How To Save Money For A Trip: Start A Travel Fund

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How To Save Money For A Trip

Summer will be here soon and I know most people start getting the itch to go on a family vacation. There’s always the dilemma of how to save money for a trip when you’re on a tight budget. I wanted to share with you some tips I have for creating a travel fund fast for your family vacation in just 4 months and some ways you can still have an awesome vacation while spending less!

This post may contain affiliate links. See my disclosure.

How To Save Money For Vacation

One of the easiest ways you can save for a trip is by lowering your bills at home. Cutting your cable or satellite expenses is so easy and you can save about $80 a month by just cutting this one expense. We cut our cable and saved $928 in a year!
Saving money on groceries is another great way to start saving for your travel fund. I’ve found meal planning and following a grocery list when I go shopping can drastically lower the amount of money I spend since I’m not just throwing a bunch of random stuff in my cart.
Be mindful of extra items you buy if you want to build up your vacation fund fast. How much money do you spend on clothes, shoes, etc. that you really don’t need? Before you buy those items, think about whether you really need them or if you’ll regret not buying them.
Have your meals and coffee at home. $5 a day at Starbucks, $10 here and there for lunch, and $20+ dinners out can really add up over a month. Just making these small sacrifices can really contribute a lot of money to your travel fund.
Sell any personal or household items you don’t need anymore. When I was in college, my school always seemed to switch to a different book for the next semester and wouldn’t buy back my books. One day I looked on Ebay and realized my textbooks were selling for around $100 each. I listed them and ended up making over $300 from textbooks that I thought were useless! You can list things on Craigslist, Facebook local buy, sell and trade groups, Facebook Marketplace, or Ebay and make extra money to save for your vacation. You might be surprised how much you can make off of stuff you don’t use anymore.
If you’re crafty or have an eye for vintage stuff, you can start an Etsy shop to make extra money for your trip. I’ve been making extra money every month since I opened my Etsy shop. It does take a little work, but it’s totally worth it.
Throw your extra change in a travel savings fund jar. You’ll end up with more money than you expect just by saving your change.

Use my 16 Week Travel Fund Challenge to save $1000 for your vacation in 4 months!

Free printable 16 week (4 months) travel savings plan with ideas and tips to save money on expenses and start your family vacation fund before summer! This template will help you create a budget travel savings plan and hit all the places on your bucket list. — Print this and start your own travel fund!

How To Save Money While On Your Trip

We really enjoy staying in homes we find on Airbnb for our vacations.

You can find any size home on there.
The thing I love most about it is that you don’t feel like a tourist. You can actually be comfortable rather than cooped up in a hotel room with just a bed and a little table and you get to experience the place as if you’re a local.
Surprisingly you can find places that are much larger than a hotel room for the same price or less. We recently took a trip to Colorado and booked a 4 bedroom house on a 1 acre property for around $150 per night. If you’re traveling with more than one family and split the cost, that would be a fraction of what each family would spend on a hotel room.
The best part is that it was dog-friendly so we were able to bring our 2 little dogs. We really felt at home and the house was AMAZING!
Another great thing about staying in a home is that you can cook your own meals and save money on food while you’re on your trip. If you’re driving, you can bring a cooler with all your food for the week and not have to even worry about finding a grocery store. The houses are fully equipped with all the tools you need to cook your meals.
If there are just 2 of you, you can find condos or small houses or if you have a large group there are some huge houses available. I really just can’t say enough good things about it. If you want to try Airbnb, you can use this link to save $40 on your stay!

Consider where you’re going and whether you’ll drive or fly. If you’re driving you’ll need to account for the fuel expense, whatever maintenance you need to have done on the car before you leave, if you’ll need to get a hotel along the way to your destination, and food costs while you’re driving. Flying as a family can be expensive depending on where you’re going. If you need to fly, keep checking the airlines for price decreases.

Try to find some vacation activities that don’t cost too much or are free. I love the outdoors and exploring. When we go on a trip, we usually end up going hiking at least once. Find attractions in the area that are free or low cost. Also, when we stay in a house through Airbnb, we end up spending time at the house because it’s like being at home. We had snow on our recent Colorado trip. So we stayed in one day and watched the snow fall, went sledding on the hills that were on the property and then came in and made hot chocolate and sat by a fire in the fireplace. It was a completely free day and we had so much fun!

Bring your own food if possible or go to the grocery store once you get to your vacation destination. You’ll save so much money on your vacation if you don’t have to have every meal and snack in a restaurant. If you’re staying in a hotel room, it’s challenging to make meals, but a lot of hotel rooms have microwaves and small refrigerators. When booking a hotel, check to see if they have those amenities.

I really hope these tips will save money for your trip and save even more while you’re on vacation! Be sure to share this on social media so your friends can save money for their family vacation too!