Different Ways to Save for Trips

There are tons of different ways to save towards a trip. As two people with smaller incomes, I thought I would share the ways that have worked for us in the past. Keep in mind some of these strategies helped us pay for an entire trip but some of them also just helped us save a portion.

We set up a Tangarine Bank account specifically to save towards trips. We found when the money is in our every day bank account, we spend it on something else instead. We need it to be "out of sight, out of mind" and Tangarine Bank accounts have no fees so its our top choice for saving for things like this. We have an "Orange Key" for anyone interested in signing up for an account (we do earn money if you use it) : 62179666S1

Save the 5's

Before Covid and having my own kiddos, I did a lot of babysitting where I was paid cash. So our general rule of thumb was that we wouldn't spend $5 bills. Whether I got them as part of the payment or we got them in our change when we were shopping, we always set them aside to save towards a trip.

52 Envelopes

This one we modified what we saw online to work better for us. There was a challenge a few years ago that went around where you took 52 envelopes and wrote a number on each one ranging from 1-52. Each week you pick an envelope and put that much money into it.

We never have cash on us anymore, so instead we numbered pieces of paper and moved that amount of money into our Trip Fund bank account. We also decided that both my husband and I would participate so we picked two numbers each week instead of just one and we had two sets of all of the numbers.

If you do one set of number (1-52) at the end of the year you will have $1378 saved.

$1 Per Week

Similar to the last challenge, we added $1 each week for an entire year. We did this two years in a row and did it opposite ways each time. We had a hard time saving the largest amounts ($49, $50, $51 and $52 = $202) in the month of December when we already had Christmas to pay for. So one year we started in January with the large numbers so that in the month of December we only had to set aside $10 to meet our goal.

Again, at the end of the year you should have $1378 saved.

Weekly or Biweekly Saving

Another year we picked a set amount of money to put aside every week like $20-$50.

$20 a week would make for $1040

$50 a week would make for $2600

Our best year financially, we set aside $95 a week so we had $4940 at the end of the year.

Selling on Facebook Marketplace

Anytime we decide we want to take a trip, I go around our house and collect all the items we no longer use so I can sell them. We've never sold enough to pay for an entire trip, but all of our Disney trips we've used the money to pay for our food and souvenirs which has been incredibly helpful.

The key for us is we always decide towards the end of the year what our goal is going to be for the following year. We usually go over our budget first to see how much money is left over after all our bills are paid and then divide up the remaining amount of money into all of the things we need to save towards or want to spend our money on (a trip, a new car, eating out, Christmas, Birthday presents, etc). I'll be honest, there isn't always a lot of extra money to spread around. Those times we also look at where in our budget we can make cuts, call our various bill companies and try to lower them and challenge ourselves to eat out less or my husband will work some overtime to try to help us reach our goals.

Whats your favourite way to save towards a trip or a bigger priced item?