An Honest Conversation About Saving and Budgeting for Travel: Women Who Travel Podcast - Condé Nast Traveler

An Honest Conversation About Saving and Budgeting for Travel: Women Who Travel Podcast - Condé Nast Traveler

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This week, we're having all of the awkward conversations that come with budgeting for travel. How do you even start saving for your next trip? What do you do when you can't afford a group trip? What do you prioritize spending money on when you vacation? What do you do when you don't qualify for a travel-friendly credit card and can't cash in points and miles? We've tapped the experts—Samantha Barry, Glamour's editor-in-chief and host of the She Makes Money Moves podcast, and Travel Channel's Oneika Raymond—to answer these and more.

Thanks to Samantha and Oneika for sharing their tips and tricks to making their savings go as far as possible on vacation. And thanks as always to Brett Fuchs for engineering and mixing. To keep up with our podcast each week, subscribe to Women Who Travel on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And, if you have a minute to spare, leave a review. We’d love to hear from you. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter to keep up to date with our live episodes, meetups, and trips, too.

Read a full transcription of the episode below.

Lale Arikoglu: Hi, this is Women Who Travel a podcast from Condé Nast Traveler. I'm Lale Arikoglu and with me, as always is my co-host Meredith Carey.

Meredith Carey: Hello.

LA: Today's episode is all about money, not just how to spend it on travel, but how to save for travel, and more importantly, how to make those savings go as far as possible once you hit the road. With us in the studio to share their tips is the Travel Channel's Oneika Raymond and Glamour’s editor-in-chief Samantha Barry, thanks so much for joining us.

Oneika Raymond: Thank you so much for having me.

Samantha Barry: Thank you for having us.

MC: First things first. How do you even kick start saving for travel if you've never done it before?

OR: Oh, my goodness. Well, I think it's super important to really honestly assess your finances. So many of us go into these things with blinders on. We have all these pipe dreams, these travel pipe dreams, but it's really important for us to know how much money is coming in and realistically budget for the type of trip that we want to have. So I recommend, first off, getting your finances in order, signing up for an app like Mint, for example, which will track your expenses, allow you to pay your bills, know how much is coming in. And then figure out obviously how much you are going to be spending. Research is absolutely key in this, in this world. And luckily we have so many resources that are at our fingertips on the internet.

SB: I think with travel, like with everything financial—we do a lot of conversations with women at Glamour about finances—it is about setting that goal. And it doesn't need to be a lofty goal. It can be I want to go on one trip to Miami this year and I need $500 for that. One of the places that people let themselves down when they're either saving or spending on travel, is they dip into their bigger pool, right, and I think there's something psychological about having a line in your bank account that says Thailand trip, or Miami trip, or backpacking adventure around Europe. So we talked to women about every woman needs to get their finances in order.

We say every woman needs to fuck-off fund which is six months of living. So if everything goes wrong and you need to leave your job, you need to leave your apartment, you need to leave your relationship, if any of those things happen to you, you have three to six months of living that you can survive on and that security of having that fuck-off fund is really important and it's a call to action that we have. But when you have that, if you have the goal of travel, like put that line in your bank account. Call it what it is. It is “backpacking trip to Europe,” and there's something about doing that that when you are putting that $20 a week or that $200 a month into that fund and you can see the name of it, it helps you save for travel.

OR: You're absolutely correct and it allows you to backwards plan because if you have this ideal destination in mind and you have have an idea of how much it costs and obviously you've researched it, you know what it will take or the steps that it will take to get there and you can take action to make sure that you realize that that dream or that desire. So, so important.

LA: if you've never saved for travel before, and perhaps you've been one of those people who's like, slap it on my credit card pay off after, how do you set realistic expectations for the sort of trip you should be saving for? Because obviously everyone wants to save for that sort of like “bucket list” trip. But is that reasonable when you're starting off from scratch?

SB: I think again, it's doing your research. I traveled a lot when I was in my 20s and very broke. And it was a lot of backpacking, and I did a lot of sharing dorms with four people, but I was in the destination I wanted to be and I was taking the buses. Now if I'm planning for a trip later in my career, in my 30s, I probably want a bit more luxury and I know what I have to put away for that. So I think understanding that travel is a big spectrum of how much you want to spend. But if you love travel, which I imagine a lot of people listening to this do, it is setting those financial goals for yourself. Because the reality is putting things on a credit card and paying it back afterwards is the worst thing that you could do when it comes to travel. It is and I've done it. A lot of people have but it ends up really… It's a financially detrimental move for you. If you can forward-plan, even if it means putting off that travel for six months in order to get to a place where that travel is not costing you whatever your interest on your credit card is. Because that's what adds up. It's not putting it on the credit card and paying it back. It's how quickly can you pay it back on your credit card because otherwise a trip that could have cost you $1,000 up-front, at the back end with credit card charges and fees could end up costing you $1,500. So I think going into it with a strategy is important.

OR: Yeah, and I absolutely agree, once again. I think it is really important to assess what is a need versus what is a want. For myself and for others, my biggest piece of advice is to chase the deal and not the destination. So whenever we're traveling and when we want to travel a lot, I know for myself, I traveled extensively—well, I travel extensively now—but even in my 20s I traveled extensively and one of the ways I was able to do that was I did not discriminate in terms of destination or in terms of sleeping arrangement. I never compromise my safety. Let that be said but you know, I had a I guess I had a Champagne, what is the expression?

SB: Champagne lifestyle on a cider budget?

OR: Exactly. So I definitely had a cider budget wanting to live that Champagne lifestyle, but I had to find alternatives to living out those travel dreams. So If that meant sleeping in a 20-room dorm, a mixed dorm, well, yeah, I did it. But guess what, I got to see Prague in all of its glory. And now that I'm older and I have more money, I can make calculated splurges. So I can say well, you know what, I'm going to eat cheaply five days of my trip but on two days, I'm going to have that filet mignon and it's going to taste extra special. Because I'm worth it. I deserve it. I saved for it. I budgeted for it. And now I'm going to have it.

SB: And even if you're going like, let's say you're going to a big region, I spent a lot of time in South America and Southeast Asia when I was backpacking and traveling. And I would spend longer in a country like Vietnam, where my dollars went longer and further than I would spend in Thailand, because that was, out of that region, the more expensive. I’d go and I'd have two great nights in Bangkok but I'd have a week and a half in Vietnam, where my dollar went longer. It meant I was in the region and I was getting buses from those countries, but I got to spend longer there.

MC: But Onieka earlier you were saying that feeling of like, “I deserve this so I'm going to splurge on these specific experiences that mean a lot to me.” Why do you feel like spending on travel or the experiences within travel is a really empowering way to spend your money?

OR: I think that travel is such a worthwhile experience. It's not only about going and seeing the sights, it's also about the transformation that can occur while you're on the road. All of the encounters that you have, all of the people that you meet, all of the sensations that, that you feel being on the road. I think those are really worthwhile experiences and I think that we can learn from them. The transformative power of travel is one that we cannot negate or deny and I know that travel for me has been something where I've found myself, in quotations. I've learned different languages. I met my husband on the road. I've had so many incredible experiences. And I mean, my early travels, basically led me to work in travel media today. So for those people who think that travel is frivolous, I think that they really need to assign purpose or align their travels with a specific purpose because you can learn so much and we can transform so much from traveling.

SB: Oh my god, I think it's the one thing I always want to spend money on either for myself or I like giving the gift to travel to other people. So my parents are not huge travelers. They've been on plane four times in their life under pressure by their three kids that live all over the world. But the gift of travel or the gift of experiences, I think it's my favorite thing to give. My sister just turned 40 and she lives in Sweden and my gift was a very romantic weekend away for her and her husband to Rome because I think, yes, I could have sent her a gift. Absolutely. But that will be way more special for them, their marriage, everything. It will be something that she can mark. So I think personally, I've always enjoyed and loved and saw the massive value in spending money on travel. And I think now I'm in a place where I like to give travel as a gift as well.

OR: So I am a strong proponent of women traveling for the purpose of self care. I think that as women, we are pulled in so many different directions that we have so many expectations placed upon us. We're expected to be the nurturers, the caregivers, the supporters, as mothers and daughters and partners. And so I think that women should really relish the opportunity to travel solo, and to take care of themselves, whether it's through a wellness journey or, or a health journey or an emotional spiritual journey. And so yeah.

LA: You know, I think, obviously, travel can be relaxing, and it can be an escape, but it's also an incredibly satisfying experience. It feels very satisfying to pull off the trip that you booked and planned and organized yourself. And so to spend your money on something that you have sort of complete control over how you orchestrate is sort of incomparable to any other type of purchase. I mean, and you know, sometimes there's a trip that goes really wrong, but I think it's very rare that someone spends that money on themselves in terms of travel and then thinks, “Oh, I wish I'd never taken that trip.” It's not like that pair of shoes that sit in the corner of the room and look at you because you've never worn them.

MC: You were talking earlier about living like that champagne lifestyle on a beer budget. You know we had talked earlier about going to a restaurant and grabbing a glass of wine and extending your dinner…

SB: This is my tip for traveling. I used to travel a lot in my 20s and with very little money and I would be staying in those 20 room dorms but I always had a couple of nice dresses in my backpack. Actually it was a wheelie, I just think there's roads everywhere so I don't need a backpack. And my trick especially in some of the bigger cities I'd go to—Buenos Aires is when I started doing it—is I will put on a nice dress. I'd go out maybe with the other girls from the hostel and we would go to the nicest hotel in the whole of the city, like we're talking five-star hotel, and we would have enough money for one glass of wine each for the night. But you know what, we got our dinner because the amount of hors d'oeuvres that got passed around that that hotel bar felt like a three-course meal. Because you're sitting there with your one glass of wine, feeling like you got that champagne budget, and you got a lot of free hors d'oeuvre being passed around. So that's one of my tricks. And I think most cities in the world like if you go to London, if you go to Paris, there are places that you can buy one glass of wine and sit there and eat a lot. You know, I love going to Paris: free bread. Every time you sit down have a glass of wine, you've got free bread, and I'm like that, I love this place. So that's one of my tips on how to extend your budget.

OR: Yeah south of Spain, tapas.

LA: I love that because I also think that when people are traveling, they feel a pressure because they think, “I don't know when I'm gonna come back to this place. So I'm going to not spend like I do at home. I'm going to spend more money than I have on a meal because I have to experience this meal or at the bar because I have to drink at this bar.” How do you figure out what you want to prioritize on your trip and what you feel comfortable splurging on and what you feel comfortable skipping?

SB: Yeah. Well, food is big for me. I mean, I'll go for the free food, but I also spend money on the food. I think, for me, the experience of travel and food are so intertwined. And I absolutely love that. So if I do, you know, spend one or two nights getting free hors d'oeuvres in Buenos Arias, and I'll save that money for a big steak in an amazing restaurant.

I think that's important in prioritizing. If you really care about luxury or your room, I remember, I used to work at CNN and my boss told me something. We would go on a lot of business trips, and she taught me to tip at the start of the trip at the front desk, or say when you go into a bar, because then at the start tipping, even if it's just something nominal at start your trip, means your experience is probably going to be better than if you try to tip at the end which is the mistake a lot of people make. So if you're tipping as you're checking into the front desk, they have the opportunity potentially to put you in a better room. If you're tipping on your first drink in a busy bar, they're going to come back to you, you're going to get service during the night. So I think that's some of the things but food is important is what I prioritize in travel.

OR: And food travel is a trend that is growing exponentially a lot of people are traveling to eat, and realizing that they're able to really sink their hands into the culture of the place simply by eating the food that is native to a particular place. Now I'm not necessarily a big foodie, even though I love to eat tons. But my splurge is on experiences when I travel, so I'm going to splurge on that nicer safari. Or for example, I'm going to splurge on that high tea in London, because I value the experiences when I travel. I always say that I may be poor in money but I'm certainly rich in experiences and I would encourage all of us do that. Because that is especially why I travel. It is for those experiences and those unique adventures that I cannot have at home. That is what I'm really passionate about. So if it's a bungee jump off of the Victoria Falls bridge, which I did, if it's, you know,

MC: But you also if you're bungee jumping, I feel like just as a disclaimer to everyone who wants to invest, invest in the best bungee jumping outfit.

OR: I absolutely agree. But again, these are experiences that I can't necessarily have in New York. They're once-in-a-lifetime experiences. And therefore, I think that it is important for me to allocate my funds to be able to have those experiences.

SB: Sometimes I kind of combine experiences and food. So I remember going to India and I try to do this and other places, there's often local cooking classes where you're in the homes of the people. So you get to learn how to cook Indian food from a woman that has cooked Indian food since she was born. When would I ever get the opportunity to be sitting in her front room and learning how to cook and taking it home? You know, I remember getting back from a trip from India and I think for a good six months is the only thing I cooked any of my friends was this food that I had learned how to cook in this woman's house.

LA: And on a side note, I will say signing up for something like a cooking class, if you're traveling alone is an amazing way to be social when you want to and maybe meet some new people. And then the best part is you can leave and be alone again.

OR: Yes, yes.

MC: I think you look at places like Airbnb experiences, which are offering tons of cooking classes and then other sites like EatWith which provide, you know, like a dinner/salon-type vibe, where you go into someone’s house and they've already cooked and you can just eat and meet all of these new people are relatively inexpensive ways to one, get a meal. and two, get an experience. It's that nice combo.

OR: Or even just the free walking tour is kind of where we all started from. All you have to do is tip at the end and you have built-in friends for that two or three hours that you're doing the tour and then you can even hook up with them afterward—platonically or romantically—but it's a wonderful breeding ground for finding like-minded people that you can then travel with and do other things with in that destination.

And speaking of that, I remember a long, long time ago I traveled to Dublin. This is years ago, and I did a free walking tour and I ended up meeting an Israeli couple and they said “Well, hey, do you want to do carvery? Do you want to go and see Riverdance?” And we ended up hanging out for the two remaining days of the trip and it was fantastic. Otherwise I wouldn't have made that connection had I not gone out and done that walking tour. So that is one of my top tips for people who are traveling solo and they're maybe not accustomed to it. It is to do the walking tour one of the first days that you're there. You can find that group you can find your footing. You can get an idea or a better idea of the surroundings and what attractions are available. And then really use that to your advantage to kind of upgrade your trip.

SB: I feel like I want to do a walking tour of New York now, right like even a city that you live in for sure.

OR: Good idea.

MC: If you're ever looking for one, the Municipal Art Society does really awesome working towards all over the city. We've been talking a lot about solo travel, and it's really easy—well, relatively—easy to control your money when you're only worrying about yourself. Things get a little hairier when there are other people involved. How do you navigate money conversations on a group trip?

SB: Oh my god, it's so important. And you’ve got to do it before you can be rocking up to Bangkok and be like, “Hey, guys, are we going to this expensive restaurant or this? Are we getting some food truck? You've got it?”

We talk about this a lot: Conversations about money are awkward. They're hard. They're not easy. Nobody pretends that they're easy. We say at Glamour that people are way more willing to get physically naked with people than they are ever financially naked, right? So here's what's important: money conversations before you go on the trip. Whether you're in a relationship or a couple where somebody earns more or less than the other, you've got to set the rules before you go. On group trips, it gets even more complicated. I think being honest, here's my budget. Here's where I want to go. Sometimes there will be that back and forth. Let's say one person in the relationship is making more money, if they really want to do the splurgy thing, they may have to pay more of a percentage of what that hotel room looks like. But you’ve got to lay that out at the start. You’ve got to understand. Because the reality is most friendship groups, most couples, they are not all earning the same money. There is going to be a difference. Sometimes if you are the person making more money, you might have to do those trips solo because it's not fair to put people that aren't on the same financial level as you in that situation or maybe you compromise and you go on the backpack trip, but the key is communication up front. What are we spending, who's spending what percentage? What's a no-go? What's a yes? What are spending our money on either in a group situation or a couple situation? It's awkward. But getting that conversation out of the way before you get on the plane is important.

OR: And we also should be discussing the nuts and bolts of how we're going to pay for those things. Once we are on the road or beforehand, I always recommend getting a trip expense app. So Splitwise is a really good one.

MC: I’m like an evangelist for this app. It is truly—I go on a trip with my girlfriends once a year, and there are eight of us. And we are now at a point where we're all super competitive—not with each other, but with ourselves about points. And so deciding who at the table is going to pay for certain things and ensure that they're going to get paid back is a huge conversation that we have and Splitwise has like completely eliminated all of the concern about who's going to pay and are you going to get the money back and are we splitting it equally and are people paying for their bar tabs because you in the app can just do everything.

SB: But even that conversation, it happens on trips and it happens at dinner. I had alcohol, I didn't have alcohol. The Venmo requests that come and you're like, wait, I don't understand what I'm paying for here. You gotta lay it out before.

OR: Yes I am really I'm really stringent about that because I don't drink alcohol at all. So I refuse to pay for anyone else's alcohol. I refuse. Likewise, I have a couple of my best friends are vegan, so they’re not really eating anything when we go out. I remember I traveled with six girlfriends to Brazil, and as part of our trip, we went and we had all of the meats and my two vegan friends were there. And you know, when it came around to splitting the bill or what have you, that had to be a really important consideration because they weren't eating as we were eating.

Furthermore, I think that if we're not able to bridge those conversations verbally about expenditures and what type of experiences we want to have, let's throw up a Pinterest mood board. You know what type of hotel do you envision yourself being in? Well, guess what, if somebody's putting a photo up, or if someone's pinning a photo of a hostel and somebody else's pinning the Four Seasons, well, we understand that there's a mismatch there.

Equally important is having that discussion as to what you're going to do as a group versus what you're going to do by yourself. I'm an extroverted introvert. I'm an ambivert. I get energy, draw energy, from people but then they tire me out. And I actually just want to sit in the room and do something by myself in the dark. So really making it clear that, you know what, I'm going to have my alone time from two to five every day, or what have you. As we travel in a group, this general understanding of not having to move in lockstep is so, so, so important. And I think that if we do have that conversation beforehand, we can avoid a lot of tears, a lot of, you know, dissent.

SB: And also financially, if you are like, I can afford to do two of these four experiences but I'm going to dip out of the, you know, those two big ticket item experiences because I want to go on this trip and I can't afford it, so I'll sit those two out, but I'll do these two. It’s the conversation. And I think also, if you are not willing in a place to have a conversation about money and finances, you probably shouldn't be going on a holiday with these people. Because in whatever situation you should be able to have a conversation. You're going to travel with these people 24/7, whatever it is, and if you can't have money conversation before you go, they’re probably not people you should be going on holidays with.

OR: And money is the way the world works. I mean, these conversations are imminent, because everything you do on a trip involves money. We don't live in a barter society anymore. So there is going to be some sort of expenditure being made so you need to be comfortable to do so and to have that conversation.

SB: And those things add up as well. Sorry, like even just we've talked to a lot of women about travel for hen parties—what do you call them over here, bachelorette parties—and stuff like. Those things add up and people have come to us with bills at the end of a bachelorette party that they expected to spend $800 but it wasn't laid out the way they thought and they ended up coming back with $2,000 that they spent. Again, any kind of trip any group travel. If you are planning something around weddings or holidays or christenings or whatever it is, 40th birthdays, lay out who's paying for what. What is it going to end up costing? Because I think that causes a lot of friction between friends. If they go into a travel experience, expecting it to cost $500 and it ends up costing $2,000, that's what causes the friction. So again, upfront, here's all the costs associated with this weekend. And this is what ultimately it's going to end up costing you. People need to have that knowledge going into those both travel moments.

LA: This is just a small aside but a friend of ours was telling me and Meredith the other day that she went on a bachelorette weekend and they're all going out that night and the bride-to-be left her credit card at the Airbnb and just was like, “I'm not going with a wallet.”

MC: On purpose so that everyone else would pay for her.

SB: Oh, I've heard these stories before. Again, if that's the expectation set them before people: “By the way I won't be spending a penny, welcome to my bachelorette weekend.”

LA: I love you all so much.

MC: Don't you love me? Um, Oneika, you have very recently become a mom.

OR: I have.

MC: And travel is so integral to your life. How do you think, looking forward, your outlook on travel saving and spending is going to change with now a third person in the mix?

OR: Hmm. I've always been really judicious with my spending. It's travel for me as a lifestyle. And so it's something that I do all the time. I think that apart from that however, I will be doing all of the things with my child before she's two years old.

SB: Yeah, right. My sister did the same, right? You're not paying for the seats in the airplane before they're two.

OR: Exactly. So I will absolutely be taking advantage of the fact that I can travel for almost free with my child before the age of two. But I think that having a child doesn't necessarily have to change the way you budget travel necessarily. I think the same principles apply, you know, open communication, being really open and honest with your finances and how much you have to spend versus how much you're saving and how much you're making. But obviously, traveling with a third party will cost more so I will be taking advantage of those deals and employing as I said those same principles like chasing the deal and not necessarily the destination.

MC: What is the first planned trip? Do you have one yet?

OR: Oh my goodness, I absolutely do have one planned and we've purchased the tickets. So my little one will be traveling to France, Germany, and Greece in September, as we're looking really forward to that, but that will not be her first trip. The first one remains to be seen. Right now I'm waiting for her passport we applied for it last week. it was very difficult to get that photo you can imagine, trying to take a passport photo for a six-week old.

LA: Yeah, but also adorable once you got it.

OR: Really, really, really adorable but lots of squirming, screaming, and crying. But yeah, hopefully we're looking to travel to a warm weather destination in the spring. So we'll see. We'll see how that goes.

LA: And so Oneika you’ve said that, you know, travel is sort of a part of your life.

OR: Yes.

LA: And unquestionably so, but you know, for a lot of people, it is limited to a few weeks out of the year, you know, depending on the job. I'm interested to know Sam, at Glamour, what your readers talk about in terms of when they're negotiating new jobs and negotiating vacation days. Because I think we get so focused on negotiating a salary, that sometimes then it feels like you can't ask for both.

SB: I think you can. I think when you go into your negotiation for a new job in particular, because that's when you have most leverage, or when they fear that you might leave, that's your second biggest leverage point, with a laundry list of what you want to check off. Money obviously should be and is top of the list. What's your title? What are the vacation days you want? Do you want to work from home or remotely on certain days? That enables a lot of people, I know for us during the summer to do a lot of weekends away, if they're working remotely. I think it should be something that you talk about and negotiate.

Look, sometimes there's corporate policies in place, right. I remember moving over when I lived in London and worked for the BBC and moved over to work at CNN. And I remember trying to put in my contract that I'd be back in London every two months. Because I love London and my boss was like, I can't put it in your contract, but I can tell you it's going to happen. So that was the reassurance I needed in terms of, I wanted to have that ability to go back to London. I think if you are being moved for a job you should look at… There's a lot more openness to, if let's say you are originally from Austin, and you're being moved to New York, you can include in your contract two trips back home a year. These are all up for negotiation. Knowledge is power, understanding what policies are out there, understanding what you could ask for, but absolutely, if remote working, weekends away are important to you, or certain holiday hours. Like America so funny because you guys don't get that many holiday days off at all, but in general, across the board, you can as a person negotiate for it and you can have an open conversation. I find it interesting and I'd love to understand how many people are taking up this new startup culture of like unlimited vacation days. Are they taking those? Like how many vacation days are you actually talking?

MC: No, so I think that the the issue the central issue with unlimited vacation is that there is no standard so you have nothing to guess against. So somebody who is maybe used to having 15 set days is going to take those 15 days because they know they've worked for those days. When you have unlimited vacation, unless your boss is saying, I'm taking 15 days, which those conversations are usually not happening you have no idea what the benchmark...

OR: And also you don't want that to be a strike against your name. I think that there's a lack of transparency there. So if I decide that I want to take 35 days a year and then I have my CEO my CEO in the background and kind of talking badly about me, well, guess what happens when bonus pool comes around? I'm probably not going to get my due just because they think, Oh well, she reckless and she's taking all this time off. I think that to your point, when you're talking about negotiating certain things in your contract, I think we also have to leverage diverse opportunities. We have to consider certain alternatives and be really smart with what we do. For example, if you work for an international firm, maybe you could ask to go and work in the Johannesburg office. And on the back end of that, you know, if you negotiated to work in that office for a week, then you take four additional days of vacation and whoops, there you go. You have 11 days in that destination. Are you working for one week of that? You are but guess what you have the weekend and you have evenings..

SB: And you’re still experiencing the country.

OR: Yes, you’re still experiencing the country through the work culture or even just walking to work in the morning or leaving in the evening. So I think that that's something that you can do as well. Request to meetings, business meetings. Take the initiative and say, Oh, well, you know, I want to visit our client in Australia or in Tokyo. I think a lot of us don't necessarily think outside of the box when it comes to these sorts of negotiations, but they are equally important.

SB: And then when you do go into that point, I've tried a lot when I have to travel for work to either have it at the very start of the week or the end of the week. So if I've got to do a two-day trip, even a one-day trip, and I want to see more of the place I'm going to, I will try to book-end it at the start week. Maybe a Monday and Tuesday trip and fly out on the Saturday to be there for the weekend to see it or, again, Thursday and Friday and then add a couple of days. You know, it's the weekend so you're not eating into your holiday days, but you’re getting to that destination. I would ask for like a day on either side to make that part a business expense. Because I think that's again an extra way that you can—if you don't have all of that vacation days—claw in travel in the midst of your business.

OR: Or alternatively scheduling your vacation when there are national or statutory holidays, for example, Presidents’ Day is coming up. Well, this would be a wonderful time to take one additional day of vacation, tack that onto the weekend plus Presidents’ Day, you have four days, but you can go away. Now if you leave on a Thursday night or on a Wednesday night, and you take the red eye somewhere while you have the full day once you arrive. So sometimes it's just about being strategic and maximizing the time that you have in a particular place.

LA: So obviously, you know, on this podcast, we talked a lot about points and miles, and how to kind of hack them how to maximize them. You know, Meredith was talking about she and her friends getting super competitive when it comes to who's going to get the points at a meal. But not everyone necessarily has the credit to get the right card that's going to give them those benefits. Sam, I know that you've talked a lot about credit and credit and visibility before what's your advice to someone who is having to build up credit for the first time but also wants to be able to kind of start the points in miles games?

SB: So it's a great question. And I've talked about it a lot on CNBC. Millions of Americans are credit invisible. And that's just the reality. And a lot of them are either coming from a place of being undocumented immigrants, or the green card process, or they're new to the country. I arrived in America with a credit score of zero, so you're invisible, about five years ago, and it really was kind of terrifying. I was lucky that I had the backing of a company that could help me get an apartment and mobile phone, all the things you need for your credit. But it made me quickly realize that I needed to fix it and fix it fast.

The American credit score system is very much a moveable feat. So I don't want anybody that's listening that's either got a bad credit score, or is credit invisible to get disheartened because the reality is, it is a system you can game doing the right things and making some smart moves. So that means you have to start off with a prepaid credit card. Get that on the books show that you're consistently paying that back and you are only spending less than 10 percent. So there's a lot of different variations that goes into your credit score in America, including the types of credit you have and the number of lines of credit. So in other countries, Europe in particular, you benefit from having less lines of credit. In America, the more lines you have and the less you use them, the better your credit score. So understanding that system right getting those prepaid credit cards but only spending 10 percent. So most people with really good credit on any given month of have what they have in a credit line, they're only spending 10 percent of it, and they're paying it back in-full immediately every month. That is how you build up your credit score.

And it is a moveable feat. I will tell anybody this listing, you can go from bad credit score to a very good credit score in 12 to 18 months. Again, it's planning, it's being strategic. It's not getting disheartened by it. But it is a problem, an issue, a challenge for people that are moving to this country for the first time, or have not been for different reasons on the credit system, and it is millions upon millions of Americans. And I just want you to know, it's a moveable feat. You should know your credit score every single week. Credit Karma is an amazing app. It can tell you, like, I know after Christmas, I took a little dent in the old credit cards, and I saw my credit score dip and I was like, okay, well, this is what the next couple of months looks like. You should also know your credit score weekly and new apps like Credit Karma, every time you go in and check it, it doesn't affect your credit score. But it also helps you dispute any, any marks on your credit. A lot of people get marks on their credit that are not about them. It's a different name or is different. It's a mess in the system. But you have to be the one that disputes this. So credit is a moveable feat to get those best steals and the points and you can kind of do the two parallel. But the first one is you got to get your credit to a place where you're getting the best credit card deals and you're building up your credit score and gaming it and making it as high as you can in your situation.

OR: So I'm sitting here smiling and nodding because I was credit invisible. I arrived in the U.S. three and a half years ago with a credit score of zero. I am a Canadian citizen. I've lived overseas for many, many years, 12 years, and arriving to the US, I was starting from ground zero. So it was exactly that I had a prepaid credit card with a limit of $250 that I would put sushi on basically every night. I put $12 of sushi on that card and I would pay it off immediately. And it took me— I'm still building my credit actually—but it really took me until about last year, so over two years, until I got a big girl credit card, a real credit card. And even now I'm not eligible for Chase Sapphire credit card because I am self-employed and because I haven't been here long enough. So I'm so glad that you put that out there and I'm so glad that we're making that discussion known because once again, we're so uncomfortable talking about money, but guess what? We need it and we need good credit in order to facilitate and realize all of these dreams that we have, travel or otherwise.

MC: That feels like a perfect place to end. If people want to read more specifically about money and glamour side, where should they go?

SB: Glamour.com/money.

MC: Perfect. And where can they find you on the internet to follow your travels

SB: @SamBarry on Instagram. I'll try to give you some good travel photos. And then we've got a podcast all about money: She Makes Money Moves.

MC: You can hear Sam's voice on that as well. Oneika, where can people find you on
the internet?

OR: Oh, if you want to follow all my travel adventures, definitely you can go to my website, oneikathetraveller.com, that is with two L's because she's Canadian and you can also follow me on Instagram at @Oneikatraveller.

LA: I'm @LaleHannah and I just realize you're the only American, Meredith, at the table.

SB: We’re all tourists here.

MC: It's amazing. I'm @OhheythereMere, you can find a bunch of stories about money and otherwise at womenwhotravel.com and we will talk to you next week.

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2020-02-19 11:00:40Z
https://www.cntraveler.com/story/an-honest-conversation-about-saving-and-budgeting-for-travel
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