WoW 5: Don’t just dream it, Do it!
What better time to take a step back and put some travel goals in play than when you’re trapped in your house for too many days to even count. We have been putting some intentional thought around our next 3 years and what our TRAVEL goals are in that time frame. While winging it can be a great way to go about your next adventure.. When you have a tight budget, limited vacation days, or a bucket list that never ends that you are continually trying to re-prioritize, a plan can really help make your dreams go the furthest within the means you have. So why not take some time in quarantine to set your travel goals and see if you can make some dreams come true?
We wanted to share with all of you some tips and tricks we have found helpful to bring our travel visions to life; making the most of our time and money as it relates to travel -
1. Make a list and prioritize destinations. Your list and your partners list of dream destinations may not all look one in the same. If you find you have lots of differences, you may have think a little harder about how you will prioritize picking your next destination. See if you can find a few places that overlap and those may be re-prioritized to the top. Or, you can decide if you want to rotate one of your dream destinations with theirs for an every other trip cycle.
2. If you are planning a trip with a destination already in mind, be flexible on the time frame. If you are working with spring break as your only option for a time frame in which to travel, some destinations are not ideal at that time. You want to do your research to see not only when the weather plays nice, which could mean ensuring for abundant snow your your ski vacation or if you are trying to plan a beach vacation ensuring the variables are right for optimal sunshine - sometimes you have to adjust the time you go to make sure it is in alignment with your goal for that particular destination. Sometimes weather patterns alone aren’t the only variable in planning the time of year to travel to a destination, you may also want to take into account other variables such as tourism highs and lows. If you are trying to go on the off season to save money and hide from crowds, off seasons can look very different depending on the destination. Planning earlier, can usually lend you a better chance to be able to go when it’s ideal for your goals.
3. Don’t be afraid to play with Holidays. We often look at our work holiday calendar and try to back up trips to when we have “freebie” days. When you have a limited number of vacation days, and a long bucket list they don’t always play nice together. By planning trips around some free days, it allows you to better safeguard your vacation days and make them go much further. Do you have a destination that you could do over a long weekend? It’s always a good idea to back it up to something like Memorial Day or Labor Day!
4. Sometimes it pays to be exclusive. If you travel often, think about what companies are widely available to satisfy your needs. Think of airlines and hotels specifically (if you’re a hotel person). If you can stick to the same airline and continually build up “miles” or “points”, eventually your flights start paying for themselves. With the points we currently have, we are looking at not paying for a single flight in 2021 with 3 destinations in mind. If you are hotel exclusive, you will start to reap the benefits of free nights and it really does add up if you are regularly on the go.
Just a quick peak at some of our most recent Airbnb stays - Many more came before, and many more yet to come!
5. On the flip side of that, don’t be afraid to explore Airbnb. We are big fan’s of Airbnb and have been using the platform for years. We often hear misunderstandings around the quality and safety of the platform. If you’ve never given it a try, I would urge you to do so. It can truly be a game changer for making your budget go further in a new destination while NOT compromising on quality. You read that right, we have stayed in many Airbnb’s that were nicer than a hotel has ever been. Another way it can help stretch your budget further? They are often equipped with a kitchen. Eating out is fun on vacation and absolutely brings value in understanding a new place through their food. However, if you’re on a longer trip, eating out for breakfast, lunch and dinner can become a daunting task. Having a kitchen to prep coffee and a quick breakfast in the morning can not only save you time but also money before you head out for a day of adventures.
6. Get extra travel money for the spending you are already doing. Once you’ve identified your preferred airline… look into getting their credit card. We are not ones to often say open a new credit card, because generally that’s not a good move in our opinion. However, in this instance it has really paid for itself time and time again. For us, we identified Delta as our ideal airline partner. When signing up for their credit card, as with most airlines, you get a pretty large lump sum of “miles” as a sign on bonus. In addition, depending on the level of card you get, you get other travel perks. For us, our card came with a free domestic travel companion ticket every year. That means we can fly anywhere within the US each year and for one of us that flight will be free. Then as we use it on our purchases, we are continuously earning more ‘miles’ for buying things we would be buying anyway. It’s a travel fund we are continually contributing to that takes barely any effort at all!
7. Lucky number seven coming in with the final tip of the day! If you are able to, set money aside before it ever hits your checking account. Decide on a number you are comfortable with that will go into a separate “travel savings” account. What I mean by that is, when you get paid it would be directly deposited into a separate account that never hits the money you use for day to day bills and activities. Maybe that’s $50 a paycheck, maybe that’s $200. Think about your goals and if you are saving for one domestic trip a year, or traveling to a few new countries. For us, we made an easy transition into travel savings after our wedding. When we were planning our wedding we set aside a sum of money from each of our paychecks that went directly into our “wedding savings” account. Once our wedding was over, we decided to keep this savings going and have it’s purpose be our travel fund. We had already learned to live day to day without it, so we felt it served a greater purpose fueling our travel goals then helping us eat out with friends on the weekend or as money to shop for new clothes. Once you’ve committed those dollars to travel, pretend they aren’t there. Do not touch them, think about them, dip into them when it’s been a bad month. Unless of course you truly have to, don’t think of that account as money you can touch. Having this mentality has continually helped us prioritize travel and have the funds set aside to make our dreams come true!
If you’ve been struggling with visions of grandeur but no plans to execute, think about how maybe just one of these tips may help you get one step closer to your goals. With the world moving a little slower right now, it’s a great time to put some action steps in place to conquer your travel dreams! If you have a tip to share that we didn’t cover that has helped you, leave it in the comments below. As always, we are happy to help in any way we can!
**Our next bucket list destination was Arizona scheduled for the end of May around the Memorial Day Holiday.. at this point that trip is extremely unlikely. Stay tuned for more adventures yet to come!
Happy Travels (someday!),
The Starback’s
WoW 01: An Intro to Us
Biking through the countryside in the Netherlands - one of our favorite places.
(2018)
Welcome! We’re so glad you’re here. Maybe we will be the only ones that read this, and that’s okay too.
We are Mitch and Tara Starback and you may have guessed by stumbling upon our site, we love to travel. We are high school sweethearts and best friends who have been taking on life together for the last 12 years and counting. We haven’t always had the means to travel, and we get it, it seems daunting and expensive and there’s a million reasons in any given day that you think you can’t make it happen. But we decided (after we finished college and actually had an income of course ) that traveling was a non-negotiable for us. We could have fancy cars, or go out to eat every night, but that wouldn’t really leave us any more fulfilled than we were the day before.
We decided the thing that was most important for us to invest in, was travel. That mentality has continued to guide us.
That being said, we both work full time jobs and you guessed it - are tied to limited vacation time. So we have to get creative in the when and where and HOW LONG we can stay places. So stay tuned for updates along the way on how to not only get the best bang for your buck but to stretch that vacation time thiiiiiin.
What can you expect from the Starback Wanderlust travel blog? We will post about our adventures; up and coming and maybe feature some from the archives. We will share what we are doing, how we navigate unique situations, sample itineraries, tips and tricks for getting deals on travel, cultural experiences, anything…. you guessed it, travel related! Someday we hope to look back on the experiences we built together, and smile from ear to ear knowing we made the most of every moment.