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My First Blog Post

Starbucks or Italian Coffee

Travel is the goal but money is the tough part. Ever say to yourself you want to travel but don’t know how to get the funds to do so? I have and so many others have too.

The first step is to pick where you want to go and budget it out. Plus I would suggest to add an extra $100 or so for emergencies. Once you know your goal for saving, that’s where the work starts. Every little purchase makes a difference. I use to treat myself to a coffee or nice drink often and sometimes every day but when my goal was to make it to Italy I kept reminding myself do I want this now or do I want to spend this money on a coffee in a cute, little café in (fill in the blank). $5 a day x 365 days equals $1,825. That can pay for a whole trip! Now you may not spend $5 day but some days you spend more on other treat yourself purchases. All the little things can add up so you might need to sacrifice things now for fun things later. After budgeting your trip give yourself a monthly budget for at home spending and work out how much you can save each month. There are lots of great programs and courses out there on how to budget and save money. If money saving is a problem for you that might be something you want to look into. Find where your bank account leaks the most money and start working on plugging those holes.

Selling extra things you have that you don’t need is also a good way to declutter/make a bit of money for your trip.

I have personally used my tax refund to pay for plane tickets. It can be a good way to add a chunk to your savings.

I would never recommend putting a trip on a credit card if you can’t afford to pay it off right away. Debt is just going to make life hard and then you’ll regret all your travels. So don’t do it. If you do however have the funds to pay for it I would recommend using a cash back CC and make some of that money back.

Waiting to take your trip sucks but it gives you more time to plan out the best trip and to actually save the money.

Travel the World or Pay Your Mortgage

I honestly don’t know the right answer. My husband, Stephen, and I have different views on this. He thinks we should work hard for the next ten to fifteen years to pay off our mortgage so that we can then use that extra income we’d be saving to travel. He has a point. Paying off our biggest debt as quickly as possible is a good idea. I however think we never know what the future is going to bring us and since we are still making monthly payments on our mortgage we should make travel our near future goal. We are both in our mid twenties, healthy and have no kids. While we are able and it’s something we both love we should go for it. Stephen likes traveling and has been all over the world. His desire to learn about other cultures and history is one of the reasons I fell in love with him. His everyday hobbies and special interests keep him happy enough that he can put travel aside for a few years. Me on the other hand… I can’t stop thinking about it. I spend most of my wandering thoughts on what it would be like to explore Morocco or swim in a cave in the Philippines. I google and plan out trips for fun. It’s my way of window shopping. The only problem is like any good window shopper you will eventually want to buy the product. I’m not an impulse buyer or traveller. Travel for Stephen and I means planning a few months ahead and making sure we have the money to pay for the trip. A good way to enjoy your trip is to know you can afford it and that your bank account is safe when you get back home to bills. One of the reasons I enjoy planning out my trips and doing research is so I know we are not spending emergency money on mistakes that could have been missed. One example is we flew to London and stayed there for a few days on our way to Athens. I knew very little of London and it’s lay out. I did not realize that Gatwick and Heathrow (London’s two main airports) are very far apart from each other. We landed in Gatwick and stayed in a hotel on that side of the city. We then had a very early morning flight out of Heathrow. Early morning transit in a city you have no idea how to navigate is hard. With buses and the train it took us nearly two hours. I know that’s not that long of a time but I could have planned it out better so half that time was spent going out for one last breakfast. If I could do it over again I would make sure we did all our flying out of one airport so we didn’t spend extra money on transit going across the city.

I have gotten a little side tracked. I wanted to ask my readers what their thoughts are on traveling now or in the future? What makes you choose your answer.

Izzy

Travel the World for $1,000

It’s been my dream to travel the world for as long as I could remember. But like all things MONEY! I know there are so many travel blogs out there about people talking about travel or telling you their experience. I wanted to show you that it is actually possible to go anywhere in the world for $1000. The tricks are having flexible dates like traveling on week days and off season (late fall to early spring). Willing to make a few stops before your final destination. Buying groceries and not eating out as much are the few main money savers.

One of the biggest money savers I found was leaving from a costal destination. I live closer to central Canada and so it can be a bit more expensive to get to places. I have however found that there are cheap flights to Vancouver and from Vancouver it’s a lot more affordable to hop over to Asia. If you live in a less populated city or the center of a country, find the cheapest city you can fly to that has more airplane traffic. The flights will most likely be a better price but do the math and make sure you are not actually spending more money than if you were to just leave from home.

As for Europe, London is one of the worlds most flied to cities so they always have decent priced flights to and from London. If you plan it right you can land not leave the airport and hope onto your next flight. Save pricey train ticket and a night at an airport hotel (also pricey but doable). Stephen (my husband) and I wanted to go to Greece but the flight prices were most of our budget for our whole trip. So I did a lot of research and found that we could fly to London stay a few days and fly to Greece and pay for accommodations all for the same price it would have been to fly direct to Athens. We would have missed out on seeing a second country. I got to say I was going to England and Greece. Two very different and beautiful countries. Made the trip sound even fancier. Now as you can imagine that trip was more than a $1,000 but not by much. We did it for about $2,000 each but we did choose to stay 5 days in London and that my friend is a very expensive city. Possible to find deals but over all a higher priced city then most.

Food is one of the best parts of travelling the world. You get to experience different flavors and traditions. Of course the easy thing to do is go out for every meal but the best money saver is one, find a place that serves free breakfast (most hostels do so) and two, buy easy things like snacks, mini lunches, and water. Grocery stores are going to have a better price for things like water and muffins then a coffee shop would and it’s great to have on you when you are stuck in line for a museum and can’t leave to find a little snack. If you happened to find accommodations that has a fridge and or stove that will help you expand the types of food you can buy. It can be worth paying a few dollars more for accommodations with a fridge/stove then it is to eat out every meal. I normally try to go for a free breakfast, light lunch, and then treat myself for a dinner out. By the end of the day I want to relax and take in the cities fine dining and local people watching. You still don’t need to spend a whole lot for dinner and if you are travelling with someone splitting and sharing food can help save money as well. I love travelling on my own but having a travel companion defiantly helps with cost and it’s fun to share experiences with.

A side tip a learned after making this mistake is learn what transit prices are and how far attractions are away from where you are staying. I found a really nice hostel in London for an amazing price but in the end because I didn’t look up where it was located compared to attractions we spent more in transit than if we had just stayed at a place a little more central. Map out everything! Might not be the fun part of planning but make sure you have access to everywhere you want to go. I would also recommend looking into Hop on Hop off. They are in every major city and are a great tour for what I would say is totally worth the price. You control your schedule and what you want to see. It even comes with an automated tour guild. My husband likes information so he listens to it and fills me in on interesting and important stuff. I like to take in the sounds of the city. I also know I’d never remember anything. We used them in Athens and our first ride we did the whole bus route as a way to see the city and get a lay of the land and then from there on we got off at the stops we wanted to see. In Athens I made sure we were staying at a place close to one of the Hop on Hop off stops. It saved us a long walk and it saved money on extra transit.

$1,000 dollar trip? It is possible! You can fly and stay in Europe, Asia and South America for up to none week for only $1000. Just do the research or you can purchase my step by step $1,000 trip planner.

Happy exploring,

Izzy

Introduce Yourself (Example Post)

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
What topics do you think you’ll write about?
Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.