Budgeting isn’t just about paying bills. It’s about understanding your spending patterns and making informed decisions. Our spending habits shift with the seasons. With warmer weather comes the temptation to indulge in outdoor activities, dining out, and vacations.
In today’s episode, I share how to create a 90-day financial plan so you can vacation without stressing over your finances. Looking at your calendar and estimating costs for upcoming travel and holidays allows you to anticipate spikes in spending so you can feel in control. Predicting vacation expenses like eating out, hotels, gas money, and souvenir shopping gives a realistic expectation of your spending so you can make informed choices.
By taking a proactive approach to budgeting, you’ll enjoy your vacations without the post-trip financial hangover!
Stay tuned for insights on these topics:
- [01:20] Money has seasons
- [03:45] Vacation planning
- [04:50] 90-day travel plan
- [09:00] Expenses to plan for
- [13:30] Consider overspending opportunities
Tune into this episode of Money Files to learn how a 90-day travel budget plan allows for drama-free vacation spending!
Are you ready to start asking for help with your finances? Apply to work with me, and let’s start working towards your financial goals.
IF YOU LOVED THIS CONVERSATION ON, FINANCIAL SPRING CLEANING: PLANNING YOUR VACATION BUDGET FOR THE NEXT 90 DAYS, CHECK OUT MY EPISODE ON HOW TO PLAN AHEAD AND BUDGET FOR HOLIDAY SHOPPING!
Transcript for “Financial Spring Cleaning: Planning Your Vacation Budget for the Next 90 Days”
Intro: Hi, and welcome to Money Files. I’m Keina Newell from Wealth Over Now. I work every day with professional women and solopreneurs to help them get out of financial overwhelm and shame so they can experience more flexibility and ease with their finances. Are you ready to gain confidence and learn to manage your finances intentionally? Tune in and grab financial tips that will help you master the way you think about and manage your finances.
Keina: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Money Files. Thank you so much for tuning in. So I told you in the last couple of episodes I’ve been doing like financial spring cleaning. I feel like with the weather changing, there’s more light outside. At least when I was little, I felt like spring break was for cleaning the house and with the spring and daylight and more hours of daylight in the day, it just prompts you to want to do certain things. And so I want us to also be able to spring clean our finances and really think. This series I want you to think thoughtfully about what’s going on with your money. Your money has seasons, just like there are winter, spring, fall, and summer. Your money also has seasons, I’m preparing my clients right now coming out of winter and going into the spring and summer that some of their expenses may increase, especially because there is warmth outside.
And with the warmth comes the desire to want to go outside and potentially you’re eating out more or you’re taking opportunities to go and sit on a patio and converse with friends because you haven’t been able to do that unless you live in a warm area in the last several months. And so that’s something you don’t need to be scared of happening to your finances. But I always love to help my clients really think about like, what are some of the trends? And really like that is the key of budgeting and making sure that you’re just thinking about like what’s going to be happening in the next 90 days, like do I have more friends coming into town? Am I going to be out of town more? Because all of those things are going to dictate how you’re spending money in a season.
And you’ll also get to know your numbers in that way. So you also don’t have to be shaming yourself for spending more money at the grocery store or spending more money eating out or overspending in one area or not thinking ahead about something. And that’s why when I’m talking about budgeting, I don’t want us to just be focused on bills and I also need us not to do fake math. We need to actually sit down and have points where we’re really thinking about our numbers. And we may not always get every single number right, but even with us going and attempting with a plan in mind and asking ourselves questions and not just ignoring numbers that are coming up, you are going to be closer and closer each and every time you sit down to look at your numbers. This may be a year that you’re just starting to look at numbers.
For some of my clients in their first year, they’re like, oh, Keina, I underestimated how much I spent on birthdays or I really didn’t think about these other expenses that I have, like landscaping coming up because it’s the spring. And that’s not anything we have to be scared of. It’s like, okay, well now we know we need to put landscaping into your budget, or now we know that you spend more on birthdays than you thought. You gave yourself a number when we started working together that sounded good. And now we just know from the data that that’s not the actual number. So let’s work towards putting the real number in your budget.
So with that in mind, in this spring cleaning series, financial spring cleaning series, the thing that I want to talk to you today is about vacation planning. I have already talked to you about the fact that it’s turning warm outside. The trees are budding, the flowers are coming up and vacations are getting ready to start happening. People are going to, you are people <laugh>, you’re going to start taking time off of work and your friends are calling you up, they’re asking you to do road trips, they’re asking you to fly out and see them, or you guys are going to meet in a location, or maybe people are celebrating 30th, 40th, 50th birthdays this year, whatever it is. But you have some vacations coming up and just like Christmas, I don’t want you to wait until the month before and start planning for this vacation because it’s not going to feel good when you go on the vacation and you’re like, oh my goodness, I had fun on the vacation, but when I come back, I’m paying for everything or trying to figure out how to pay for everything that I put on my credit card.
And so if you’re listening to this episode, this is your opportunity to actually start doing some vacation planning. What I want you to do and I’m going to offer that you do this in like a 90 day cycle. I want you to think about in the next 90 days and literally sit with your calendar open, like in the next 90 days, what do you have coming up in terms of travel? So when this episode comes out, it’s even going to be really close to Easter. And sometimes people travel for Easter and maybe that’s something you’ve never considered of like, oh, I do drive four hours to go see my family and spend time with Easter, or it’s not spend time with Easter, but to spend time with my family for Easter, or similarly, I do the same thing for mother’s Day or Father’s Day and fake math will say, that’s not a real expense. I don’t need to account for it.
But the real math of it is no, it is an expense and that might throw off how much you’re spending on gas. It could impact how much you’re spending on tolls. It could impact your grocery or eating out budget because of the fact that you are not going to be at home or if you’re not staying with family, maybe you are getting a hotel. So these are all little things that can creep up into your spending and cause your budget to feel out of sync and to feel like you can’t seem to budget well. And it’s just simply because you ignore something like a road trip that just me naming those three events, Easter, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, I didn’t even talk about Memorial Day weekend and we haven’t even gone into like the 4th of July. We haven’t done any of those things. But just this is an opportunity when you sit down and you look at your calendar in these 90 day cycles to really think about how do I move in life and how are those numbers reflected or not reflected in how I desire to spend money and how I’m desiring to save money and how I’m preparing myself.
So with your calendar open, you’re going to ask yourself, what are my travel plans? You can also ask in this, because vacations I feel like can be you going away, but I would also offer like, it’s not just you going away to Europe, it’s not just you going away to Mexico, but are there any other special weekends that you have in there? Maybe people are coming to visit you or maybe you’re taking a road trip. I still include road trips as a part of travel.
And when I’m talking to clients, the reason that I want to include the road trips is because gas fluctuates. And so with how I’m teaching people to budget, they may have gas money that’s left over from one month to the next, but if they know that they’re going to have a series of road trips, they know that they want that like fluctuation in gas is going to probably cover their road trip money or if there is no money there, then they know that they need to be more intentional about shifting their finances to make sure that they have extra money for gas, they can go on their trips and be drama free.
So with your calendar open, you’ve identified, what are these special weekends or what are my travel plans for the next 90 days? So really taking the time to think about April, May, and June, I would offer that you can do this same exercise at the end of April. And so when you do the same exercise at the end of April, you’re going to have data from what happened in April and you’re going to be able to look at May, June and July. April would’ve given you a lot of information, especially if you’re like, oh, I told myself that I had two road trips in April and I ended up having three road trips in April. And that’s going to give you information just moving forward about how much money you want to set aside for travel or if you want to have a separate category that just, is weekend road trips, whatever that looks like. Because this is your plan for how you desire to spend money. But if you’re taking the time to plan ahead, but then also reflect on what actually happened, you’re going to get really good at knowing yourself and understanding your financial seasons that you’re in.
So the goal of doing this vacation planning exercise is really thinking about where there’s going to be some spikes in your spending, where things are going to look different. And if you’ve told yourself, I’m setting aside $2,000 for travel this year and let’s just go with the example that you haven’t used any of that money, but right now you have $400 saved, like, do I need to save more aggressively because I have a couple of trips coming up or maybe $2,000 actually isn’t realistic because even when I look at the next 90 days, it’s more than $2,000. So that’s going to allow you to even look at the numbers you have right now and ask yourself, are they realistic? That’s just like big picture and thinking about your travel plans, thinking about 90 days out.
Then we can go and we can bring in our planning just a little bit more. So for instance, I know that I’m going to Chicago in April to visit one of my girlfriends and we are going to go see Alvin Ailey. I definitely know that we will, we’ll go out to eat, but I am thinking about how will my spending look different than it does when I’m at home. I will probably be taking Ubers, I will, also have an Uber to and from the airport. Actually I’m undecided. I could potentially park at the airport, I could potentially, not depends on which airport I’m leaving out of, but those are things that look different than just a normal weekend for me. So if I was making an itemized budget, so really sitting down and thinking about what are my expenses? I know that I have to have transportation to and from the airport both on the DC end and on the Chicago end. So how am I considering that?
Am I spending, I know I’m going to be there Friday night, Saturday night, and I’m going to be leaving on Sunday. So there’s probably going to be at least five meals out. If I’m thinking about at least two meals on Sunday, at least two meals on Saturday and then a meal on Friday or probably two meals on Friday so there’s probably going to be six meals there. And so how is that, like if we think about, I don’t eat out a ton at home, especially I’m not eating out three or four times a week. So that’s going to look a little bit different because I’m going to be eating out more. But also I’m going to be really mindful of not overbuying groceries because I don’t want to waste a whole bunch of groceries that week. So I’m going to be able to make some trade-offs in terms of what I would be spending at the grocery store I’m just now going to be spending in restaurants.
I’m also going to have to probably have a little bit more money because I’m also going to be in downtown Chicago, which means it’s going to be more expensive for eating out. So thinking about that, I don’t foresee this being a trip where I’m like, oh my goodness, I need to go buy a whole bunch of things and outfits and stuff. But that’s something that I talk about with clients, especially when you find yourself going to a resort or you find yourself going to a different location that is a different climate or if you’re going to like celebrate a girl’s weekend or it’s a birthday or a baby shower, generally speaking, there are things that come with that. With my clients, we’re talking about are you getting a manicure and a pedicure? Do you have a wax appointment?
Do you have a brow appointment? What clothes will you buy? Are you going to do something different to your hair? And so we’re adding up all of those little expenses to think about how they’re going to fit into their travel budget, because those are the things that we are not thinking about when we’re planning the vacation. Generally speaking, people are thinking, oh, I’m going to buy a plane ticket, but they may not be thinking about the transportation to and from the airport or do you have to have a rental car? So we’re going through and we’re really thinking about those pieces. And the other piece we’ll think about is like, do you have a dog that you’re going to board or not board? But those things matter when you’re talking about planning for vacation. And when you are looking ahead in the next 90 days and you start making these smaller budgets for these experiences, you’re going to actually have a real number for how much money is going to be spent on these experiences and or how much money needs to be saved. How much money do I have saved? What’s the gap in between what I have saved and what I want to be able to spend?
And you’ll be able to make adjustments accordingly. So this episode is really focused on, I don’t want you to go into vacation season, road trip season and not be prepared. You can be prepared. And even if you are like, oh my goodness, Keina, I’m like totally overspending. Okay, I still want you to sit down and have a conversation with yourself and think about how much you want to overspend. I know why is a financial coach telling me to think about how much I want to overspend? Because even let’s say for instance, you realize the trip is going to cost you $1,500 and you have $800 saved. If you know that you’re $700 in the hole because of the fact that it’s going to cost you $1,500, that’s a lot better than you spending $2,000 on this trip and realizing that you’re $1,200 in the hole.
With my clients, I help them problem solve for even being in the hole. I would rather you go in knowing that maybe you’re at a deficit and that deficit you coming back with a much smaller deficit than you just going and being like, ah, I’ll figure it out later. No, let’s figure it out before you go. Even if that means that you’re a little bit short or you’re a little bit shy because it’s going to impact how you make a plan to pay that off when you get back. It’s going to impact what decisions you make while you’re actually on the trip and you’re not just going to close your eyes and hope for the best and hand over your card because you’re going to know how it’s impacting you when you return from your trip. So I’m not giving you permission to be like, oh my goodness, go and spend uncontrollably and irresponsibly. That’s not what I’m giving you permission to do.
But I would rather you go in with a plan, even if the plan is telling you that you’re short, because you’re going to do a lot better in terms of making sound and intentional financial decisions while you’re on that trip. So as a part of your financial spring cleaning, really sit down and take the time to look at what’s happening in the next 90 days, what holidays do I have coming up? What vacations do I have coming up? What special weekends do I have coming up and looking for those spikes in your spending? And that is going to help you start planning ahead and it’s going to make the experience of vacationing feels so much better because you’re not going to be worried about trying to figure out how to pay off a vacation when you return home.
So thank you so much for tuning in this week, and if this episode impacted you, I would love for you to share it on social media. You can tag me and also go, if you listen to me on Apple, I would love for you to leave a review. I love reading reviews and just hearing how my podcast impacts your life. So I will talk to you later and have a great week.
Outro: Thank you so much for listening to Money Files. If you’re ready to take the next step to reach your financial goals, head to www.wealthovernow.com/appointment and let’s get started.
