Financial Feminist - 278. Budgeting For Summer Travel

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

Summer travel is something most of us look forward to all year.* But without a plan, it can leave you with a maxed-out credit card and a lot of financial stress to come home to. In this episode of Financial Feminist, I'm breaking down exactly how to budget for summer travel so you can enjoy your trip without the money anxiety hanging over you the whole time. I'll walk you through how to set a realistic trip cap before you ever open a flight search tab, why travel is a known predictable expense and not just a fun splurge, and how to build a sinking fund so the money is already there when it's time to book. If you’re craving a getaway this summer, I'm giving you a step-by-step framework, plus my favorite money-saving tools and practical tips, so you can travel well and come home financially intact. *Important note: this episode was recorded in January 2026, before the increase in gas prices Visit ⁠https://herfirst100k.com/ffpod⁠ to get my free Travel Budgeting Spreadsheet!  00:00 Intro 00:16 Why Summer Travel Feels So Expensive 02:50 Step 1: Set Your Total Trip Cap 03:49 A Budget Is Not a Killjoy 05:46 Let Flight Deals Decide Where You Go 07:55 Step 2: Break the Trip Into Real Categories 12:22 Step 3: Plan Backwards 15:13 Step 4: Cut Costs Without Ruining the Trip 17:48 Book Experiences in Advance & Pick Your Splurges 19:21 Use Credit Card Points 19:58 What to Do If You Can't Afford the Trip You Want 22:05 Travel Is Part of a Rich Life Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Planning a summer vacation is stressful enough. Let's make sure you can actually afford it. Hi, I'm Tori. Welcome to Financial Feminist. I'm a multimillionaire, a money expert, and I've helped over 5 million women be better with money. And we're talking about summer travel today because everybody wants to travel in the summer,

but nobody wants to pay the high costs. The real reason summer travel feels so expensive is, one, of course it is. Things are more expensive now. But two, we want to reframe the problem of the expense of travel. Travel is not a fun splurring. it is a known, predictable expense. And summer travel is only stressful when it's treated like a surprise. So this is for my type B folks who are not as good at A, planning trips, but B paying for them.

We want to make sure that we're going into our summer trip knowing we can't afford it, but also being able to enjoy it, not worried about swiping our credit card one too many times in the heat of the moment on our trip and realizing we're going into debt to pay for. it. But first, a word from our sponsors. This newly independent podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace was the first investment we ever made in her first 100K, and it is the thing that I probably recommend most to business owners when they ask me what tools I should use. You need Squarespace because you need a beautiful website that works.

You also need SEO tools so that you can get discovered and your business can get out there. And you can post anything on Squarespace from courses to coaching, anything that you need to sell, you can do on Squarespace. Head on over to Squarespace.com slash FFPod for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch your brand new website, use offer code FFPod to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check

at a corporate launch. The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx Intellects. and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. You are not irresponsible at the end of the day for wanting to travel. Every single person on the planet, I think, wants to travel. I hope. Maybe there's some people who don't. Those people are the concerning ones, but they're not who I'm talking about today.

Wanting travel is totally normal. And in fact, it's encouraged. I love that you want to travel. But wanting something doesn't mean you just get to ignore the money. And especially at this moment where everything feels so expensive, it's very easy to just be like, fuck it, I'm going to spend whatever I'm going to spend and it's going to cost whatever it's going to cost and I'll go into debt and that's fine. But the end of the day, that is not sustainable and that's not fun. As I've said many times on this show and in my work, nothing tastes worse than a pinia collata on the beach with a side of guilt.

So this episode is exactly how to plan a trip you can afford and also enjoy step-by-state. step. And I also built a free travel budgeting spreadsheet for you that walks you through this exact process. So if you go to her first hundredk.com slash ffpod, you can download it for free. I just want to do it a quick aside. Only 1% of people who actually listen to the show go get the free resources. We create. Our team puts so much effort into making these incredibly valuable. And you can't just come and listen to the show and be like, cool, I did it. You have not done it. You have to go actually apply everything I'm teaching you. So we're making it really easy for you to do that. There's no excuse. It's free. Herfirst hundredk.com slash ffpod. Okay, first, before we decide where we're going this year,

we first need to decide what we can actually spend. So before you look at flights, before you already have a dream destination in mind, you cannot start with Instagram. You right? You cannot start by saying, yes, this is the exact place I want to go at this time. Okay. What we first have to start with is what can I realistically afford without debt. So how do we determine what we can realistically afford? You're going to pull up your checking account balance. You're going to pull up your savings and you're also going to pull up your fixed expenses. And the first thing is if I just said these three terms to you, your checking account, your savings account and your upcoming fixed expenses and you're like, I couldn't tell you what's in my checking account or I couldn't tell you what's in my

savings account or I don't know what my upcoming fixed expenses are. Start there. If you don't know how much money you do or don't have, you cannot set any financial goal or any goal for yourself, travel or otherwise. So we need to decide one number, your total trip cap. This is the highest number that you can pay. Okay. If you don't set a cap, your bank account will do it for you. Because you'll overdraft or you'll get that little credit card decline notice while you're trying to check out at a store. A budget is not a killjoy. It is a boundary and it is a permission slip. Okay. I'm going to sound like a broken record. But if you're new to the show, this is really important. A budget is not about restriction. It's not about deprivation. It's not about a diet.

a budget is like a gas gauge in your car. If you start a road trip, and this is a perfect metaphor for this episode, but if you are driving your car without a gas gauge, that is a stressful experience. From the moment you get in the car to the moment your car inevitably breaks down at 2 a.m. on the side of the road without cell reception in a place you've never been before. Your entire trip is stressful because you don't know if you can get 20 minutes in your car. You don't know if you can get to the next state over. you have no idea. But if I get in my car and I see that I'm low on gas, maybe even my lights on,

I at least have information. It might not be the most fun trip to the grocery store, but I know at least, okay, I can go and I can get my gas at my Costco. That is 10 minutes away, right? This is what a budget is. A budget is your gas gauge in your car that tells you how far you can go. And people think, oh, budgets are the reason I can't have fun or budgets are the thing that are stressful. No, you know what's actually stressful? Getting in a fucking car and driving. You're just like raw dog in life and wondering, what am I going to break down? Am I going to break down at any moment?

Is my car going to get declined? Am I going to run out of money in my checking account? That's the stressful thing. It's not, oh, I don't have a ton of money, so I know I need to get gas soon. That's not as stressful, nearly as stressful as you just driving. Budgets at the end of the day are not restrictive. They're not diets. They're not meant to tell you you can't have something.

they're there to tell you what you can do. If you take nothing else away from this episode, this is it. My number one tip for this concept of trying to figure out how much money you have before deciding where to go. I have managed to travel to Italy for 10 days on less than $2,000. I have managed to go to New Zealand and Australia where the flight was so cheap. Like I'm trying to remember it was a couple years ago, but it was so huge. cheap. Oh, I flew to Iceland for like $400 from Seattle. That is so cheap. Do you know why I was able to do those things? Is because I didn't care where I went. I'm going to explain. So, when I am getting ready to plan for a trip, and this especially works if you're flexible on schedule,

but if you know you want to travel in the summer, okay, this is applicable here too. If you can just look at the flight deals during that time, if you can plan ahead and see where the flight deals are out of your airport. I love going for this. We'll put a link to going. It's in the description. But what going does is it sends me deals out of Seattle. It says, okay, your home airport is Seattle.

Here are the deals out of your home airport for certain times. You can also do this, theflightdeal.com is another free service that I love. And I allow the flight deals to decide where I want to go. I've seen some incredibly cool places that were on my bucket list. just maybe not at the exact time I was thinking about going, but that makes it so easy. If you're like, okay, I want somewhere warm and maybe somewhere out of the country,

that can be so helpful in terms of making flights more excessively priced, making the whole trip more excessively priced, as opposed to saying, I have to go to Florida, and I have to go with these days or this time, and I have to fly into this airport. Like, that is where you're just not going to, to have as much flexibility budget-wise. So if you can allow the flight deals to pick where you go, this is my biggest tip that will absolutely transform the way you travel because you can go

by the deals rather than just your own whimsy. All right. Step two. So after we've set our trip cap, after we start to understand what we can actually afford, you then need to break the trip into real categories. People blow their travel budgets because they only plan for flights and accommodations, right? Or if they're on a road trip, they plan for like hotels and maybe gas. They don't think about everything else. And I get this impulse because it's like, oh yeah, food is not going to cost a lot or like excursions are not going to cost a lot compared, of course, to flights or in hotels. But those costs add up really, really quickly, especially when you consider that all of us have vacation brain. You know what vacation brain is. Vacation brain is you get to the place you're going,

especially if it's like tropical and you're like, you know what, Yolo, I'm here, I'm going to have more drinks, I'm going to do this crazy thing that I didn't plan for. Right. Like vacation me is a different tori. Vacation Tory, money's the last thing she's thinking about. Okay? She's just like, yeah, that sounds fun. That sounds great. We'll buy this and we'll do this and we'll spend this thing and, oh, yeah, we'll upgrade the hotel and we'll, like, it's so easy to allow vacation you to actually decide what you're going to spend. When suddenly all of the other things you didn't actually plan for might be more expensive than the flight of the hotel. So the categories to include when you're planning.

One, transportation. Yes, flights, but it might be gas, trains, Ubers, right? That Uber or taxi tour from the hotel gets me every time. I forget. I forget it's happening. It's usually super expensive and you got to plan for it. Two is lodging. Is that hotels?

Is that Airbnb is that the ability to crash on somebody's couch? Incredible. Cool. That's going to save you some money. But also the sneaky things, okay? The Airbnb cleaning fee that you maybe didn't account for. Or maybe the resort fees. that's the one that always gets me because I'm staying in nicer hotels now,

and especially in like tropical locations, they tag on that $40 resort fee every day. I've been there for five days, suddenly, 40 times five, that's $200 that's just, it's just gone now. I completely forgot. Food. Oh, food, right? We all want to eat well while we're on vacation.

But eating well is really expensive, especially in this moment. So maybe it's groceries versus restaurants. but it also might be a coffee you're getting every single day. Maybe it's the snacks that you forgot to bring, right, that you now have to go by. So this adds up very quickly, especially if you're a cocktail or two deep and you start getting into vacation tory, okay? The vacation mode starts kicking in and you start spending money. I think food is like the big place that your budget can just be blown very quickly. when you're like, oh, I can have that nicer glass of champagne. And again, we can, but if we budget for it. Activities are the fourth one that we tend to forget. Tours, tickets, excursions, but also tips, right?

You want to tip your tour guide because we believe in tipping people properly. You want to tip your housekeeper. You also have to think about not just the activities, but the tip for the people who are doing those activities with you. The fifth one is shopping and souvenirs. Give it a line item. You have to be specific about how much you're willing to spend or it's just going to get blown out of the water. And if you are the person who buys things for other people, like you're like, oh, I am buying my mom something and my partner something and my sister's something and my best friend

something. Great. Have a budget for each person. I'm spending no more than $30 on a souvenir for my mom, right? I'm spending no more than $50 on a souvenir for my best friend. whatever you decide that budget is, make it before you leave and make it per person. And that includes you. If you know you want to bring home souvenirs for yourself, set a budget. And finally, it's probably just a good idea to an addition to all of these things.

Put a buffer in. Maybe it's 10 to 15% for surprises. If it does not have a category, it will become credit card debt. If it does not have a category that you have planned for, it will become credit card debt. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. If you love financial feminist and you're listening, so I hope you do, we've got something to take your learning even deeper from the podcast, especially if you've ever felt like personal finance is a confusing maze. My book, Financial Feminist, Overcome the Patriarchy's bullshit to Master Your Money and Build a Life You Love You Love is out now. It is a New York Times bestseller that is sold nearly 300,000 copies and it is not just another financial guide. It's everything you need to get better with money step by step, but through the signature feminist lens that you know and love here at her first 100K. There is so much in the book that we've never discussed on the podcast. There are

homework assignments, there are deep dive lessons, and there's even more information that you've never heard it here on the show. You can get a copy of financial feminist wherever you get your books, and if you're listening on Spotify right now and are a premium member, you can get the audiobook read by me for free. You can get signed copies and learn where it's sold at her first hundredk.com slash ff pod. Step number three, if you're trying to plan for any financial goal that has a strict timeline, like, I want to renovate my kitchen next year, or I want to buy a house, the next four years. Or I want to take a trip by this summer, then you need to plan backwards.

Here's what I mean. You're going to take the total trip cost that you calculated on step one, and you're going to divide it by the months until travel. That is your monthly travel sinking fund, right? So if you're trying to take a $2,400 trip and it's four months away, you need to be saving $600 a month. If you're trying to take a $1,200 trip and it's six months away, you need to be saving $200 a month. This, I think, is especially where we have to get honest with ourselves. I was talking with a friend the other day, and this is not related to travel, but it's the same concept. She was like, I want to make $500,000 next year in my business. And I was like, cool, that sounds amazing. And then I literally did the simplest math ever. I didn't even do it in my head.

I pulled out my phone, and I went $500,000 divided by $12. And I showed her the amount of money she was going to have to make every month in her business. And she went, shit. And I said, I love that goal. And I love that you're thinking big. And also, it has to be realistic. A goal without a plan is just a wish. A goal without a plan is just a wish. So we adjusted that goal accordingly. Because I think once you see it every month, it's just more real, right? As opposed to saying, oh, yeah, this trip costs. $4,000, like, I'll save a little bit and I'll figure it out. It's like, no, if you want to take that trip in six months, then this is the amount you need to be saving every single month in order to not go into credit card debt to afford this trip. You don't need a trust fund, right? But you do need a timeline. You do need a timeline and you need to know

the amount of money that you need to be saving in order to have the trip you want. And if you're not able to save the amount of money to get the trip you want, And if you're not able to save the amount of money to get the trip you want, then you need to change the trip. And I hate to be the killjoy. But again, nothing tastes worse than a pinia collata on the beach with a side of guilt. Nothing tastes worse than you taking this long-awaited, well-deserved vacation, and the back of your mind the whole time you're going, you can't afford that. You're going to have to deal with credit card debt when you get home. That's home me's problem, not vacation me's problem, right? That's not the narrative that I want you to be happy.

on this really nice trip that you've planned. I want you to be fully present. I want you to be able to afford nice things. I want you to be able to have everything you want while also being able to afford it. Step four. If you've realized, oh shit, the trip of my dreams is not the trip of my budget. Then here's how to cut costs without ruining the trip. These are my non-annoying frugal tips. The first one, cut your bills. Now, I don't mean this as like, oh, stop buying. laties, even though you love them. Negotiate your bills. We've talked about this before. We also have a resource that we can link in the show notes about how to do this. It has scripts. It has how-toes. But what you can literally do is negotiate things like your auto insurance, your cable bill,

your phone bill. Also cable, I don't know if you're still paying for cable. You get my drift. Your home insurance or rental insurance. Your medical debt. Like there are so many things you can negotiate that can immediately save you more money. So we have a resource we'll put in the description with scripts. Scripts to negotiate your car insurance, your home insurance or rental insurance, your cable bill, if you're still paying for that, your phone bill. Like, we've seen people literally in just a few phone calls that take like an hour get thousands of dollars back in their pocket. So this might be a way that you can help pay for the trip by cutting your costs. So we will have those two resources down below a way to help save money on your car insurance by

checking. I almost said by switching at Geico, but by checking to see if you're getting good coverage and also what we call our bill breakthrough scripts. And the last thing I'll say about that bill breakthrough scripts as well is that there's a ton of scripts in there to negotiate upgrades. This is a way that you can take a more luxurious trip for the same price. So we have a script in there about how to ask for a upgrade on a flight. And that might just be, hey, I'm in the middle seat and I want to get to an aisle seat, or I'm trying to get into the exit row, or even I'm trying to sit in premium economy or first class without paying for it. But also we have a script in there about how to get a room upgrade if you're staying at a hotel. So definitely check out those

bill breakthrough scripts. The second thing you can do to cut costs without ruining the trip, you might want to travel one day earlier or one day later. If you have a little flexibility on how you're traveling, when you're traveling, this could potentially save you hundreds. There's just some days that are more expensive to travel. This is how airlines work. If you have a little bit of flexibility, you could save some money. The third, pick your experiences and book them before the trip.

The reason we want to do this is you sometimes save money by pre-booking it, but also we inevitably, a lot of us, like, go on a shopping day, when we're on vacation. And then we don't know how much money to spend on that shopping day. If we book our experiences before, those are the things that most people tell us really matter to them. Those are the things that they want to do, the snorkel excursion or the art museum, right? Like those are the things we tend to remember, not the things we bought. Okay. So if we can plan those ahead of time, that's going to be super helpful. The fourth thing, you're going to pick one, maybe two splurges, you're not going to pick five.

As my lovely friend Paula Pant says, you can afford almost anything, but you can't afford everything. Six, you maybe want to stay slightly outside the city center, or one of my favorite tips is split up your trip. I love doing this. I'll stay in the city for like a couple days so I can go to the museums and eat at the good restaurants

and do everything I need to do. And then I will purposely take myself to like a sleepy town somewhere outside. I did this in New Zealand. Like we stayed in Wellington for a couple days and then we went to a random surf town called Raglan that I had never heard of but ended up being the highlight of the trip. It was beautiful.

We found a great Airbnb. It was amazing. And finally, use your credit card points. You knew that you weren't going to get through this episode without me talking about credit card points. You knew that. We have our credit cards we recommend linked in the description as well. We have so many resources.

I'm going to keep plugging them in the description. But you can start using points strategically to pay for your hotel, pay for your flights, pay for your rental car, or at least put a dent in it so the cost doesn't feel as high. My final tip, I said it before, but allow the flight deals to pick where you go as opposed to feeling super restrictive. It'll help save you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Okay, finally, what to do if you can't afford the trip you actually want? First of all, it is okay to want more than you can afford right now. That is normal. We all, I think, want nicer things than we might be able to afford. It's very easy for us to dream about, again, the vacation we want or the vacation we deserve and then realize, shit, I can't have all of this.

So it is okay to want more than you can afford right now. But it's not okay to financially screw over future you. just to get it now. Okay? So it might be taking a shorter trip. It might be picking a closer destination. It might be deciding, hey, we're not going out of the country in the summer, but we're going to go some really cool place in the U.S. we've never been. My parents are great at this. They actually have not, I don't think they've been out of the country in like 10 years, but they have seen so much of the U.S. And like, yep, the U.S. is fucked right now. Of course it is. And also, there are beautiful national parks. There are beautiful cities and people and places to go. Like, the U.S. is, like, so big, right?

We have what feels like 50 countries inside the U.S. And so this might be a way that you can better afford a trip while still seeing a new place. You might want to do off-peak timing. It might be, you know what, we're not going to take a trip in the summer, but we are going to go in September or October. It might be saying, you know what, The trip that I really want, I cannot afford this year.

So we're going to sit tight this year. We're not going to go anywhere. We're going to keep saving so that we can take the trip of our dreams next year. So rather than trying to half-ass a trip that I'm not really excited about this year, I would rather sit tight, maybe go away for the weekend somewhere, an hour or two away, and keep saving so I can take that killer trip next year. Delayed does not mean denied. It means planned.

It means that you planned it. Okay? One of the easiest ways to save more money without cutting anything you love is by eliminating the things you're not using. And I know that sounds obvious, but the amount of money that gets spent on things that you forgot you signed up for is insane. And that's where Rocket Money can help. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions,

monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. I love using Rocket Money. They've been a long-time sponsor of the show. They can track your subscriptions and give you the ability to cancel within the app with just a few taps. So you save time and you avoid charges. You can set budgets and goals, get personalized insights and regular reports, and the app consolidates checking savings, loans, and investments in a single dashboard to give you a clear view of your financial picture. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at RocketMoney.com slash SFPod. That's Rocket. money.com slash ffpod.

Rocketmoney.com slash ff pod. Where are my gloves? Come on, heat. Any day now? Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to be. This winter, stay warm. Tap the banner to order your groceries online at voila.com. Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home.

You'll find the same regular prices online as in-store. Many promotions are available both in store and online, though some may vary. Ultimately, travel is part of a rich life. We have talked about the importance of traveling, the importance of doing really, really incredible things with our money, okay? And you don't have to choose between joy and responsibility. Financial feminism means that you get to enjoy your life without financial hangovers. It means that you get to use money as a tool to build a life that you want.

But it also means we have to be responsible with that money. and not go into debt just so we can get immediate gratification. So we have this free summer travel spreadsheet that you can use to plan your trip, stay on costs. It is linked in the show notes. It is free. You can go to her first hundredk.com slash ffpod. And please use this before actually booking your trip.

This is a great place to start as you're planning for summer travel. Ultimately, hot girl summer does not include a max-dust. credit card in September. So we can have our cake and eat it too. We can travel and do all of the things we want to do while also taking care of ourselves financially. We'll see you back here soon, Financial Feminists. Thanks for being here. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, produced by Her First Hender K. If you love this show and want to keep supporting feminist media, please subscribe or follow us on your preferred podcasting platform or on YouTube. Your support helps us continue to bring this content to you for free. If you're looking for resources, tools,

and education, including all of the resources mentioned in this episode, head to herfirst00k.com slash s-s-spodd.