College students have a well-earned reputation for being both resourceful and penniless. Even with a job, full-time studies limit your hours, and limited work experience usually means modest pay from student employment.
Yet even as a student, Lauren Juliff managed to sock away enough money to fund a post-grad, round-the-world adventure. The roughly $24,000 she accumulated sustained her travels for two years.
Did she build that fund through quirky schemes like selling biological samples or mystery shopping? Not at all. Lauren juggled part-time retail roles while finishing her degree. Working at a garden center, in a pharmacy and at a supermarket, she averaged about 20 hours per week and earned roughly $14,000 a year.
Although her income was modest, she still saved over $20,000 across five years. Below are the strategies she used as a student to cut expenses and bankroll her dream trip around the globe.
1. Keep the Goal Crystal Clear
When saving for something big, two things matter: a vivid picture of what you want and a firm timeline for achieving it.
Lauren decided on day one of university that she wanted to travel after graduation. “I’ve always been happiest away from home,” she said. “Vacations always felt too short and far too infrequent.”
Because she set a concrete objective early and knew her college years were her saving window, she began funneling money into her travel pot right away.
2. Use Your Loan Grace Period Wisely
If student loan repayments had started the moment Lauren graduated, globe-trotting might have been off the table.
Being from London and having studied in the UK, she didn’t have to begin repayments immediately after finishing university. She only had to start repaying once she secured a job and earned above a certain threshold — making the period right after college an ideal time to travel. Without a salaried position, loan payments weren’t yet due.
3. Break the Goal into Manageable Chunks
A long-term savings target can feel overwhelming, so Lauren split her objective into monthly goals. She aimed to tuck away $500 each month. Realistically, she averaged about $400 per month.
Open a separate savings account and set a realistic monthly contribution target. Keeping those funds separate — perhaps with a different bank than your everyday account — helps keep the money out of sight and out of mind.
There are many solid online banks, but my favorite is definitely Chase because they’re currently offering Savinly readers $250 just to open an account.
4. Live on the Bare Essentials
Saving $400–$500 each month wasn’t easy. Lauren limited her spending to necessities and funneled every spare penny into her travel fund.
She avoided buying new clothes she didn’t need (especially since space would be limited while traveling). Nights out were swapped for home movie evenings. She packed lunches, which saved about $2,500 a year. Skipping a daily $5 coffee saved roughly $2,000 annually.
She even took drastic measures to lower bills. “One vivid memory is sitting inside on a snowy day with the heating off, bundled in five blankets,” she recalled. But it was all for her travel savings.
“Sometimes it felt like I had a pretty poor quality of life,” Lauren admitted. “But once I was on the road, I knew it had been worth it!”
5. Translate Purchases into Travel Time
Lauren often felt the urge to buy new things, so she used a mental trick to avoid unnecessary spending. She reframed potential purchases in terms of how much travel time the money would buy.
For instance, she estimated travel in Thailand would cost about $15 per day. “If I was tempted by a $50 pair of shoes, I’d remind myself that skipping the purchase would buy me an extra three days in Southeast Asia.”
6. Sell What You Don’t Need
As graduation neared and her departure date approached, Lauren executed the second phase of her funding plan: Anything that wouldn’t fit in her backpack was sold. That meant clothes, books, CDs, DVDs, textbooks and even her guitar. She also cleared out random clutter from her room.
“My rule was if I could make at least $5 from selling something, it was worth listing,” she said. Items that didn’t sell were usually donated. She figures selling her belongings brought in about $5,000. “Clearing out years’ worth of junk was liberating and boosted my travel kitty,” she said.
While she recommends selling unused items to build savings, she wishes she’d started earlier. “I left most of it until six months before I left, which made that period frantic as I rushed to sell as much as possible,” she admitted.
7. Eliminate Rent Costs
Before departing, Lauren wanted to buy a few larger items like a sturdy backpack and a decent camera, plus pay for travel insurance and vaccinations. To avoid depleting her travel fund, she moved back in with her parents. “Cutting rent had a major positive impact on my travel savings,” she said.
Enjoy the Journey!
The roughly $24,000 Lauren saved funded two years of travel. Along the way she learned how to earn money while on the move through her blog Never Ending Footsteps. She’s been traveling full-time for four years and has visited 45 countries.
Does she regret turning off the heating and skipping social outings to fund her trip? Although she would still have scrimped to some degree, she says she might not have been so extreme if she could do it again. “I wouldn’t have been quite as harsh on my bills, and I’d have seen my friends more often,” she reflected.
Your Turn: Have you ever built a large fund for a big goal? What tactics worked best for you?
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Alexandra Gray is a Chicago-based freelance copywriter. She loves cycling through every city she visits to discover the best taquerias.
