Traveling abroad provides an exciting opportunity that opens up a whole new world of experience to explore new cultures, expand your horizons, and create lasting memories. However, international travel often comes at significant cost due to required expenses like airfare, accommodation, transportation, and meals. However, this should not discourage you because with proper planning and saving, your international travel dream can still become a reality.
Saving money to travel abroad is a good way to make your international travel dream destination of choice a reality, and to ensure you enjoy the experience without any financial stress. By planning properly, you will be able to make the most of the experience without running into debt or affecting the budget meant for other of life’s demands.
Is going abroad worth it?
Absolutely! Traveling internationally can be a transformative experience, enriching your life with new perspectives, knowledge, and experiences. Whether it is a vacation trip for that much needed getaway, for international study, visiting friends and family, culture immersion, you name it, the benefits of traveling abroad often outweigh the costs.
I want to travel abroad but have no money?
Don’t worry, we will guide you through how to either get the money you need to travel abroad and how to effectively save money for your international trip. But first, setting a travel goal is essential. By doing this you can be clear on your destination, estimate the cost involved, and establish a clear timeframe to get or save the money you need to travel abroad.
Setting Travel Goals
Setting travel goals is a crucial first step in planning your trip abroad. It helps you stay focused and organized, making the entire process smoother and more enjoyable. Here’s how to set your travel goals:
- Determine your travel destination:
Here you need to consider the country and city that you want to travel to. While you may have your preference, you also need to consider the cost implications of that destination. For example, if travelling to the USA, cities like New York may incur a significant amount of living expenses compared to Texas.
This does not mean sacrificing your travel abroad destination of choice, but the key is to find the things you love about that location and find cheaper cities or countries with the same attributes. If your love for a city is because of its weather, language, food, beach, etc. You can find other lower end destinations in terms of cost that have the same similarities as well.
2. Estimate the cost of traveling to that location:
Break down your international trip expenses into different categories such as airfare, accomodation, transportation, meals etc. There are several easy ways to have a fair idea of the cost of these major expenses. For example, you can look up the airlines to know how much they charge for a roundtrip. Hotels or airbnb abroad can help you have a fair knowledge of how much accommodation will cost.
Categorizing these expenses into these categories are important for a number of reasons:
- Now you know what key expenses to focus on: For example, you may cut down or choose to manage meal costs while abroad, but there is nothing you can do about the air ticket or hotel cost. So it helps you know which expenses to focus on to make your international travel dream a reality.
- With this you can easily discover cheaper alternatives while researching them. It could be finding cheaper hotel accommodations.
- It can also help you to determine how long to stay abroad given the cost.
- Doing this also gives you a solid idea of how much money you need to get or save to travel abroad. It has now gone from a wish to an actual travel goal that you really intend to reach, and to do so within a given time frame.
Pro Tip: You can also add a buffer for unexpected expenses.
3. Set a clear timeframe to get or save the money to travel abroad:
Now that you have a clear idea of the total amount international travel will cost, you can follow this simple step to save or get the money to travel abroad:
- Divide the total amount you need for international travel by the total number of months you have to save or get the funds.
- Now it is time to take action on how to either save or get them money towards the journey as we will share below.
- Set a system in place to help you reach your goal: For example if you are saving towards your travel goal, using a savings app built for target contribution, is a good travel goal saving system to adopt.
Where to save the money you need to travel abroad
Now that you have an idea of how much you need to save monthly (based on our calculations above), you may be thinking of putting off a certain amount whenever you can at your local bank – wrong. While banks are the traditional ways of saving money, they are not built for this kind of travel goal specific savings.
Financial technology (fintech) saving apps are the best ways to save to get the money you need to travel abroad. This is because they are built with features such as goal setting, automated savings and more that makes reaching your travel goal possible. The best savings app in Nigeria for saving money to reach your abroad travel goal is Sycamore NG.
If you are looking for where to save money to travel abroad, then you should consider using its Target Contribution product.
Here are some of its unique features that can streamline the saving process and make reaching your travel goals much easier:
Goal Setting: You can set a goal for example “International travel” and set up a system to save towards it in the app. You can, depending on your type of income, decide to save daily, weekly, monthly towards reaching your travel goal. There are reminders and other incentives, such as interests and cashbacks on bills payment, for sticking to your goal that makes it rewarding.
Spending Tracking: Just as it is said, you can’t manage what you can’t track. Savings app in general, allows you to track your spending to help you see exactly where your money is going. With this knowledge, you can identify areas where you can cut back and redirect funds towards your travel savings.
Automated Savings: Fintech savings apps often allow you to set up automatic transfers from your regular account to a dedicated savings account for your international travel dream.This “set it and forget it” approach helps you save consistently without having to think about it.
Finding Additional Ways to Save
Saving doesn’t just mean having more money to spend on your goal, it can also be finding ways to ensure you don’t have to spend as much on it. Here are additional ways you can spend less money for your abroad travel:
- Utilize travel rewards programs:
- Credit Card Points: Many card or POS companies offer travel rewards, such as points, that can be redeemed for flights, hotels, or other travel-related expenses. You should consider taking advantage of these card and POS deals.
- Look for travel deals and discounts: Travel deals and discounts usually come out every now and then with several criterias for eligibility. You can use comparison websites to find the best deals on flights and hotels at a given time. Also, many travel service providers offer package deals if you stick with them. You can take advantage of these to lower your travel expenses.
- Consider off-peak travel times to reduce costs: Traveling during off-peak seasons can lead to lower costs for flights and accommodations, as demand is lower.
How to get money to travel abroad
- Personal and business loans:
- Personal Loans: Several banking and other lending institutions in Nigeria give loans to people. Digital loan banks give these with minimal requirements. You can check online to see their requirements.
- Business Loans: For business owners, whose reason for travelling is also business related like attending a conference, you may use the opportunity to take a business loan towards financing your international business travel.
Tip: Sycamore NG has FX loans specifically for people like you looking to travel abroad. You can contact the company through their website to learn more.
- Start a high-income side hustle: This is not intended to be your regular ‘sell your clothes online’ kind of side hustle, no. You can take up contracts and other such engagements within your area of knowledge. For example, you can reach out to companies to be their supplier on diverse needs.
- Ask family and friends: These are people who know you on a more personal level. Because of this personal connection, they understand your goals and dreams. They could be willing to give towards helping you achieve your international travel desire. You should also look beyond your close family to other acquaintances whom you have built relationships with over time. These could be your pastor or Imam, your close colleagues at work, etc.
- Get a sponsor: Depending on your reason for wanting to travel out of the country, many people may be willing to sponsor your international journey for several reasons. For example, an athlete may get people and organizations who believe in his ability as sponsors. It could be wealthy tech principals sponsoring an early-stage tech founder for a startup competition abroad, etc.
Hindrances to avoid reaching your travel goals
Saving money for travel abroad can be challenging, especially when faced with temptations to spend on non-essential items. However, staying disciplined and focused on your goal can help you reach your savings target.
Avoid impulse spending: The trick to avoid this is to create a budget of the things you actually need and stick to it. You should also avoid the people and places that lead you to spend on impulse, this could be in its totality or avoidance in part. For some people, this could be a club, or a whatsapp group that encourages last minute expenses on ‘best deals.’
This could also be looking at your purchase history and differentiating the nice to buy from the need to buy. For example, ordering from Chowdeck may be good but cooking at home is just as healthy and saves you money in the long run.
Before spending, always stop and ask, are there other cost effective ways of getting this same thing done? Think ordering Uber vs using public transport for not so urgent or business-level commutes.
Traveling abroad is an exciting opportunity that requires careful planning and financial preparation. Following the guide above, you should be able to save or get the money to travel abroad in no time. The world is waiting, ready to explore?
