search. But if we leave things a little bit open-ended, you can sometimes come away with a better deal. Okay, but what are the things that we need to include in a budget to ensure that we have enough money for this particular trip? We've determined destination, we've determined the flight cost. Now the duration of travel is important, because some of us may be in jobs where time off isn't paid, and so the duration of your travel can affect your income level. So that is important to factor in as well. Then, of course, there's your accommodation, transportation, food, activities, things you may want to purchase. All of these things. We need to create a line item for them and put a number beside it so that we can actually see what this vacation may cost. And then don't forget to plan for emergencies. Sounds kind of oxy-moron, but I always talk about planning for the unexpected, and you really don't know when you're traveling what can happen. So I highly recommend that you purchase travel insurance when you are going away outside of the country. It is a safeguard that is so important. I worked in healthcare for many, many years and I have seen first hand people end up with thousands and thousands of dollars owing because they just didn't purchase travel insurance and then something unfortunate happened while they were on vacation. So number one tip purchase travel insurance. Now the next thing once you kind of have an idea right, do you have an idea of where you want to go, how much you want to spend? then the research and planning kind of begins, and this is where you're going to do some digging online and perhaps look for travel bloggers. Now, travel bloggers are people that go to different destinations. They give you the highlights on where you should visit, the food that you should try, the restaurants, the people that you will experience. There is some great information out there by these travel bloggers, and just reading their stories will inspire you, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel. The other thing that we're on the hunt for is for discounts and cost saving opportunities. So sometimes, if you travel, maybe in a group or you join up with a group, you can get some cost saving advantages that way, and if you book in advance, sometimes you can get discounts off of hotels and different things. So that's what we're kind of scouring and doing our research for when we're planning out our vacation. Now, the next thing to consider is transportation. Now, of course, if you're flying, you know you're going to be looking for flights, but there's also trains to consider, renting vehicles, public transportation passes, using rideshares, things like that. You know, these are things that we kind of don't think about when we are doing our initial budgeting. My husband and I we took a trip to England one year and did a side trip to Paris for one day. So we decided to take the express train from London to Paris and explore Paris for the day and then come back. We purchased our train tickets. I tried to purchase the most earliest one and the latest one so that we would have the most time to spend in Paris. And you know, we did our thing. We saw the Eiffel Tower and all the good stuff, right. Well, it came to the end of the night now and I said to my husband let's go back and see the Eiffel Tower at sunset or in the nighttime. So it's lit up And he's like oh, i don't know, let's look at the train ticket and see how much time we have to make it to the train. And so we do. And I don't know, i must have misread it. And I said I hope you have lots of time. Well, my husband kind of said no, i think we should go and head back to the train station. So you know, i was a little disappointed. I'm the risk taker and wanted to go back and see the Eiffel Tower and go back and see the train station and see if we could get there. I don't know, i was a little disappointed and I thought I have to go back to the train station. And then we came back and we went back and we got back to the train station. Point is, i'm the risk taker and wanted to go visit and see this site all lit up at night, but we decided to go back. Well, we get back to the train station and, sure enough, we look at the ticket again and the train is leaving in literally 15 minutes and we are on one end of the train station and we need to get to the far other side of it. So we are just bolting it. Now We are running across the train station and we were trying to say excuse me, excuse me, gotta go, and we just make it onto the train as the doors are closing. Now, let's keep in mind this is the very last train of the day, so we would have not made it back to London and you know there's a series of events that were happening after this. So if we had missed that and had to stay around in Paris, it would have been a catastrophe. So, just having said that, you really don't know what can happen when you're on vacation. So perhaps just read twice. All right, so there's transportation. Next up is accommodation. Now, accommodation can range from the sublime to the very rustic and it depends on what your comfort level is. It depends on your budget, but doesn't mean you can't visit that destination, because there's a lot of options these days for you. So we have our hotels. That can range from one start of five. We have hostels like in Europe that is very popular where you can stay in a hostel for a couple nights as you're traveling through Europe. There's vacation rentals. We all know of Airbnb and Verbo. These are places where you can rent out a person's property to stay for a period of time for a lesser rate than perhaps your hotel stay would be Now. A cost saving strategy that would be helpful is to book in advance. A lot of the time, if you book up to even a year in advance, you're going to get a far less rate than you are if you're like months out. So you want to do your comparison shopping. There's a lot of apps also that will do comparison shopping amongst themselves, and so you can see which one is the best rate to go with. And then there's off peak season. That is the time of year when perhaps most of the tourists are not traveling to those countries. So if you pick those seasons, you're going to get a little bit of a discount as well. Another thing that people don't think about is to stay outside of the city center. Being close to the downtown core usually implies higher rates at hotels, but if you book hotels that are slightly further out, then you may have a better chance of securing a lower rate. And if you were planning to rent a vehicle anyways, then it shouldn't mainly make a difference if you're traveling around the city in that form of transportation. And then there's the good old points. There are certain loyalty programs that offer discounts and the ability to use points to book hotels and accommodation. Okay, then next up we have food and dining. Now this is where your budget can really get out of hand, because you're on vacation. Who wants to cook when you're on vacation? So there are some tips that you can do to reduce your food costs when you're on vacation. So the first thing is to eat like a local right. Go to local markets, maybe food stalls, especially for breakfast and lunch items. Don't find yourself in these big restaurants during those times because it can tend to be pricier. So if you can find the local markets, it's a great experience. Number one. And secondly, you probably can just pick up a few things and that will tide you over until you have your big meal, which could be a lunch or a dinner. Then, if you had decided to stay in an Airbnb type accommodation, then perhaps you could cook some of your meals right. Going to the local grocery store and then preparing them can really significantly cut down on your food expenses. But if you're going to head to a restaurant, then I would suggest looking for the specials. There's always lunch specials, happy hours, set menus, things like that, where the local people are trying to bring in the tourist, and they will offer these types of discounts at a lower cost. And another option is to check out street food. So now this is where maybe it's a food truck or a stall that has some food that they're offering. It can be very delicious, because these are chefs that don't have their own physical restaurants, but they make it affordable so that you can try out these kind of gourmet local flavors but not break the bank. And then, finally, there's the alcohol. So if you do find yourself buying drinks at restaurants or bars, this can really add up. So there are some restaurants that will allow you to actually bring your own bottle, and so if you purchase that from a local winery or a place that sells mostly alcohol, then you can bring that into the restaurant and they will serve it for you, probably at a fee, but a much lesser rate than actually buying a few drinks from the restaurant. So those are just a couple ways to kind of shave off your spend on food. All right, well, it's not a vacation unless you do some activities in sightseeing. So how do you save money on this? Well, there's lots of ways. You can look for free attractions or parks or museums. Now in Washington in particular, all the museums are free of charge. It's a great way to learn a lot about the city that you're in, experiencing the history in a different way. Being able to touch, feel and do other activities within these museums is a fantastic addition to your vacation. Another way is to purchase a city pass. Now some cities they offer bundles where you can hop on, hop off and align your planned activities based on what it is that you want to see. So that's a great way to save on travel costs as well as some of the activities that you want to check out while you're there. And then they have these self-guided tours, and so, instead of booking an expensive guided tour, you can actually research this on the internet. There are some companies where you can purchase a tour already put together for you and you just follow it as it's laid out. That's a fun way, because they have activities and things that you would have never thought of to research, and it's a really inexpensive way because you can still learn about the history while you are reading the information yourself and visiting these locations. And then there's also free walking tours that are actually led by locals that do provide insights and knowledge about the destination. You know they do like to have a tip at the end of these tours, but it's well worth it because you actually become friends with them by the end, even though you're totally exhausted, and they give you lots of recommendations for food and other things that you can see. So again, i would highly recommend doing those free walking tours. And don't forget this is your vacation, so you don't have to spend every waking minute planning out an activity. You can just spend some time on a beach, you can relax in your hotel, you can just go for a little stroll down the area that you're in. You don't have to make it into this big planned event for every day of your vacation. Alright, so now here are some just ad hoc money saving tips when you are planning your vacation. So let's talk about the currency. A lot of countries do accept the American dollar, but you have to be mindful because if you're in a place where you can negotiate and get a bit of cheaper price, they definitely do want you to buy in US dollars. But if you have local currency, it may save you a little bit of money. So it may be a good idea to convert some of your money into the local currency. Also, watch out for high, unnecessary fees when exchanging your money. So if you go to do that at the airport, these places will have a fee associated when you are converting your money into the local currency. So do some planning ahead of time check out your local banks, order the money there and perhaps you can save yourself from some of those fees as well. And then there's like this luggage fee that's happening these days. It seems to be more and more expensive as the time goes on. So you might want to develop a minimalist mindset when you're packing. If you can reduce things down, put everything in a carry on, you may save yourself some unwanted baggage fees. I hope that has helped. I'm excited to hear about all of your travel plans, so definitely send me a message on Instagram or send me an email and tell me how you plan to incorporate some of these saving tips over the summer. I hope you enjoyed this money saving episode and be sure to share this episode with a friend perhaps your fellowmate that you're going to be traveling with, so you're both on the same page when you go to plan your trip. All right, have a great week and we'll see you next Thursday. Thank you for listening. We are committed to helping you place your very first steps into your new home. See you next time.