One day we were sitting by the breakfast table in a luxurious BNB in the middle of Barcelona / Spain. We were sharing our travel stories with other guests and suddenly a man from Norway asked a question: How can you afford all of this? What do you do for a living?
He was a doctor and his wife a lawyer and they are from Norway. You might know already - these two professions in Norway comes with very good paychecks. And who were we? No career, no high paychecks but travelling the world. How is it possible to travel so much?
I believe this is a question that many young people have. I was young and broke years ago. Not that I would feel old and rich now but you know what I mean. For some reason, I was also able to find money to travel or do the things I want. Honestly - opportunities are all around you, especially now in this digital era. I will share some tips and tricks I know or I have used myself.
Think where you spend your money on...
First and probably the most important thing is to understand where your money goes to. There are fixed costs like your rent, utility bills, bank and phone fees and others. You can cut as much as possible on these as well, but let’s go back to the time when I was living in Vancouver BC / Canada. Most of us know that that is one of the top 10 cities to live in the world. And yes it is - it has everything y
ou might ever want from a city - a great vibe, loads of opportunities to make a career, nature all around you and many more things, but it all comes with a great cost to everything. So if you live there or honestly anywhere and make money, you also spend money. The more expensive the city the more you make but also - the more you spend. That is just the nature of life. One day I had a brilliant idea - to go all around the USA. So how can I make a road trip all around the USA if I don’t have a huge amount of money?
How to save money on clothing?
Buying things like shoes, clothes, gifts or paying for car maintenance or hairdresser is classified as an irregular cost in your life. Cut as much as possible on these as well. Remember - when you travel, you can’t take loads of stuff with you. There are loads of things to do before you go on the WOW holidays. As an example - before you hit the road get a great hairstyle. When you will be on the road, then have no limits - treat yourself because you saved up for this. Remember - You have to have a minimalist mindset before and during your trip. No matter if you are having a long term travel plan or just a weekend trip somewhere minimalist mindset will come in handy. You are not able to take everything with you when you have a limited amount of space. So there is no point to buy loads of clothing every time you feel like it. Instead, buy a minimum amount of things that you can carry or fit in a suitcase. You can always learn how to mix and match different clothing for travelling so that you would not look the same every day and would be able to use the same clothing.
How to save money every day?
Next biggest expense in your everyday life probably are things like coffee, soda, snacks and fast food. These are called variable costs in your life. Cut it all off. And I mean all of it - don’t buy these things when you are out and about. You can always make coffee at work or home and take healthy snacks on the go. When all my colleagues went to buy a bun and a coffee plus a soft drink/soda, it was not easy to resist to follow them. The best thing that worked for me was remembering my goal. When I think that I would spend anything between 10 and 15 CAD for just a few things I would eat or drink, I would imagine that money to go towards petrol for the car and that would allow me to go from point A to point B to C to D and so on. Or maybe it would go towards a ticket to see or do things I want to do. This is called goal-orientated savings. That is how you save some amount of money every day so that you can travel.
How to recognise bad habits that stop you from travelling?
Here we come to well known but many times overlooked habits like using alcohol, smoking, partying, gambling, spending money on health care and low-quality food. How many of these things you are doing on a regular basis? Many people don’t realise that this all is linked and affects you as a human and your future direction. Imagine and calculate how much money a year are you spending on the above things. I am not going to do the maths here but I suggest you - do it and think if that money you spend there could go towards tour travel goals? Two things in the example above you might be confused about are health care and low-quality food. So with the health care I mean - if you have regular pain somewhere - headaches or back pain as an example. This means you are spending money on painkillers on a regular basis but how about finding and terminating the cause of it. Just go and speak to your doctor and refuse to take painkillers - instead get to the root of the problem and eliminate it.
Next - low quality food will damage your whole body. At the end of the day, you are what you eat. Think really hard and investigate - what is good food? I have my thoughts about vegetarian, meat or vegan diets but there is one that I believe is the best for everyone. That is a paleo diet. This typically includes vegetables, lean meats, fish, fruits, nuts and seeds — foods that in the past could be obtained by hunting and gathering. A paleo diet limits foods that became common when farming e
merged about 10,000 years ago. These foods include dairy products, legumes and grains. I am not an expert in this all but I have my points that I am happy to discuss in another post. If you want me to tell you more about this then let me know in the comments. I’m happy to share my findings and that is because they allow me to travel more and save money every day.
The summary
Think carefully about your everyday expenses, and apply the tips provided above. Then the next thing is to learn how to save money while you travel and how to generate extra income so that you can travel more! If you can figure out how to generate a passive income that supports your travels that's even better. We have gone through all of this already and one good proof is a 74-day long road trip around the United States. We saw 33 states, got a car for CAD 1 and didn’t spend money on accommodation but were able to sleep in real beds have normal showers etc. That is called smart travelling on a budget. Want to learn more about this? Subscribe and follow us and keep reading. My goal is to allow more people to discover the world.
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