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Think you don't have the money for that vacation? Wrong
We all know that we could find quite a bit of "extra money" to put toward traveling if we readjusted our daily budgets and started to save a little bit here and there.Still, some of us might need a tool to help make this happen.
There's a Web site out there ostensibly designed to help show people the types of spending they can cut, and how much saved money that's likely to yield them.
The people over at TravelMuse have come up with what they call their "Yaycations Calculator" -- Yaycation being a term I thought our very own Brenda Yun had coined -- which is meant to prove that we all have the money for that special getaway, even if we don't know it.
The calculator prompts you through 20 categories and asks you what you'd be willing to live without. That coffee-to-go five days a week? Over a year, that could save you $390. That sandwich on the run at work? We're talking $1,820 a year in savings if you brown bag it.
I went through each category and chose the cheapest item in each to cut. My overall savings for the year? $41,016. Woohoo! I'm going on one hell of a vac...er, yay...cation!
OK, so the site is simplistic at best, and perhaps complete BS at worse. Still, it's kinda fun to play around with, and its basic lesson of making small budget cuts to afford travel down the line is a sensible one.
Filed under: Budget Travel
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
hauteroute Apr 21st 2009 12:44PM
Jeff, let us know what you think of NileGuiide (http://www.nileguide.com/) --- our mission is to be the world's first one-stop-shop for custom trip planning. We combine personalized travel recommendations delivered in real time with integrated planning and booking tools and a free downloadable custom guidebook for your trip. Check it out...
Marissa (from TravelMuse) Apr 22nd 2009 3:58PM
Hi Jeff, thanks for the mention! You're right on the money: we might all really trim $41k off our annual budgets, but it at least gets us thinking about what we can cut back on to make travel more do-able.
In any case, travelers have used the Yaycations calculator enough to date to save over $110 million! Whoa.