Saving up to launch yourself into the trip of a lifetime is an endeavour that can soon get pushed off track and into a vicious circle if you are the type of person who finds themselves vulnerable to impulse shopping.
You may have taken on a new job or a few months of overtime to earn yourself a bit of security, a one-way ticket or some spending money for when you go away, but when those serious paychecks start to add it up can be very difficult to resist the urge to splurge.
Before you know it, you’re sixty years old, divorced with three kids and you’re working double-shifts to pay off decades of credit card abuse. And guess what – you never got around to taking that trip! Well, maybe that’s a bit of leap, but all the same if you want to save for adventures to experience rather than possessions to pile up on shelves, you need to get your spending under control.
Little can stand in the way of your traveler lifestyle more than those credit cards. If you have hundreds or thousands of dollars to pay back each month, you’re chasing your tail before you’ve even begun: instead of saving up, you’re paying off; and the whole time you travel, you’ll need to work (or cut your trip short) to meet those monthly payments.
What’s more, the very existence of credit cards encourages you to shop more in the first place. It’s all so easy with a credit card: swipe it in a shop, or click-to-buy online, and you barely even feel the pinch – until your bill arrives.
So leave the cards at home when you leave the house, never save your credit card details to online store websites, and try to divert your earnings to a special account where you can see your holiday fund pile up.
And for a host of other impulse buying solutions, you might want to make a note of some the techniques in this new infographic. Your money should be what frees you to travel, not what anchors you to your regular life.