🌏Travel feature - How to Plan for trips (Part 1 of a 2-part series)
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
I hope you enjoy this blog but most importantly learn from it. Please share these tips with someone you hope to travel with, someone who is interested in travelling this year or someone who loves to travel.
1. Plan your year.
1. Plan your year.
In planning your year, it is good to decide how many trips you can afford to make. Access your financial situation so that you know how much you can afford to put aside toward your trips.
2. Have a budget in mind.
Once you have decided on how many trips you want to take. Plan a budget for each trip. Your budget needs to be a sum total of everything for the trip: flights or transport costs, accommodation, spending money and even money for your pocket (carry along money).
3. Do your research
Personally, once I have a budget in mind, I then turn to research. I will pick a time range that is preferable for the trip. For example, if I know I want to make one trip within the first 4 or 5 months of the year, I will search for flights to Barcelona for 30 April - 2nd May and then 7th May - 11th May etc. and then compare the prices.
But before I go searching, I use a web browser in Incognito mode to search for flights to my preferred destinations within those dates. Why? Websites use a thing called cookies and they save your searches in order to provide web browsers with information about your interests. This is then sold to advertisers who will sell you what they know you like. So NO NO to cookies. Or else, the prices you saw the last time will be hiked as the travel agents and airlines know that they might have a potential customer for this and that date.
I tend to use Google flights(incognito mode still) to search flight prices and availability because I can see the prices for the dates and can decide which dates are cheaper.
I will also look at costs of accommodation for those dates and seek out potential places I will stay so that I can see how it fits into my budget.
4. Breakdown your budget/spending.
Once I have done my research, I can then decide on my spending for each of these:
- Flights
- Accommodation
- Tours
- Transportation
- Expenditure - food/drink, daily travel, shopping
5. Start a savings plan.
A lesson I have learnt about saving is this, one must save for a purpose.
So on the topic of travel, make sure you are saving purposely toward your travels. A starting point is to allocate a separate account for travel. And every month or as regularly as you can, put in some money towards your well-awaited trip.
I will be writing a separate post on 'how to save for travel' so keep your eyes out for that.
You can buy your flight tickets once you have gathered enough funds to cover the flights. I always advise that you get flexible tickets so that you don't pay extra if you wish to change the travel dates or location. For this reason, I prefer travelling with established airlines like British Airways for instance rather than budget airlines (...👀🤐)
I will be writing a separate post on 'how to save for travel' so keep your eyes out for that.
You can buy your flight tickets once you have gathered enough funds to cover the flights. I always advise that you get flexible tickets so that you don't pay extra if you wish to change the travel dates or location. For this reason, I prefer travelling with established airlines like British Airways for instance rather than budget airlines (...👀🤐)
I will also advise that if you tend to travel with a particular airline, you should definitely consider joining their membership scheme or club. That way, you can earn points and other special offers towards future trips.
6. Prepare.
You will need to sort out visas or vaccinations in good time, especially if you are travelling to tropical countries. While you've got some time ahead of you, use this time to do some research into the place you intend to travel to. Find out about their currency, cultures, places of interest and levels of safety. Sometimes, you may need to learn some basics of their language if speaking English alone will be too difficult to get around.
If you have booked for travel which involves monthly/periodical payments then making payments will be part of your preparation stage.
7. Get travel insurance and medical/life insurance.
The good thing about travel insurance is that often you can get it with the airline when you are booking your flight. Now in recent years, with the COVID-19 pandemic still around, it is advisable to have medical insurance. Most times this is covered within the travel insurance policy, but make sure you read the small print to know what you are signing up for.
That's it for today! Thank you for reading this blog. I hope you enjoyed this blog but most importantly learned a lot from it. I am currently saving up for a trip I hope to make and putting some key money principles into practice. As mentioned, come back again for the next 🌏Intraordinary Travels post on 'How to Save for your trips'. In the meantime, you can check out my YouTube channel for more on my life and travel expeditions.
Till next time,
Happy Living!
Claudy xoxo
Thank you, Claudia.
ReplyDeleteYou are so organised. I always do all these when I'm at security check point, even when I prepare everything into each individual pocket, when it's time to take action that's when I realise I have some contraband on me and I put my passport and documents into different pocket and by the time I'm asked to present the ticket all my documents are in my hands.
That's when I start to pray, if not then all of arrangements can go ⤵️ even when going to my hometown.
Perhaps you could therefore add one more point -> travel as light as possible.
I will use your check-list from now on.
Amen 🙏