29 May My Personal Story: How I Saved Money to Travel

Posted at 12:00h in Budget Travel, Travel Stories by Caroline Rose 2 Comments

0 Likes

These are the questions I get most…

"How can you afford your travels?"

"HOW DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH MONEY?"

"HOW DID YOU SAVE?"

"HOW MUCH DID YOU SAVE?"

"ARE YOU SPONSORED?

"ARE YOU RICH?"

"HOW? HOW? HOW????"

And I get it! When you see pictures of paradise, it’s difficult to not see dollar signs too. And it’s frustrating when you see someone in a new paradise every other day for months at a time, all while you’re living the 9-5 life and wondering what you’re doing wrong – trust me, I’ve been there.

First I would like to point out that, like almost everything shared on social media and online, my travels are a highlight reel and often times depict the destination not the journey. In order to travel for long periods of time, I had to work really hard for it and make sacrifices. So like anything really worth it in life, saving for travel requires effort and time. But I’m a firm believer that anyone can do it.

I plan on creating posts with tips on how you can save to travel, too. But before I jump into that though, I want to share my story and answer these “how” questions personally. Because I am nothing special. I’m not rich. I’m not sponsored. I do run out of money, and I do need to start working online or figure something out moving forward to make it sustainable. But up until now, I’ve always traveled off of my own savings that I earned myself. This may be a long story, but to me learning the details of someone’s travel and financial journey was always helpful to me in understanding and seeing how I could do it too.

When I was in college, I started to get this huge desire to see the world...

I’m not sure how it started, whether from seeing photos on Instagram or having a friend who had extreme wanderlust, which in turn, rubbed off on me. But I knew absolutely nothing about travel and hadn’t even been to the West Coast much less out of the country in my whole life. Plus, I was already taking out loans for college and working my way through school to pay my rent, so it looked pretty impossible for me to ever have a lifestyle other than the once a year vacation life. But then a friend introduced me to this Youtube channel called Global Degree. It was a bunch of guys backpacking through South America and Asia, and in each episode they shared the cost of living and activities they were doing. It was so cheap! I couldn’t believe it! By seeing the exact numbers, I started to realize, this is something that is actually attainable. But I wasn’t ready to backpack country to country, and so instead I looked into volunteer and internship opportunities abroad. That way I could travel and further my career at the same time. That seemed safe (I ended up going to South Africa for 3 months and working in maximum security prisons, so you decide if that sounds safe to you or not lol).

Leading up to my trip to South Africa in 2016, I graduated college a semester early and used that time to save my money by working 3 jobs. A day job at a tanning salon that paid a little more than minimum wage, a research position at the university I graduated from that paid minimum wage, and bartending at a night club on weekends which brought in most of my cash. With these saved earnings, I bought a round trip flight to South Africa, paid for my apartment there (about $400 a month), paid 3 months of student loans (covering my time there) and went with about $2,500 in my account to cover spending. When I came back from South Africa at the start of 2017, I returned with a burning desire to keep traveling, but $0 in my account. I actually ended up going into the negatives, because I had to use my credit card while I searched for a job.

I returned with a burning desire to keep traveling, but $0 in my account.

Eventually, within a month or so of returning, I earned a job at an eating disorder hospital in Richmond, VA. Unfortunately, although mental health is something I’m passionate about, entry level jobs in the field pay next to nothing. While only being paid $14 an hour, I knew at this rate I would barely be able to support myself much less save money to travel long term once again. So I made two sacrifices. On top of all ready working 40-50 hours a week at my day job, I began doing bottle service at a day and night club from Thursdays – Sundays. But I didn’t want all my cash going to cost of living; I knew how far a dollar goes traveling so I wasn’t going to fall into the temptation of getting my own place and paying high rent. In search for a cheap place, my friend in Richmond offered up his basement to me. It was an unfinished basement with no windows and pretty musty, but I wanted to save for travel so badly I took it. So in exchange for cleaning the apartment, I paid $150 a month to stay in my friend’s basement while I worked two jobs relentlessly.

But it wasn’t as simple as pocketing all the cash coming through. Like everyone in the world, I had some bumps along the road. I had student debt and a credit card to pay off, and eventually I had to buy my own car. I ended up making a poor decision on a used car, and ended up investing a couple thousand more than I would have liked into that car, which ended up costing me upwards of $7,000. Several months later, the end of 2017, I ended up moving home in an attempt to save even more money, started a job working with children with autism paying $20 an hour, and started bartending Thursday-Saturday nights. With all the working I was doing, I managed to keep up with my bills, pay off my credit card, and save $13,000 over time.

In 2018, it was now over a year and a half since I had returned back home from South Africa. So with the money I saved, I planned a 3 month road trip around the United States with my sister. The plan was to take the trip (which I budgeted out very well), come back and work a few months, and then take off for Asia. However, things don’t always go as planned.

When I returned from the road trip in the middle of 2018, I had about $9,000. I wanted to bartend for a month or two, pocket the cash, and then take off backpacking. However, that car I had invested in ended up with a faulty transmission, a repair that would cost more than the car was worth. I had no choice but to get rid of the car, and therefore pay it off, which was about $2,000. At this point with $7,000 in my account, I could still take off backpacking but I really didn’t feel comfortable with this amount at the time. So I got a cheap car that would last me 9 months for $1500, which I paid up front in cash, and began living at home, working two jobs once again.

Again, I lived this way for about a year. Working days and nights and saving. However, I didn’t save as much as I could have this time around; although I sacrificed my social life, I developed a serious long distance relationship which I invested a good amount of money into and took off a lot of work, in order to be in Miami so often to see my partner. Halfway through the year, I dropped one of my jobs as well, only working one and using the rest of my time to study for exams to get me back into school. At this point, backpacking was nearly in the back of my mind. However, when life took a turn as it usually does, I found myself in a situation where my next steps were no longer there. But I had $10,000 in my account, and an almost forgotten dream to travel.

So I immediately began planning and within a month I was out the door and on a flight to Singapore. I ended up traveling for about 6 months before coming home. At home it’s been back to bartending, and hopefully I’ll be out the door again soon.

Update: *now with coronavirus, I’m jobless and looking for any ways of working online. Hopefully in the end this will be a blessing if I make it work, because then I can travel anywhere in the world while working once this is over. We’ll see!

That’s my financial journey concerning travel. Not the best, but honest! Hopefully it answered any questions you might have had, and you realize you can do it too!