I hear lots of people talking about how they wished they could save money to travel or they wished they didn't have so many bills. Maybe they're banking on winning the lottery to get them going.
It's easy to get caught up in this belief, thinking people who travel are so much luckier than you are and things have just worked in their favour.
"But I DO really want to travel" I hear you say. "I'd do anything!"
I believe you. But you need to know that saving money to for a big trip isn't easy and you have to put the work in if you really want it. Most people who travel didn't just receive money which they could do whatever they wanted with. It takes effort, dedication and commitment to stay strong and it means turning down more events than you attend.
It's tough work and you'll probably need to stick to it for a long time, especially if you want to go away for a while. But there is one thing that'll always keep you going - the light at the end of the tunnel. And, it's a bright one!
Is travel really what you want to be doing more than anything in the whole wide world? OK, great. Then let's go through the 8 warning signs that you may never save the money to go. Knowing these means you can make the changes required and finally start preparing to be on your way.
1. You're still buying new clothes
Even if deep down you know that you don't need anything new you're still giving in to the idea that you need a new outfit for an event. Or maybe you just really like something and decide you deserve it. What do you like more - the dress or a travel lifestyle?
2. You spend money you don't have on your credit card
There's nothing wrong in using a credit card if you're doing it to get airline points or if it lowers the interest rate on your home loan. If you're using it this way then I assume you're also making sure to pay it off each month to avoid fees.
But if you're spending money on your credit card just because you haven't been paid yet then you'll never get ahead enough to save.
Be sure to track every bit of money you spend on your cards, actually write it down somewhere or go through your statements regularly. It's a lot easier paying for things on the go when you're not handing over physical cash. Purchases made by card can add up very quickly without you even realising it.
3. When you get a pay rise you raise your debt
Just because you are now receiving more money in your account doesn't mean you need to upgrade your phone, car or apartment. You might think you deserve it, and I've got no doubt you do, but that's showing where your priorities are.
If you still have debt, a pay rise will help you pay it off quicker and then allow you to save cash for whatever you want to do. Rather than wasting money on the extra payments for your newly aquired loans, you could be pocketing it.
Be patient. Is the short-term thrill worth the spend? I would LOVE a brand new car, but I have my priorities straight, and travel is nรบmero uno.
4. You can't be bothered working out a money target
Doing the research to figure out your goal can be time-consuming and a little overwhelming. Even so, it's really important to get to this figure as soon as possible. If you don't have an amount in mind then you don't know what you're working towards and you also don't know how far you have to go.
It's easy to get caught up in the "I'll just save as much as I can and buy a ticket when I have enough money" trap because it seems like the simplest solution. But beware, it can put you out for years. Figure out your money target as soon as you can and start planning how to get there.
5. You don't have a budget to stick to
If it's in your account you can spend it, right? Maybe you'll just try to save a little extra next pay.
Go back to #4, work out your final goal, work out how much money you need to put away and how much you can spend each week, then work out a weekly budget to get you there. That's it.
6. Your coffee dates easily turn into lunch dates
I used to meet friends for coffee on an empty stomach half knowing I'd buy a light lunch or snack (erm, cake) as well. You can still catch up with friends but try to minimise the overall spend. Eat a sandwich at home then just have coffee when you're out. This will also help you prepare for the life of travel where it's not always in your budget to constantly eat out.
7. You really like big nights
Maybe you go out for a casual wine or two then all of a sudden your credit card is behind the bar while you're ordering another round of tequila from the table you're dancing on.
If you get in the party mood really easily then maybe just take a $50 note with you and leave the credit cards at home.
8. You're afraid to commit to doing whatever it takes
Making the commitment means that you're taking a big step to being closer to your dreams but also to leaving the life you know. And that freaks you the heck out.
Yes, it can be terrifying, but that's nothing compared to feeling the regret. If travel is something you're dreaming about then it's time - make the decision and dedicate yourself to the outcome. I know you can do it.
๋์ ๋ฐ๋ฌผ๊ด
neilalderney123/Flickr
๊ณ ๋ ์ ์ ์ ํฌ์ด๋ผ๋ฉด ๊ผญ ๋ค๋ ค์ผ ํ ๊ณณ. ์ ๋ฝ, ์๋ ์ ์ธ๊ณ ์ต๊ณ ์ ๋ณด๋ฌผ๋ค์ด ์ ์๋์ด ์๋ค.
ํฐ์นผ, ๊ณผํ
๋ง๋ผ
Justin Foulkes / Lonely Planet
๊ณผํ
๋ง๋ผ์์ ๊ฐ์ฅ ์ค์ํ ๋ง์ผ๋ฌธ๋ช
์ ์ ์ง๋ค. ํ๋ ๋ฒ์ฑํ๋ ์ด ๋์๋ฌธ๋ช
์ ์ผ์ค์คํ ์ ๊ธ์ ๋ถ์๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ๋ด๋ฟ๋๋ค.
ํํธ๋ผ, ์๋ฅด๋จ
Joe Windsor-Williams / Lonely Planet
๋ง์ ์ฌ๋๋ค์ด ํํธ๋ผ์ ์ธ์์ ์ํ '์ธ๋์๋ ์กด์ค'๋ก๋ถํฐ ๋ ์ฌ๋ฆฐ๋ค. ํ์ง๋ง ์ํฌ(Siq, ํ๊ณก)์ ๊ทน์ ์ธ ๊ด๊ฒฝ ๋ง๊ณ ๋ ํฌ์์ ๋จ(High Place of Sacrifice), ์๋์, ์๋ง์ ๋ฌด๋ค์ ํํํ ์ ์๋ค.
12์ฌ๋ ๋ฐ์, ํธ์ฃผ
Pete Seaward / Lonely Planet
๊ทธ๋ ์ดํธ ์ค์
๋ก๋์ ์์, ๋ผ์์คํค์ฝ์คํธ์ ํน๋ณํ ๊ฒฝ์น๋ฅผ ๊ฐ์ํด๋ณด์. 12์ฌ๋ ๋ฐ์๊ฐ ๋ง์๋ ์ผ์ดํฌ ์์ ์ฒด๋ฆฌ์ฒ๋ผ ๋ณด์ผ ๊ฒ์ด๋ค.
ํ์ค ๋ฉ๋๋, ๋ชจ๋ก์ฝ
Getty Images/Flickr RF
9400๊ฐ์ ๊ณจ๋ชฉ๊ธธ๋ก ์ด๋ฃจ์ด์ง ์ด ๋ณต์กํ ๋ฏธ๋ก์๋ 1๋ง4์ฒ๊ฐ์ ๊ฑด๋ฌผ๊ณผ 16๋ง๋ช
์ ์ฌ๋๋ค์ด ๊ณต์กดํ๋ค. ์๊ธฐ๋ 1์ฒ๋
๋ ๋ ์ ์ผ๋ก ๊ฑฐ์ฌ๋ฌ ์ฌ๋ผ๊ฐ๋ค.
์์ผ ์ํผ์, ํฐํค
Mark Read / Lonely Planet
ํ๋์ ๊ฑด๋ฌผ์ ๊ตํ, ๋ชจ์คํฌ, ๋ฐ๋ฌผ๊ด์ด ์๋ ์ด์คํ๋ถ์ ์์ผ ์ํผ์๋ ๋ญ๋ผ ์ ์๋ด๋ฆฌ๊ธฐ ํ๋ ๊ณณ์ด๋ค. ์ฝ 1์ฒ500๋
์ ๋น์ํด์๋ ํฉ์ ์ ์คํฐ๋์๋์ค 1์ธ์ ์ง์๋ก ์ง์ด์ก๋ค. ํฉ์ ๋ ์ฒ๊ตญ์ ์ฅ์ํจ์ ์ง์์ ์ฌํํ๊ณ ๋ก๋ง์ ๊ตญ์ ๊ฒฝ์ด๋ก์์ ๋ฌด์ํ๊ฒ ํ ๋์ฑ๋น์ ์ํ๋ค.
์๋๋ธ๋ผ๊ถ์ , ์คํ์ธ
Pete Seaward / Lonely Planet
๊น์์ง๋ฅธ ๋ฏํ ๋นจ๊ฐ์ ๋ฒฝ์ด ์ฐ์ ๋ฐฐ๊ฒฝ์ผ๋ก ์ฐ๋ ์ ์๋ค. ์ด ๊ถ์ ์ ๊ทธ๋ผ๋ค๋์ ์ค์นด์ด๋ผ์ธ์ ๊ตฌ์ฑํ๋๋ฐ, ์๋ง๋ ์ ์ธ๊ณ์์ ๊ฐ์ฅ ์ธ๋ จ๋ ์ด์ฌ๋ ๋ฏธ์ ์ ๋ณผ ์ ์์ ๊ฒ์ด๋ค. ์ค์ธ ์คํ์ธ ๋ฌด์ด ํต์น ์๋๋ฅผ ์ฟ๋ณผ ์ ์๋ 800๋
์ด๋ ๋ ์ฌ๋ณผ์ด๊ธฐ๋ ํ๋ค.
์ด๊ณผ์ ํญํธ, ์๋ฅดํจํฐ๋
Matt Munro / Lonely Planet
์ด๊ณผ์ ํญํฌ๋ ๊ณผ๋ผ๋์กฑ์ ์ธ์ด๋ก 'ํฐ ๋ฌผ(Big Water)'์ด๋ผ๋ ๋ป์ ๊ฐ์ง๊ณ ์๋ค. ์ด ํญํฌ๋ ๋๋ฌด๋๋ ๊ฑฐ๋ํด์, ์์์ ๋ณด๋ฉด ํญํฌ ์๋์ ํฌ์ด๋ณดํธ๊ฐ ์ฑ๋ฅ๊ฐ๋น์ฒ๋ผ ์๊ฒ ๋ณด์ธ๋ค.
์ฝ๋ก์ธ์, ์ดํ๋ฆฌ์
Justin Foulkes / Lonely Planet
5๋ง๋ช
์ ์์ฉํ ์ ์๋ ์ด ์ํ๊ทน์ฅ์ ๋ก๋ง์์ ๊ฐ์ฅ ํฅ๋ฏธ์ง์งํ ์ฅ์๋ค. ์ด๊ณณ์ผ๋ก ๋ฐ์ ๋ค์ฌ๋๋ ๋๊ตฌ๋ผ๋ ๊ฑฐ์น ๊ณ ๋ฌด์๋นํ ํ์ ๋๋ ์ ์๋ ๊ฑด์ถ๋ฌผ์ด๊ธฐ๋ ํ๋ค.
๊ทธ๋๋์บ๋์ธ, ๋ฏธ๊ตญ
Mark Read / Lonely Planet
20์ต ๋
์ด๋ผ๋ ์๊ฐ์ด ๋ง๋ค์ด๋ธ ๊ฑธ์. 447km ๊ธธ์ด๋ ์ ๋ง์ด์ง ๊ฒฝ์ด๋ก์์ ์์๋ธ๋ค.
ํ์ง๋งํ , ์ธ๋
Mark Read / Lonely Planet
ํ์ง๋งํ ์ ํฌ๋ฏธํ๊ฒ ๋น๋๋ ํฐ์ ๋๋ฆฌ์, ์์ฒ ๊ฐ์ ์ค๋ณด์, ๋ณต์กํ ์ด์ฌ๋ ํจํด์ด ์๋ฒฝํ๊ฒ ๊ท ํ์ ์ด๋ฃจ๋ ๊ณณ์ด๋ค. ํฉํ ๋ญํ์ฆ ๋งํ ์ ๋ฌ์ด๊ธฐ๋ํ ํ์ง๋งํ ์, ํ๋ง๋๋ก ์๋ฒฝํ ๊ฑด์ถ๋ฌผ์ด๋ค.
๋ง๋ฆฌ์ฅ์ฑ, ์ค๊ตญ
Mark Read / Lonely Planet
์ฐ์ฃผ์์๋ ๋ง๋ฆฌ์ฅ์ฑ์ด ๋ณด์ธ๋ค๋ ๋ง์ ๋ฏธ์ ์ด์ง๋ง, ๊ฐํ์ ์์๋ด๋ 885km ๊ธธ์ด์ ์ฅ์ฑ์ ๋ณด๊ณ ์๋
ธ๋ผ๋ฉด ์ ๋ง์ด์ง ๋๋ ์๊ณ ์์ํ ๊ฒ๋ง ๊ฐ๋ค.
๋ง์ถํฝ์ถ, ํ๋ฃจ
Philip Lee Harvey / Lonely Planet
๋ง์ถํฝ์ถ๋ ๋๋ผ๋งํฑํ ์๋ฐ์ค ์ฐ๋งฅ์ ๋ฐฐ๊ฒฝ์ผ๋ก ํ๊ณ ์์ผ๋ฉฐ, ๋์๊ฐ ๋ฏฟ๊ธฐ ์ด๋ ค์ด ๊ฐํ๋ฅธ ๊ฒฝ์ฌ์ ํ์ฑ๋์ด ์๋ค. ๊ทธ ๋๊ตฌ๋ ์ด๊ณณ์์ ์ด๋ค ์ผ์ด ๋ฒ์ด์ก๋์ง ์์ง ๋ชปํ๋ค.
๊ทธ๋ ์ดํธ๋ฐฐ๋ฆฌ์ด๋ฆฌํ, ํธ์ฃผ
Matt Munro / Lonely Planet
๊ทธ๋ ์ดํธ๋ฒ ๋ฆฌ์ด ๋ฆฌํ๋ ํธ์ฃผ ๋ถ๋์ชฝ ํด์์ 2993km๊ฐ ๋๊ฒ ๋ป์ด ์๋ค. ์ ์ธ๊ณ์์ ๊ฐ์ฅ ํฐ ์ฐํธ์ด ๊ตฐ๋ฝ์ผ ๋ฟ๋ง ์๋๋ผ, ์์ฒ ์ข
์ ๋ฌผ๊ณ ๊ธฐ์ ํด์์๋ฌผ์ ํฐ์ ์ด๊ธฐ๋ ํ๋ค.
์์ฝ๋ฅด์ํธ ์ฌ์, ์บ๋ณด๋์
Mark Read / Lonely Planet
ํ๋๊ต์ ์ต๊ณ ์ ๋น์๋๋ฅผ ์ํ ์ธ๊ณ์์ ๊ฐ์ฅ ํ๋ฅญํ ์ฌ์์ด๋ค. ์์ฝ๋ฅด์ํธ์ ์ฅ์ํ ๊ฑด์ถ๋ฌผ์ 1000๊ฐ๊ฐ ๋๋ ์ต๊ณ ์ ์ฌ์๋ค๋ก ์ด๋ฃจ์ด์ ธ ์๋๋ฐ ์ฑ์ง์ ๋ฌด๋ค์ ์บ๋ณด๋์ ๋ถ์ชฝ ์ ๊ธ์ ์ ๋ค์ ๋์๋ฅผ ํ์ฑํ๋ค.
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