How To Save Money FOR Travel

Travel can be expensive, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t travel!  Learn lots of easy ways to save money for travel or whatever your financial dream is with the helpful money saving tips below.  

EASY WAYS TO SPEND LESS

• Food and Drugstore Items

• Eat meals at home  Take an afternoon every couple of weeks to make some delicious dinners.  Then individually wrap portions, place in a labeled zip bag and store in the freezer.  Keep an inventory on the side of your frig, and make hashes for every portion stored.  I cross off a hash mark each time I take something out.  This way I don’t forget about something and lose it to freezer burn. Eight portions divided by 60 minutes is 7-½ minutes to prepare my dinner.  Each night, put the next evening’s meal in the frig to defrost so all you have to do is zap it when you’re hungry.   I also always keep frozen shrimp in case I forget to take something out, I can easily make a shrimp stir fry.

Consider dining out as entertainment NOT convenience by planning and freezing your meals. If you make your dinners when you are relaxed and not frazzled, it’s fun! Plus you won’t have any reason to get takeaway because you are too pooped to cook!

• Bring your own lunch instead of going out.  It takes five minutes to make, so you save time as well as money.  You will also eat less fat, sugar and salt by eating from home.  You can take that extra time and go for a walk!
• Buy Things on Sale.  Grocery and Drugstore flyers come out weekly.  Go online if you don’t get a physical paper and see what’s on sale.  Then eat what’s on sale. You can save 50% of some of the most expensive items on your list.  Why not have the pork tenderloin buy one get one free this week instead of the full priced ground turkey?  Fruits and vegetables go on sale when they are in season so you’ll be making the freshest most nutrinional choices as well. For other items, sales go on a rotation and many things come on sale at a regular pattern.  Pay attention to the pattern of your ‘go to’ items. Then for the non-perishables, stock up enough when its on sale to carry you through to the next sale. For example, I never pay full price for my expensive night lotion or any toiletries, makeup or canned goods.

• Know what your regular items cost.  Save your receipts awhile and then make up a list of your regular repeat purchases.  Then take a field trip to your favorite stores. You will be shocked at the discrepancy in pricing on the identical items between different stores.  So for non-perishables, I know what to buy where and when it goes on sale, I stock enough to make it to the next sale.

Once I analyze my stores, I determined what I want to buy where, even though I don’t go to every store every week.  I go to my favorite grocery store weekly because I like the produce and general selection there. I also have a basic grocery store that I buy the staples from, a dollar-type store for paper and plastic wrap type things, and then one of those European stores where I buy my meat, cheese and bread.  I usually hit these other stores about once a month.

• Reduce or eliminate food waste.  Which reminds me, I hardly waste any food.  Did you know that the average American household wastes $640/yr???  I bet I waste less than $10. Probably less than $5. When it looks like I won’t be able to finish my produce before it spoils, I prep it, then freeeze it in portion sizes to use in stir frys or smoothies.  When I cook a turkey breast, I carve it up and then portion it out, wrap it, stick it in a zip bag, label and put it in the freezer with my prepared meals. And fof course, I make a note on my Freezer Inventory sheet on the frig.  

I only buy what I think I will eat in a reasonable time and then “Shop” my cupboards so I make meals from my stocked ingredients which keeps my food in rotation and fresh.  Wouldn’t you rather put that $640 in your travel or retirement account? I know I would!

• Buy Foods in their Natural State.  Lastly on food, a huge way to save money and improve your health is to buy food in its most natural form.  Instead of fancy orange juice, which we are now told is bad for us, eat a fresh orange. It’s delicious plus you get the fiber.  Buy produce in its original state whether fresh or frozen and docter it up yourself to save not just money but fat, sugar and salt.  Think like a European, and basically shop the outer aisles of the grocery store to minimize processed food and try to buy things with just one or two ingredients. 

Entertainment 

Ask you friends:  “Are you interested in saving money?”  I guarantee 100% are. Instead of going out all the time, do potlucks, or experiement making a new cuisine together (we made our own pasta one night) or perhaps host SIMPLE dinners like spaghetti night at each other’s place.  They’re often more fun and a heck of a lot cheaper. When I host a simple get together (as opposed to a true dinner party) and people ask what to bring, I say just bring what your drinking. They fell glad to contribute, and I only have to worry about my simple meal. SUPER IMPORTANT:  When you go out to eat, make sure it’s for actual enjoyment NOT just to fill your belly. Your entertainment expenses should give you joyful memories. If they are not, you are wasting money.

Decide you want to go out for fun?  Why not leave your credit card at home and bring the amount you’ve budgeted.

Reduce Your Cafe Habit  

Lots of people grab a coffee from a cafe every day; sometimes twice a day.   Me, I make up a thermos of good quality green tea that I docter with freshly ground ginger, cloves and cinnamon.  It’s as good or better than I could get in most shops, and costs me maybe a quarter versus $4-5.  Savings over $1500/yr

All those incidental expense really add up.  I’ll give you another example, one of my workers – who is always broke by the way-  buys two fountain drinks a day. Toby tells me they area a lousy couple of bucks each. When I showed Toby he was spending $30 a week on fountain drinks and therefore $1500/yr on soda, you should have seen the lightbulb go off.  Meanwhile, I am drinking my free water out of my reusable bottle. Plus I’m helping the planet, too.

Transportation

With payments closing in on $500/mo, wouldn’t you rather spend that money on travel or your retirement?  I haven’t had a car payment in over twenty years. I drive a used car that I buy with cash. You can get a reliable car for under ten grand.  I drive it until it no longer feels reliable. 

In 2019, I gave my 1999 Camry, which still worked fine to a young man simply because the door handle broke off and I figured, “It’s time”, not because it was unreliable.  Now I drive a 2005 Camry that works and looks great. 

I find the average car payment of $500 shocking.  I spend about seven grand for a car which pays for itself in just over a year, and then I drive it for about another fifteen years for free.  $500/mo for 15 years is $90,000! You could enjoy a mega around the world trip for that!!!  

That new car smell and appeal go away after a month or so and then it just becomes transportation.  Get out of the car payment rut and then save up 5-10 grand so you can pay cash for your next car.  

Housing

 Do you need to spend a third of your income on housing?  How important is it for you to live in a specific neighborhood or a specific sized house.  Most of the McMansions today have multuple unused rooms. Is this you? Is downsizing or moving to a nice, just not as desirable neighborhood a valid trade off for more travel in your life?  Is moving to someplace less expensive something that could work for you?

If you don’t want to downsize, could you rent out a room on Airbnb?  My girlfriends Catherine and Stevi love Airbnb because they get to meet interesting people from all over the world, many of whom become friends.  Their initial goal was to help cover the mortgage, but now I think they are getting more from the experience than just income. If you can’t rent a room, what about garage space, or if you’ve got a big yard, letting someone park their boat there?  Perhaps you can rent your home when YOU travel. I know one Philadelphia couple that does this. They rent their home when they travel which basically covers their travel lodging. Think outside the box. Housing is one of your biggest expenses.  How can you bring the cost down while still enjoying your life?

Utilities and Insurance  

Cut the cable.  When my husband Bill died in 2014, I discovered our business was losing money because we had neglected it during his illness, so I made drastic cuts in my spending.  Cable was the first to go and frankly I don’t miss it. You and freinds or family can share streaming apps. Most allow several users.  Look into doing the same with cell phone plans.  

Be sure to competitive shop your cell service and insurances.  Do you really need the latest phone or can you wait an extra year and buy an improved phone over your current phone, but for a significant discount?  Also comparison shop your insurances to keep them honest and make sure you aren’t paying too much for insurance.

Memberships and Subscriptions  

Can you use the free outdoors as your gym?  Can you get results from a less expensive gym?

Do you need those subscriptions?  Can you read them from the library or even easier, do you know that your library has access to all sorts of magazines, books and movies online FOR FREE???

Stuff

This one is simple:  Buy less stuff. We are overflowing with stuff, especially in the US.    I’ll teach you an excersize in a bit that will help you see for yourself what things you buy give you joy or are just a waste of money.  I’ll also explain some easy tips to make it painless.

• Remember, the more stuff you buy, the more time you spend taking care of it.  Repeat: Buy less stuff!  Borrow or rent the occasional use items. You can even rent dress clothes these days!  Ditto for tools. I wanted a fancy $800 pair of binoculars to take with me on an African safari so I could really see the animals.  How often would I really use it afterwards? So I ended up renting a great pair from someone in my hiking club for $50. She was thrilled and I saved over $750!
• We all have a Gazinga:  the thing we like to buy in excess that gives us a dopamine hit when we are feeling overwhelmed or stressed. My gazinga WAS craft supplies although I never had time to actually DO the crafts, and I think it was the fantasy of free time I was trying to buy.  It was hard, but I finally licked it. For my sister Liz, it’s fancy lipsticks. For Tim, its gold clubs. We buy gazingas to fill a void or stress we are feeling. Try to find a free substitute, like escaping for an hour – despite your packed schedule – maybe head to the park with a thermos of tea and a book you’ve been meaning to read.  Try to find some kind of self care to satiate that gremlin that triggers the impulse to buy your Gazinga. What is your Gazinga? Come up with a plan to try out the next time it rears its expensive head.
• Buy in bulk on the things you always use, but only if you don’t fall prey to filling your cart with “SAVINGS” and end up buying things you don’t need.  USE A SHOPPING LIST and stick to it to avoid impulse buys, or buy online.
• Use online apps that automatically comparison shop so you get the best deal.  Some will alert you when something you want comes on sale. I try to keep my content evergreen, so the best thing to do is just google ‘comparison shopping app’. 
• Consider selling your unused stuff and adding the proceeds to your travel savings account 

30 DAY RULE

I tell my brain I can have anything I want, but I just need to wait 30 days.  I can’t emphasize how important it is for you to rewire your brain, which always wants, what it wants now!  So tell your brain you can have it, you just have to wait 30 days. By that time, I have usually forgotten about it or no longer want it.  This psychology lets my brain feel like I am getting what it wants so it tamps down that nasty gremlin, and has saved me thousands of dollars. If I still want whatever it is after thirty days, I then come up with a plan to get it without borrowing money.  I also follow a no debt rule, especially with anything that depreciates in value like a car. 

Learn to Budget

It’s empowering once you get over the intial scary part and learn to be in charge of your money instead of it being your master.  My spending is a habit now so I don’t need to keep detailed records anymore. But if I find myself getting sloppy, making and sticking to a budget gets me back on track. 

The bottom liine is to live below your means and channel the excess to savings.  But you can do it by tweaking your spending on the things that are not enhancing your life.  If you are like me, and a car is simple transportation, then don’t buy a fancy car.  If you are really into cars and a special car still gives you joy months after buying it, then maybe this isn’t the area to tweak your budget.  Maybe eating out is just to fill your belly.  If that’s the case, then tackle your food and entertainment expenses.

If you feel like you are depriving yourself, you won’t stick to it, so go after the categories that don’t enhance YOUR life.  Be sure to do the two exercised a little later that will help you to pin point the areas that will make it easy for your to save money.

Here’s are two great resources to help you make a budget:

Budgeting 1010 with NerdWallet

Making a Budget that Works with Dave Ramsey

Exercises to Find Easy Ways for YOU to Save Money

EXERCISE #1 : Track Your Spending

Do you even know how you are spending your money?    

For one month,keep track of EVERYTHING you spend, no matter how small.  You are going to be shocked! Get a notebook.  In your notebook, make columns for the date, description, amount, category and  four more small columns labeled Need, Want, Yes and No.  Each day for the month, log everything you buy.  Fill in every column but the last two, which we’ll do at the end of the month.  Put an “X” in either the NEED or WANT column – and be honest.  Did you really NEED it?  

At the end of the month, ask yourself, are you happy you bought it?  Again, be honest. Did this purchase bring you joy? Would you buy it again?  Fill in your answer by marking an “X” in the Yes and No columns.  By waiting until later, you can look back honestly to see what purchases actually enhance your life.

Now get four different colored highlighters, and pick two colors, let say yellow and blue.

Highlight the Want + No lines  in Yellow.

Highlight the Need + No lines in Blue

Tally the amounts for both colors and write the total at the bottom of your Want and Need columns.  This is money you are spending on things that don’t bring you enough joy compared to the expense.

When looking for painless ways to save money, this is the low hanging fruit.

Comparison shop for your Blue Need + No items and buy the least expensive thing that will get the job done.  These are your drudgery items, often insurance, that you HAVE to buy but don’t get any satisfaction from buying.  Become an excellent shopper of these needed items.  On big items in this category, comparison shop once a year.

Then tackle like a linebacker  your Yellow Want + No items.  This is where you are truly throwing money out the window.  Stop spending money on them! This might be eating dinner out just because you are starving but didn’t feel like cooking (use the homemade TV dinner method to cut out that expense).  Maybe it was some new clothes because you were bored and went shopping. Are you buying more Gazingas to add to your already unused collection?  Usually these items give you a temporary lift but are of no lasting value. Try to find substitutions that don’t cost money to fill that void.

And look at the amounts… wouldn’t you rather spend that on a once in a lifetime experience that you will cherish for the rest of your life?  Get joy from your money!

Exercise #2 :  Determine it’s value to YOU

Here we are using a business concept called Zero Based Budgeting.  Dont worry:  it sounds hard and boring, but it’s really just simply taking a fresh look at your spending.

Instead of assuming EVERYTHING has to be in the budget, take a hard look at the things you spend money on and after you’ve seen what items do and do not enhance your life.  What can you get rid of or reduce? What would your life look like if you spent ZERO on it?  At what level of spending does an item give you joy and just as important, at one level does it STOP enhancing your life?  

Example:  Going out to dinner once a week with your partner is a treat and enjoyable event.  If you do it every night, at what point do you take it for granted and no longer get joy from the expenditure?  Try to find the spending level where something brings you joy and makes you look forward to it as a treat, but where you don’t take it for granted.  Most things in life seem to work on a bell curve. Try to find where you get peak enjoyment before the curve starts heading downhill again.

Go back to your notebook and color the other two categories that gave you pleasure with two more different colors and tally them. These are your Want + Yes and Need + Yes line items. 

Ask yourself, “Do these items give me enough pleasure that I want to keep them at the same spending levels or would I get more joy by tweaking things a bit?”  Perhaps you can replace them with a free option, like borrowing books and movies from your library instead of pay per view or buying them. 

We all want a fun and fulfilled life.  These excercises are made for you to make sure that your spending is aligned with your values.  It is defintiely NOT about deprivation or you won’t stick to it!

Spend your money on the things that bring you joy and reduce or eliminate those non-essentials that do not.   And for the Need items, sorry but we are stuck with things like medical and car insurance, but it doesn’t mean you can’t shop for the best deal for YOU so that you minimize your unfulfilling expenses.

We’ve just covered the first way you can save money for travel.  There are two more ways…

SAVE MORE

The second way to build your travel savings account is to save more.

No one has extra money to save.  Let me repeat that, no one has any extra money to SAVE.  Money always seeps out and  finds a place to go. How many movie stars and athletes who have made millions have gone bankrupt?  Lots! I can rattle off a half dozen with little thought.

People who successfully save have a MINDSET that allows them to do so.  It is human nature to want something now and make it more valuable to us than something we have to wait for.  The key is to trick your brain in to finding delayed gratifiaction more fun than current gratification. So how do we do this?

When I was just getting started, I remember learning that you first had to save 6 months income.  No way that could ever happen. It was an impossible dream to me.

When times were good, I saved, but then it would go to buy a ‘new to me’ car, auto repairs, some emergency or a move.  It seemed like every time I got to $5K, something would gobble it up and I would start all over again. Retirement or a travel savings account seemed impossible.  I was self employed with erratic income and there was never anything left at the end of the month.

But at 38, I realized that 60, my hoped for retirement age, was around the corner and I did not want to end up old and poor.  I had nothing in a retirement account.  

I guess I’m called a serial entreprener, but I never built any high roller business.  I would just scratch my own itch and start a business around a current hobby. In the beginning, my new part time business would lose money, but eventuallyI’d get it to work until it could support me.  Then I would get bored and start a new business and the famine to feast cycle would start all over.  

Thus my income fluctuations taught me how to live frugally when times were lean.  I never really minded the “poor” times because I believed in myself that I would make the business work.  But what about once I stopped working and retired?

My big fear was being old and poor.  So I decided to learn how to truly save.  This savings habit then morphed into creating savings buckets for all sorts of things.  Within ten years, savings became a game that I was getting really good at winning.

But back when I was 38 years old, I had nothing set aside for retirement.  

Through research, I learned that about a third of 30-50 yo have less than $1000 in retirement savings.  Yep, that was me. I was one of them. To reach my retirement goals, an online calculator said I would have to start saving over $650/mo – IMPOSSIBLE.  However, I did not want to be eating dog food, old and broke.

Then I had a breakthrough.   I work my tail off. I always have.  So at 38, I got mad. At the end of each year, how could it be that I have nothing to show for it?  Never again. I decided that I had to be worth at least $200 a month, even though I didn’t believe at the time that I could spare it with all my other expenses.  But I was determined and so I “Paid” myself this $200 a month before any other bills got paid. I finally realized that when it comes to money, it’s not what you make, it’s what you save.  Because what you save is really, when all is said and done, what you’ve earned.  

So I had $200 directly taken from my checking account into a new savings account at the beginning of the month.

Two important things happened:

1. I made the mental midnshift that savings is not deprivation but a reward.  I DESERVED this savings and security. This is HUGE so I’m going to repeat this for you:  Saving money is not deprivation. You work hard and you are worth your savings.  You have earned your savings!
2. By paying myself through an automatic draft from my checking account to my new savings account, I treated my savings as a bill, and I always pay my bills.  But here’s the funny thing. I never missed it!  At the end of the month, there was still nothing left over, but now there was another $200 in my savings account.  

$200 a month for twelve months is $2400, no great shakes but it beat the $0 I started with.  

Then I got this great idea:  If I didnt miss the $200, what if I gave myself a raise?  I don’t remember how much my first raise was, but since then, every January I give myself a raise.  In five years I built my savings account to over $20,000. And by then, I was also properly investing and diversifying.  

And guess what, five years later, at the end of the month, there was still nothing left, but I believe my monthy “”Income”” that went into savings crossed $1000/mo and I realized that my initial two realizations still held true:

1.  Saving money had become fun and I looked forward to stretching myself to see what my January raise would be.  I still never missed it, even after my raises.  So I started other buckets, like one for travel and charity, one for short term needs like a car. Each year every bucket got a raise!  I was WORTH filling these buckets! But still, the funny thing is #2 still holds true
2. At the end of the month, there was still little left over.  I would look at my checking account balance and without any effort, I seemed to adjust my spending to whatever was in there.  I could spend it all guilt-free if I wanted because my savings buckets were already filled.  

It has now been 22 years.  When I look back, I cannot believe that I met my financial savings goal of being able to retire this year at 60 if I want to.  If I had waited until I had enough money left over at the end of the month to start saving, I would still be broke.

I now have a satisfying retirement account, travel as often as I want to some really cool destinations, etc.

If you have problems making the mental mindshift between deprivation to deserving it, think instaed of your savings account as future spending until the midset shift happens.

Now let’s swing this back to travel savings.  

So in my travel savings account, I now place a $1000.  Sounds like a lot, right? But I’ve made other adjustments to my life so that it’s actually not a big deal.  I now do virtually everything we covered in the top section on How To Spend Less.

My husband died in 2014 and when I then took over the books, I discovered to my horror that I in a bit of a financial bind with my rentals.  I own a small mobile home park and during Bill’s illness, we had neglected the business. I needed to make some dramatic changes immediately. So I looked over my expenses and debt and had an ‘AHA’ moment.  

Because I am handy, I buy fixer up homes and then proceed to make them nice again.  We bought our Cary home in the midst of the housing crisis , so we got a good deal on it.  We then cash flowed the remodeling and so had a sizable equity in the house when Bill died.  I realized that if I sold my home, a home that I really loved and had poured my heart and soul into, that I could take the equity and buy a more modest home for cash and have no mortgage.  So that’s what I did. Any you know what? I never missed my fancy home and even though financial folks tell you that not carrying a mortgage is stupid in this era of cheap money.  But there is someting wonderful, yet intangible, about owning your home free and clear.  It all but eliminates financial worry for me.

I used what I cleared on the sale of my Cary house to buy a modest 60’s fixer upper ranch for $131,000 – cash.   Then I cash flowed the remodelling. It’s in a nice neighborhood, but nothing fancy. My friends don’t judge me because I live in a more modest neighborhood than they do, and if they do, are they really my friends?  All I know is that making this move got me off the hamster wheel and it was so worth it!

Today, taxes, insurance, utilities and — my splurge —  lawn care cost me about $400/mo. I couldn’t rent anything even yucky around here for that!  

I was paying close to $2000 a month for my Cary home.  So I freed up about $1600 a month and $1000 of this money goes in to my travel fund, because travel is a top priority for me.  

Everything we do, every decision we make is a choice and a trade off.  I choose experiences and travel over a bigger home. I have not once regretted it.  As a bonus, my smaller home is less maintenance and is much faster to clean so the move also freed up some of my valuable time.

So that’s my story.  Here are some other ways you can find money to fill your savings pots:

• If you use cash, toss your change in a jar, add $20 a week story.  My old boss put his kids through college doing this
• When you get a raise, spend 10% and put 90% in savings. You will get an instant reward but won’t miss the difference.
• PAY YOURSELF FIRST Automate savings and give yourself a raise each year 
• I recommend funding a $1000 Minor Emergency Fund to start so you don’t get derailed if the car breaks, etc.
• Make it a goal to eventually get your savings up to 15% of income (this will happen naturally as you start seeing success)
• Set up your Retirement Fund – max that out, especially if there are any company matches
• Set up and begin funding your Emergency Fund of 6 months if you work for a company or 12 months if you are self-employed.  Remember a little bit each month means that eventually you will get there.
• Set up additional Savings Accounts for car replacement, education, down payments, travel, etc

Now here’s a neat trick in building your Travel Fund:

Tour payments are often staggered, and you often book flights, activities and lodging separatedly. Try to cash flow (meaning pay as the expenses are incurred from your checking account) any upfront travel costs.  Try to just dip into your travel savings only when you HAVE to. Often I have the trip paid for before I go without tapping my travel savings account at all!  I am thrilled with how quickly my travel savngs bucket adds up. That’s how I paid for my mega Middle East trip. The tours came out of the travel savings, but I managed to use points for airfare and cash flow the independant lodging, meals and activities once I was there.

 I’d rather live in a small easy to maintain brick 60’s ranch, drive a 2005 Camry, wear out my clothes and use the library so I can travel the world on my terms.  I haven’t had cable since Bill died in 2014. I think nothing of buying something used, whether furniture or clothing. I actually take perverse pride in being frugal and saving money.  Once you get the hang of it, you will too!

But there’s still one last way to build your travel savings account…

EARN MORE

The final way you can save more money to travel is to earn more money!  Here are some ways to earn more money that you can  add to your Travel Savings Account. The jobs don’t need to be permanent.

• Late fall seasonal help before the holidays (think retail stores and delivery companies like UPS)
• Short Term Side Job:  For example, the Census Bureau is hiring now with flexible hours
• Drive with a Ride Share App or post your skills on Task and Gig apps and websites
• Get a part time job at nights or weekends – remember it doesn’t have to be forever
• Start a side hustle.  Can you paint? Do lawns? Code? Play music, do photography, write copy, or do graphic design?  Sell? What special skill do you have that someone else might not have the time or skill to do, and so might want to hire you for?  Virtually all the the many businesses I have started all began as a side hustle that grew into my full time work.  But even if it doesn’t, remember , it doesn’t have t be forever. You’re the boss!

PSYCHOLOGICAL HELPERS TO KEEP YOU MOTIVATED

1. Draw a Thermostat to visualize your dream.  You often see them for school fundraisers… (Goal:  $100000 and the school fundraiser is at $58,000). I used this technique when I had my nursery business.  My late husband Bill and I would use those 0% financing credit card offers to fund our spring season. (NOTE: I only recommend using those offers for folks who are super averse to debt like we were and who are POSITIVE they can pay it off before the interest meter kicks in!).  Let’s say we charged $50,000 in initial plant stock, I drew a thermostat with the top bar at $50,000. Each week, using different colored pencils, I would fill in the level of sales we made so that we could see our progress towards our goal of finally making money on our plants. This is a surpirsingly effective strategy.

Let’s say you want to climb Kilimanjaro… an expensive trip that you estimate with airfare to cost $8000.  Draw your goal thermostat. Then use a magnet and stick it on your refrigerator. Every month or pay period, use a colored pencil to fill in how much you saved so that you can actually SEEyou climbing towards your goal as your bands of color charge up the thermostat.  This is so powerful that a decade after closing my nursery, I STILLhave my thermostats, and they make me smile everytime i look at them.  

1. Make a game out of saving.  No one wants to feel deprived, and if you feel like you are sacrificing rather than benefiting from saving, your plan is probably going to fail.  So it is critical that you train your mind to LOVE SAVING.  And make sure you don’t leave any money on the table:
   1. Take all your discounts!  If you qualify for a senior discount on Tuesday at the grocery store, shop then.  If you are a AAA or AARP member, a student or military, ASK for your discount
   2. And when you get those store Bonus Bucks redeemable in the future, remember that these stores are counting on you forgetting or losing them.  I stick the coupon on my dashboard of my car, right when I return to my car so I don’t forget. Super simple and effective.
   3. Before you head to the store, look for discount coupons online and print them out if that’s the only way to use them(many stores no longer let you pull up a coupon on your cell while in the store).  You can save 10-20% here.  
   4. Use comparison shopping apps (google for most popular ones) that find the best deal on things you need and/or can alert you when they come on sale.
   5. When I worked for Hamilton Beach in my previous life, I oversaw the Rebate Program.  I remember that when we calculated how much the program would cost, we knew that statistically a $2 rebate would – I don’t recall the exact stats- actually cost us 40 cents since 80% wouldn’t bother to mail it in.  A $10 rebate might cost 6 or 7 dollars because a higher number blew it off. Dont leave money on the table! If there’s a rebate, mail it in when you get home.
   6. Fill a Savings Jug:  Let’s say you got $5 Bonus Bucks from a purchase at the drugstore.  Get a large jug and actually PUT $5 cash in it so you can actually see your Piggy Bank growing.  Do the same with coupons and rebates.  Anything you save money on.  Do the same with grocery and drug store savings that are usually listed on the bottom of your receipt.  You will visually see that your minor tweaks are starting to add up to some serious savings!

SUMMARY

Learn to live below your means, realize that you DESERVE to save money, and using these techniques find YOUR best mix of these three ways to save money for travel so that you can fulfill your dream of more travel.  Spend your money where it ENHANCES your life and don’t just fritter it away!  When you spend your money according to the value it brings to you, you won’t waste money and will have money to achieve your dreams!  Please write me and let me know how they work for you!

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