Part 11: How To Afford Travel
Quick note—Because somebody asked me about this the other day.
I use a lot of bold and italic type in my writing for a reason.
For better or worse, reading online—particularly articles online—has turned us into skimmers. If you’re going to skim, I like to provide points throughout my articles where your eyes might naturally stop. I call it the bread crumb approach, with bold and italic words, sentences and sections being the bread crumbs.
Sometimes I bread crumb important points. Sometimes I bread crumb around transitions. Sometimes I bread crumb words that lead into important points.
Ideally, you follow the bread crumbs with your eyes if you’re skimming, then maybe slow down and go back to read what’s between the bread crumbs. Or, better yet, you just read every word, whether it’s bread crumbed or not!
In any event, it’s an approach I have found to be effective after testing various iterations. As a reader of quite a few articles on the internet each day, I like when authors give me bread crumbs.
Madrid, Spain
In the few weeks since returning from our trip to Spain and Italy, we have heard stories of people spending exorbitant amounts of money on international travel.
Like $10,000 between two people to hit three cities in Europe for two weeks. Or more than $1,000 per flight, per person to go to Europe this summer.
If this is what people think it costs to travel, it’s no wonder others brand international travel too financially rich for their blood sight unseen.
I often joke with my girlfriend that I’m not very good at many things. (It’s actually true). However, I like to pat myself on the back for the handful of things I am good at, such as planning and booking travel.
So, in today’s installment, we’ll cover a handful of tips, tricks and non-negotiables I use when booking travel, be it domestic or international.
Then, we’ll segue into how to ensure you can afford to take multiple trips per year. Multiple meaning 1 or 2 big, international trips, a couple to a few domestic trips via air and a handful or two of day trips and multi-day local trips, such as camping, via train or automobile.
The last three installments of this March series go deep into pots of money, finding the floor on your cost of living and my alternative to traditional, pie chart budgeting—backwards budgeting. Each installment builds on the one that came before it, merging into a comprehensive cash allocation strategy that allows you to do things such as travel, even if you “only” earn decent or better money. If you are, like me, of modest means.
So, consider reading them—complete with bread crumbs!—and if you haven’t already, become a paid subscriber now…