If you’ve ever visited Disney World, the Grand Canyon, the National Mall or any other major tourist spot, you’ve likely witnessed the vacation breakdown. A few days in, someone in the group has reached their limit: there’s sulking, tantrums and the dreaded proclamation of “I won’t move another inch until I get a nap.”
In my experience, the usual culprits are either a preschooler or a dad.
Let’s be honest, vacations can be taxing. Bad weather, grumpy children, long drives and large crowds create plenty of pressure points.
For many households, financing the trip is the biggest source of stress. Wouldn’t you prefer to travel without fretting over how to cover the costs? Would you like to relax knowing the trip is already funded? Still paying off last year’s holiday on your credit card? Then think about implementing a vacation savings plan.
What Are Vacation Savings Plans?
When my spouse and I flew to Alaska for a friend’s wedding, we only maintained one general savings account for everything. After returning and tallying receipts, I was shocked at the final bill — we had been having such a good time I didn’t notice how much we overran our budget. That was an unpleasant surprise to come home to!
To avoid that scenario next time, I established a vacation savings account. Here’s the method:
As part of your monthly budgeting, decide how much you want to put aside for vacations. Either choose a fixed amount to remove from each paycheck and save automatically, or determine an annual vacation budget and divide it by your pay cycle (monthly, bi-weekly, weekly) to find the target contribution.
Open a separate savings account dedicated to your vacation fund. There are many solid online banks, but one of my favorites is Chase because they’re offering Savinly readers a $250 bonus when you open a new checking account.
After funding retirement (you are saving for retirement, right?) and your other savings priorities, deposit the earmarked amount into that account and watch the balance grow.
Pay yourself first by scheduling an automatic transfer from the account that receives your paycheck — this reduces temptation to spend the money elsewhere.
Use Your Vacation Savings Plan to Budget Your Trip
When it’s time to arrange your next getaway, you’ll instantly know how much you can allocate — simply look at the balance in your vacation account.
Plan your trip budget the same way you manage your household budget (you do have a household budget, right?). Use destination-specific trip tools to estimate costs for lodging, meals, airfare and other expenses.
Once you have a ballpark figure for what you can afford, refine it. After booking flights and hotels, replace your initial estimates with actual charges (remember taxes and baggage fees) and use cost estimators from travel sites to budget for food.
If you’re driving, calculate the gas expense for the round trip. After accounting for these items, decide whether you want to reserve part of the funds for souvenirs.
My spouse and I saved $100 each per paycheck into our fund, and in 10 months we’d accumulated $2,000. When we opted to introduce our son to Disney World for the first time, we already had a clear budget to work with. After tallying everything, we found we even had enough left to upgrade to a nicer hotel room!
Make the Most of Your Vacation Savings Plan: A Case Study
To maximize the benefit of your vacation savings account, do your homework. Always hunt for the best travel bargains and insider tips on saving money and time while on vacation.
The few hours I invested online prepping for our Disney trip paid off handsomely.
We cut down wait times thanks to touring strategies I learned from regional bloggers. Yourfirstvisit.net provides excellent infographics comparing weather, crowd patterns, seasonal prices and even hurricane risk to help pick the ideal time to visit.
Josh at easywdw.com analyzes crowd levels at each of the four Walt Disney World parks so you can decide which park to visit on each day. He posts suggestions about eight months ahead, usually a few days after Disney releases official park hours.
Those saved hours allowed us to experience more attractions and savor the park rather than spending the day in queues.
We also saved considerable cash by comparing available promotions. Mousesavers.com regularly updates discounts and promotions: seasonal deals, free dining packages (here’s an informative piece to help weigh whether room discounts or free dining offers more savings), AAA discounts, AARP offers, military specials and more. Booking through a travel agent can sometimes secure excellent pricing as well.
I compared the Florida resident savings against the military rate and found the military discount provided better value for our booking.
Making a Dream Vacation Attainable
After seeing how effective the vacation savings account method was for our Disney trip, I decided to aim higher. My wife has always dreamt of visiting New Zealand, which felt out of reach until I shifted my mindset.
Rather than telling myself it was unaffordable, I sat down and mapped out how we could make it happen. If we set aside $167 per month, in five years we’d have $10,000 saved. That’s the trip of a lifetime and I no longer worry about how to pay for it.
Your Turn: Have you used a vacation savings account to plan a trip?
Daniel Hart is a freelance writer/blogger from Jacksonville, FL. You can visit his blog atwww.portofdisembarkation.com
