Budgeting for Your Next Vacation: Yaycations

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Travel Muse has a fun tool that combines the drudgery of finding money in a budget with the instantaneous gratification of discovering how your budgeting sacrifices will pay off.

It is their Yaycations Calculator, and it is a free and fun way to become inspired.

Simply go through the exercise of “finding money” as guided in the calculator, and you would be surprised at what you can save. Heck – I’m a money-wise full-time traveler, and apparently even I can stand to save a few bucks.

I will admit that although principle of the exercise is good, the calculator itself is very general and there is no room for customizing expenses or finding less traditional ways to save money. It is simply intended to be a quick way to make you realize that you could go on vacation – sooner than you thought.

Once you have the magic number of dollars that you can save (by, for example, drinking less coffee, buying fewer shoes, and cutting back on groceries), now you can see where that money will take you.

Choose from an assortment of travel styles (such as family, cuisine, museums, nature, mountains, amusement parks, beaches, etc), select your departure city, and marvel at the places you can go that fit into your newly acquired travel budget.

Although it may not help you plan your finances, the Yaycations Calculator could give you a few cool vacation ideas, and might just give you the incentive to start planning for your next trip now.