Before you go on a trip, you need to save money, but if you are as terrible at saving as I am, then you will need a technique to help you save and not miss the money you put aside. I had always dreamed of visiting Japan and decided one day to finally achieve that dream. After doing some research, I discovered that going to Japan is very expensive since conversion prices between their local currency, yen, and the U.S. dollar are very high. To assist you in visiting your dream destination, I will share my plan and how I managed to save the money needed for me to go to Tokyo and fully enjoy my experience there.
How much you need
Depending on the time of year you are planning to take your trip, there will likely be a variation in flight costs. When I was researching what time of year to go to Tokyo, I found that the average flight costs were at most $2,000 but typically much lower during some months. So for most people I’d say it is best to save about $2,000 for the flight. For a hotel to stay for 2 weeks, the price will vary depending on the quality of the hotel; it can be as little as $35 or as high as $200 nightly. $1,400 is a good figure as this pretty high for a two week stay as well as ensuring the quality. For a two week stay, it would be ideal to have between $500 and $1,000 of spending money to cover food, sightseeing and souvenirs. Any that you save with the flight costs or hotel costs can be put towards your spending money as a little extra for yourself to indulge. Now that we know how much everything will cost, it’s time to save the money.
How to Save
My fiancé told me about this method to save from the beginning of the year by putting aside some money each week. The amount you put aside varies each week and is essentially double the week number that you’re on. So the first week of the year save $2, then the following week $4, and then on week three you save $6, etc. This way you will be saving a small portion of money each week that won’t be missed. This will eventually get to saving $104 at the end of the year on the final week (double 52). This technique doesn’t seem to save much money, but you will actually save $2756 in a year and $5512 after two years by just following these scheduled deposits into your savings account.
I assure you that two years of this will be an appropriate amount of money to fully enjoy your trip to your dream destination as well as see and experience what you went there for. I went to Japan back in 2012 and had the time of my life and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Flight prices haven’t drastically changed since then but always be on the lookout for cheap flights. I highly recommend using kayak.com to search for flights, hotels, and rented transportation; the website offers a compilation of different travel sites and prices all in one place making it much easier to compare deals. It is my go-to website whenever I am looking into planning a trip since it is very user-friendly and has so many different filters to thin down your search results.
Enjoy your trip!
