Eminently EveIs it too late to send best wishes your way for the new year?… I hope not! Here is to a fruitful 2022, filled with plenty of healthy travels 🙂
So, January is that month that we start from the top and reset again in order to prepare ourselves for a successful travel year. The first issue to address is therefore the finances to support the trips.
Last year in January we covered 8 ways to make money in Zimbabwe without capital and also 4 habits to save that money successfully for your trips. If you haven’t read these articles or maybe you did but you need a recap, please start with them in order to set yourself up for success in the travel category this year.
Now, let’s jump into this year’s #Money_and_Travel topic, in which we are going to discuss 5 mistakes related to money and travel that most of us make and are at risk of making. The hope is to be able to avoid them so that we make better financial travel decisions. This list is in no particular order.
1. Not making all possible payments before the trip.
It is funny because just this last week when we did our Nyanga trip, even though we thought we had made all payments that we could before our trip, such as, accommodation and entry fees, we actually had not paid entry fee to Mutarazi falls. We thought that we could just pay with ecocash, swipe or zipit but to our surprise they said that right at the falls there was no network or internet reception so we could only pay in $USD.
To make matters worse, we actually qualified to pay only half the entry fee since we were staying at the Nyanga National Park. This is something I only learnt about a day after coming back. So in addition to losing the $USD which we had not planned to use in that way, we also ended up losing more than we should have. Had we made that payment before our trip, we would have saved ourselves a few valuable extra dollars. It is therefore important to make as many payments as you can before your trip because you will have ample time to use the best payment method & also understand your expenses in a conducive environment than when you’re already in the vacation spirit where you just want to pay and move on with your day.
2. Not travelling with multiple forms of payment options,such as, debit cards, cash, ecocash, zipit etc
After the first tip, this second one goes without saying. Failing to carry all your payment options may end up either preventing you from engaging in activities you really want to because of technical issues such as network problems or the swipe machine broke. We did not want to use our $USD for Mutarazi Falls entry fee but imagine if we hadn’t brought it, then we would have failed to see the falls completely. In addition, we would have also wasted a significant amount of fuel used to get there. So just make sure that you have some back up plans to avoid disappointments and wasting even more money in the process.
3. Not doing enough research on the USD:Rtgs exchange rate used by the resort and/or the ‘activities’ providers (if different from the resort).
In this economical era that we are in, it is very important to be aware of the ever changing exchange rates so that you do not lose any money. I know of a few relatives who were coming from abroad this last festive season and lost quite a chunk of money making payments to service providers who were using abnormally elevated rates. So just make sure that, even as a local resident, you are schooling yourself regularly on these rates before making your travel payments.
4. Not packing all your requirements, for example, medicine, hats, swimwear etc
Again, this was my husband & I when we visited Hippo pools last year. We completely forgot our hats at home and no way were we going for a game walk without hats. As you already know however, these souvenir shops can be really pricey so impromptu or unplanned purchases are not recommended. Lucky for us, the hats ended up not being as bad in price as I thought they would be. It was still money wasted though since we have a lot of hats in the house. So this also goes for any other travel equipment that you may need, including medicine. Try by all means to remember everything while packing to avoid spending unplanned money, unnecessarily.
5. Not having a budget or not sticking to it.
I believe the lack of financial discipline is one of the biggest contributors to us failing to travel as much as we would love to, in addition to actually just not being aware of the different price range options at destinations. So the first step is doing research, then writing down a detailed budget (especially if you’re travelling as a group) then sticking to that budget as if your life depends on it. You may check this article with 8 tips on how to better travel as a family. A lot of the tips also apply when travelling in any other group setup.
These are some quick travel money mistakes which as you can see, I have also made some of them. Let’s try to avoid as many of them as possible so that we do not blame travel for being too expensive when it’s just us continuously making financial mistakes while travelling.
Remember to always have a little intimacy in your life, & as always I’m talking about Intimacy With Nature :).
