We bought the tickets! Kevin and I have decided to try another attempt at traveling to Prague. We had originally planned on Ireland but instead have decided to pursue a dream of roaming the Czech Republic.
If you’ve been reading my blog since I first started this little diary of mine, you will remember our plans of honeymooning in Brussels, wandering through the Christmas markets, eye googling the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and trekking through historic Germany. If you haven’t been reading with me since then, I’ll quickly catch you up; travel warnings arose about one month from our departure date and ever since then we haven’t made it a point to make those dreams a reality.
At that time we didn’t feel it was safe to be traveling internationally. While we’re still a little gun-shy, we decided to get our feet wet by first venturing to Canada, this December we’ll be in Prague, and possibly this upcoming year we’ll make our way through some of the most iconic places on this earth. For now, I’ll be thankful for the opportunity I have to travel with my husband.
For most traveling is a luxury. And while I agree, I also believe that traveling can be a priority. To put it simply, you have to first prioritize what’s important to you and decide what can be pushed to the back burner. As a couple, we have agreed that vacations are important to us but I will tell you that it’s not easy to wait all year to have an elaborate trip. In fact, it can actually be quite miserable at times.
Below I’m going to share a few things that Kevin and I do which helps us be able to live like a king and queen for 11 days out of the year.
Prioritizing
- First, you must decide if traveling is something you really want and I mean really truly want. Taking elaborate trips are very expensive. Like I said, it takes us a full year of saving in order to have 11 days spent roaming around in a new country. So make sure this is something you want over everything else and of course make sure you can pay your bills first.
Budgeting
- Sticking to a budget will be your best friend. We sacrifice fancy date nights, eating out, we don’t own new clothing, and we rarely buy things for ourselves. Instead of seeing movies on Friday nights, we will go on a Tuesday evening (check with your movie theater, sometimes they offer special deals for seeing a movie during an off-peak time) or we’ll go to the dollar theater. Instead of having a sit-down meal, we’ll grab Chipotle. Instead of getting manicures, I paint my own nails. Instead of shopping at Target, we’ll get all our groceries at Aldi. Our date nights mainly consist of grabbing a $7 bottle of wine and catching up with each other in our apartment’s hot tub. Don’t get me wrong, occasionally we’ll cave and go on a nice date but for the most part, we spend our time finding free things to occupy our time with. We keep a budget and we’re extremely strict with it. Trust me it’s not fun but in the long run, a little saving each week comes with a huge reward at the end of the year.
Disciplining
- Every now and then one of us will feel like caving and naturally it’s going to happen when you save all year. Kevin will want to purchase a new Xbox game and I’ll find a new purse I really want or instead of hanging out at the pool, we’ll feel like going to Dave and Buster’s to blow our money on arcade games. However, we’ve worked out a system to where we keep each other in check. We both allow ourselves a certain amount of money to spend on luxurious things per week and if we don’t use it we put our cash together and spend it on a fun night out.
So, we’ve prioritized, budgeted, and we’ve been disciplining ourselves for over 300 days and FINALLY, in just a few short weeks we will be taking off on our long-awaited journey. On that note, has anybody ever been to Czechoslovakia?! If so, email me about the things we cannot miss out on or the absolute must-sees.
Have any travel saving tips to add to my list? Comment down below! Make sure to keep up with my Instagram and Snapchat (Snapcode on my home page) as I’ll share the most updated happenings through those accounts.
xoxo
Ashlyn
