Hiii,

I was recently chatting about my goals and travel plans for this year and obviously it costs money… If you know me personally you’ll know I’m savvy with spending and love grabbing deals! Here’s some things you may not have considered when putting some extra money aside for your travels!

Airline Points:

I already know what you’re thinking ‘Wise up Niamh’ lol, I know I hear myself too as I’m writing it but TRUST ME it’s WORTH looking into!

When we flew to Orlando I had created both myself and Jordan individual British Airways Executive Club accounts. This basically meant we could collect ‘air miles’ which convert to Avios, which is BA currency. I hope that makes sense?

With having this account I am able to collect points when I shop online in my favourite places eg. ASOS, Booking.com, H&M, MyProtein, Adidas, Holister etc. There is 1,300 online shops which you can collect Avios through! The way I see it is: your actually gaining from shopping through the club because you were just spending the money before, now your building up your BA currency too!

If you’re thinking ‘I don’t do that much online shopping’, firstly fair play to you or you’re lying lol. In all seriousness though there’s still another option for you to collect Avios!!!

BA offers a prepaid debit card which gains you 2 Avio per £1 you spend on it! This is NOT A CREDIT CARD!!! Essentially what happens is, you link the BA card with your own bank account and you transfer money onto this card. Once the money is on your BA card you can shop with it in person or online shopping with shops that aren’t registered with BA. This also means you can build Avios quicker because your able to collect when your paying for your essentials like fuelling your car or doing your weekly food shop or going for a coffee!

I now have enough points to pay for flights to Paris, a day ticket for Disneyland Paris or only pay £200 for a flight to and from Orlando!!! This hasn’t cost me a single penny more than what I was already spending! Told you it’s worth looking into…

Virgin Airlines also offer these benefits through velocity points, we also avail of these as our employers currently fly us through virgin so really were collecting free points!

Have a Game Plan:

Do your research into where you are going eg. Orlando you have to pay state tax, bed tax and sales tax. We knew this before going through watching different planning videos on YouTube(Brogan Tate and Disney in Detail were definitely the best for being clear about everything you need to expect!) 

With Australia we accounted for things like rent, groceries, car, driving license transfer fees, basic things to get us set up while before we get jobs! Big tip with this one… overestimate than under.

Obviously there’s a lot of things to remember when it comes to these things, so I personally kept all our budgets on a table, printed it out & kept in a folder that I brought on holidays with me. This is excessive for some but again it kept me right if we were being overcharged for different things. Although its main use for me was for remembering what money I needed to have with me before we went!

You can screenshot or click this ‘link‘ to edit or print out when your own holiday planning! 

Travel Cards:

I LOVE MONZO & REVOLUT FOR SAVING!!! (btw these are friend referral links so I do get some dolla if you choose to make an account through clicking my links xx)

Yes, I do use both! Monzo is my main bank account which is where I predominately use the ‘pots’. Then we used Revolut together on holidays as you can set up a joint ‘vault’, which meant we were able to pay off either of our cards but we were still both paying! 

How I organised Monzo pots: hotel, food and park tickets (I didn’t forget about the flights, Jordan paid for these and I paid for the hotel it was just easier because they were around the same price). I set the goal for each of these pots for the amount that was on my expense tracker, this way I can see clearly how much I needed in each pot. Again for some people its easier to just let the money gather, whereas for me putting more money into the pots that needed paid off quicker worked best for me! As each thing was paid off like the hotel and park tickets, I deleted them and was able to focus on funding the next. Once I had the food money saved, I put this into our shared Revolut vault.

How I organised Revolut vaults: joint and individual. As I mentioned I put the food money and activities money into our joint account, this made life so much easier when it came for paying for stuff because we both paid equal amounts into the vault before leaving! THIS IS NOT A JOINT BANK ACCOUNT!!! You just both need to have Revolut accounts and you can add the person to the specific vault, they don’t have access to the rest of your account, only what you put into the shared vault. Then I kept my own individual spending money on this card too as I separated my money from my main bank account that my bills were coming out of. Again not necessary for everyone but for me it gave me peace of mind I wasn’t spending money that was needed for something else! 

Another major advantage of both cards is that you don’t get charged for using them abroad! Again another hidden fee you don’t have to worry about!

Although one thing with Monzo is that you will be charged if your using your card abroad for more than 31 one days, which isn’t ideal for moving countries or travelling, just a heads up when choosing a travel card.

I have a very exciting holiday saving tip coming very soon and I cannot wait to share it within the next upcoming weeks! Absolutely buzzing about it! New ventures set my soul on fire!

With that being said feel free to support my blog and never miss out on upcoming updates & subscribe here !

CYA x