Travel Fund Focus

Thus far my travel fund has largely been a revolving account.  I estimated how much I spend in a year on plane tickets home, small vacations, and backpacking trips, and I contribute 1/12 that to my Travel Fund each month.  However, I’m going to need to start building this account up if I want to take a significant vacation (honeymoon!) next year.

Here’s what’s on my travel agenda between now and then.

Vegas Weekend in November: The cost is dependent on our ability to split a room with another couple, but I’m hoping to come in under $400.  I’ll decrease this if we can get a hotel deal, but it should be doable if not.

Christmas ticket home: I should have bought this last month.  Or two months ago.  I’m looking at $400, or perhaps parting with some of my miles to knock it down a couple hundred.

Mini-moon: We have a (really tentative, perhaps not even going to happen) plan to take a very short and close-by honeymoon immediately following the wedding, then do a much bigger vacation later in the summer or fall.  I’m hoping we can do this for $400.

Honeymoon: We don’t have a firm plan or a firm budget.  The budget is essentially whatever it costs to do what we want (within reason!), but I’m going to try to have at least $2500 saved by the end of April.  That will give me a few months (and perhaps an extra paycheck or tax refund) to make up the rest.

This also neglects little backpacking and hiking trips.  I know I won’t have time for any until at least January, so i’m going to postpone thinking about them for now.

So… at the end of this month, my travel fund will be at about $900.  I’ll have 6 more months until April to allocate the remaining $2800 towards travel.  This means I need to be putting away close to $470 each month for travel for the next six months. I’ll make it $500 for good measure.

I’ll start working that into my budget in November.  This month I used part of my extra paycheck to boost my travel fund, but I’m still a long way from where I need to be.