Afford That Vacation

My brother’s destination birthday, paid for with reward points

We’re going to World Domination Summit for the third time. At our first event, we had the opportunity to buy tickets for 2017 while we were still sitting in the auditorium. We took one look at each other and launched. Now it’s a core part of our vacation planning. This is a life philosophy thing. Plan your desired vacation first, then your desired retirement, and build the rest of your lifestyle around those poles.

How do you afford that vacation?

There are tricks to it!

The first thing is to focus on what you personally enjoy doing, and to realize that this may not look anything like someone else’s dream vacation. For instance, my husband and I usually go somewhere rainy on vacation, because we live on a Southern California beach where it’s summer nearly every day. Why pay more to go through TSA and fly to an island with lots of sun and sand when we can just do that at home? We’re willing to ride a bus and camp out in a tent in the rain because it enables us to travel longer. We like going to museums, exploring local grocery stores, and visiting historical sites. We don’t spend money on booze or dance clubs or shopping because we don’t care about those things.

On this particular vacation, we’re staying at my parents’ house. We’re able to roll WDS into a family visit. Granted, we’re almost never there, but there really is something special about being able to hug your parents in their kitchen on a regular workday.

We paid for our plane tickets with reward points. This comes about because our first financial priority is to maintain good credit, and because we systematically earn and burn those travel miles.

Here’s the thing. None of that constitutes a ‘trick.’ Anyone can fantasize about the perfect vacation, learn how to use points and miles, or cajole a friend or relative into playing host for at least a little while. The tricky part is that whole thing about building your lifestyle around your vacation.

We save 35-40% of our income.

That’s part of it. We simply refuse to spend money in ways that we find boring, unfulfilling, or unnecessary. We live in a studio apartment and we don’t own a car. The money we saved the first two months of car-freedom more than paid for this WDS trip. That doesn’t even begin to include what we saved by lowering our rent and utility bills for the year. I don’t spend money coloring my hair, getting manicures, or going for “retail therapy” because I see that as stealing from our vacation fund. We both went to Morocco for a day for $65, money that I could have easily spent on a single pair of shoes or pants that I never even wore.

Another part of “affording that vacation” is to build the idea into your life and make it a part of your identity. Travel is part of what my husband and I do as a couple. We decided to define ourselves that way, and make sure that other people see us that way. It’s fun to teach other people how to travel on a budget. A lot of the things we do on vacation have filtered into our daily life, such as our habit of having strategic planning meetings at breakfast. If more of your ordinary days feel like vacation days, then eventually it feels like you’re on vacation all the time. What that means is that you’re creating an intentional life. You see the potential in each day and the special things about your current location. You look at the world with an attitude of open wonder and adventure.

That’s what makes money and savings feel somewhat irrelevant.

I don’t feel “deprived” by not having cable television or a wine budget because those things don’t interest me, especially not in comparison to the awesome things that money can buy on vacation. I love the sense that we’re nearly always in vacation planning mode, that we always have a new trip to anticipate and research and plan. What amazes me is that people feel like they can “afford” routine daily and monthly expenses that I see as both extravagant and dull.

The other thing about “affording that vacation” is that it gave us the ability to make a radical decision. We live in a studio apartment that is, in point of fact, smaller than some of the hotel suites where we have stayed on vacation. We jokingly refer to it as “going back to the room” to remind ourselves that it’s temporary, and that it’s a choice. We deliberately live a minimalist lifestyle full-time because it provides the leverage for more interesting things. All we really do at home is to cook dinner, sleep, shower, and store our stuff. Why pay for the biggest, fanciest place we could possibly stretch to afford when we’re gone most of the day anyway?

What we want to be doing, as often as possible, is exploring the world. We like to be close to nature, watching the sun set or watching a crow toss food wrappers out of a trash can. We love the feeling of having hours to lounge around, deep in conversation, and we do that most weeknights. All of these are cost-free; they’re mindsets that anyone can adopt and fit into any lifestyle. Peace of mind, close connection, a feeling that the clock is turned off and that the next moment is full of potential. You can afford all of that if you choose to look at it that way.