3 Ways to Fund Your Vacation

In our non-stop competitive world, taking a vacation is a significantly underrated activity. Obviously, working is important. Not only does a job give you the means to pay for the essentials, but it also provides structure to everyday life and creates a sense of meaning and purpose.

Despite the importance of work, it is often far too easy to work too hard and too long without taking a vacation. The importance of heading to the best vacation spots cannot be stressed enough.

There is a litany of benefits, such as:

• Stress Reduction: No matter how much you might like your job, there are bound to be days when the stress becomes overwhelming. Not only can stress negatively affect your health, it can also be detrimental to your productivity at work. Finding a list of great vacation spots to visit and taking a break from work will reduce your overall stress and make you a happier, healthier individual.
• Improved Relationships: Working too much can easily take a toll on your relationships. When you work a demanding job, it is easy to lose touch with the important people in your life. Taking a vacation with loved ones is a great way to reconnect with the most important people in your life.
• Broadened Cultural Horizons: Taking a vacation can not only help with reducing stress and improving relationships– but it can also help broaden your cultural horizons. Opening up your perspective to other cultures and experiences is not as concrete of a benefit as relaxation or more time with family, but it can greatly improve your quality of life.

Taking a vacation is a great experience. Finding a great travel spot, planning your itinerary, and having the best vacation of your life is an experience you will never forget. However, hotel and travel costs can feel prohibitively expensive.

With that said, there are ways to take a great vacation even when you are short on cash. Here are 3 tips on how to fund the best vacation of your life:

Vacation Payment Plans

Vacation payment plans are a great way to pay the cost of visiting one of the great vacation spots you have had your eye on. Vacation payment plans are similar to other types of payment plans except instead of paying monthly for furniture or a car, you pay monthly to plan the best vacation of your life.

Vacation payment plans are not as ubiquitous as payment plans for other big-ticket items like furniture, appliances, or electronics. Vacation payment plans are becoming increasingly popular as more and more people see the benefits of taking a vacation.

There are a variety of different services and companies that offer vacation payment plans, including:

• Bookit
• Expedia
• Funjet
• Southwest Vacations

Each one of these vacation payment plans offers different rates and packages. When you are looking to visit a great vacation spot—or several—while keeping your budget intact, it is important to do your homework. There are tons of vacation payment plans to choose from, meaning you may be able to find great vacation spots that are affordable for you.

Create Your Own Vacation Fund

Vacation payment plans are a great option for when you are dead set on taking a vacation but do not currently have the savings to do so. If you are good at planning and saving, you can avoid vacation payment plans by setting up your own personal vacation account. This method is best if you dislike the idea of having to pay a company after you have already visited one of the many great vacation spots in the world.

Creating your own vacation fund is easy in theory, but can be more difficult in practice. The easiest part is creating a new separate bank account to hold all of the money you save.

Once you have the bank account set up, create an automatic transfer that will send part of your paycheck every week, or every month, to your new vacation fund.

The difficult part of this method is delaying your gratification. It is important to keep in mind that your dream vacation may cost a fair amount of money. Taking a vacation to popular destinations has the potential to be very expensive, and it might take a while to save enough.

But once you get used to your smaller paycheck every month, the excitement about taking a vacation will only grow. By the time you finally reach the magic number that you deem is enough to fund a great trip, you will be happy that you made sacrifices in the previous months.

Borrow money, possibly interest-free

Sometimes the best vacation is the one you haven’t necessarily planned for. Oftentimes, taking a vacation takes a lot of planning. While vacation payment plans and saving are great options for funding your next vacation, sometimes you might feel like taking an impromptu vacation with little to no planning.

Sometimes the stress of work and everyday life can be hard to bear. Similarly, an opportunity to take a special trip with close friends or family might present itself before you have the chance to save enough money or find the right payment plan.

In these circumstances, procuring quick cash is key. Using the value of your car to get a loan, otherwise known as a title loan, is a great way to get quick cash so that you do not have to give up your dream of visiting great vacation spots.

The best way to arrange for the loan is from your friends or family members. If not possible you can think about getting it from a source that offers the lowest interest rate. any loan idea is better than the idea of funding your vacation through credit card charges when you can’t pay the balance back immediately.

Credit cards charge generally 15-25% of interest on the carry forward balance on the card. a personal loan at 5-10% is a better option than credit cards, on any day.

Enjoy Yourself

No matter what method you decide is best to fund your vacation, it is important to be in the moment once the money has been spent. Taking a vacation is all about relaxation, and the best vacation is one where you are not stressing about the money you have spent to get there.

Whether you decide to use a vacation payment plan, start your own savings fund, or take out a title loan, taking a vacation is ultimately less about money and more about enjoying yourself.