Advantages to Planning Travel in Advance

There are many different ways to travel, and none of them are wrong! We have had some last minute trips that were largely unplanned which turned out to be some of the best trips we’ve had. However, there are many advantages of planning in advance, especially for those on a budget. Here are just a few things we’ve found valuable about planning ahead for travel.

I am a teacher and an insanely “type A” personality who actually LOVES every aspect of travel planning. I know this is not the case for everyone. We generally are able to take two-to-three major trips a year, which breaks down to roughly 18+ days over summer, 10+ days over Christmas/New Years, and 8 days for Spring break.  This means that we must maximize all of the time we have on the ground in each place we get to visit.  We definitely don’t like to over plan for a specific location, but we do enjoy having some formal tours or experiences set up in advance to help us see as much as we possibly can.  For instance, we like to book a biking, walking, or food or wine tour on the first day to get orientated to a new city. This helps us get introduced to the major (and minor) sites, which helps us narrow down what we want to check out in more detail later. It also helps us know what food. &drinks to look out for while we’re in a certain city.

Here are some of our ideas about why planning in advance can be so beneficial to travelers with minimal time and budget.  

• The biggest benefit of planning in advance is budget.  We first generate a rough idea of where we want to visit, usually a particular region or set of countries.  Based on this, we look into flights to these areas starting at around 9 months before we plan on leaving, and usually end up booking about 5-6 months in advance.  Leaving the destination somewhat open-ended helps with finding the best deals, and determining if a location is somewhere that can saved for another trip due to current financial restrictions.  Then, we begin planning hotels almost on a month-by-month basis.  This allows us to use current paychecks to pay smaller amounts, all while keeping our savings in tact.   By doing this, when we are on our trip, the only money we have to worry about is our daily food/spending money.  We are able to come home with a lot less stress because we already paid for most of our trip throughout the past few months!   
• Another advantage is how you pay for the trip. We have a Capital One Venture X Card (we are in no way sponsored by Capital One, this just works for us) that allows us to use points for purchases or spending during travel.  Whether we are traveling or not, we put as much on the credit card as possible, and then simply use the points to help pay off what we spend while away.  Therefore, we save money on what we spend on the ground as well.  
• We also have a cash savings rule where each week the person who gets paid puts away $20, and the person who didn’t puts away $10.  We are lucky that we get paid bi-weekly on opposite weeks, but this could work no matter how you do it.  This year we will use the money saved up for our payment on our Dolomites hike.
• Planning well in advance gives you time to search & wait for deals to pop up.  This is a crucial step in finding flights, but has helped us save on lodging and excursions, as well.  Looking ahead from this far out gives you plenty of time to research what you want to do in each place, and start to dial down on the specifics. 
• It is also fairly common that we are planning multiple trips simultaneously.  Planning a couple trips at the same time forces you to look at your finances more seriously to keep the budget in check for all of the travel.  We have everything laid out so we can see how we’ll spend for basically the entire year.  
• Visa requirements: Some countries have visa requirements that take time. Some can even be weeks or months to apply for and receive a visa. In these instances planning in advance can be very valuable so you are not scrambling before a trip.
• You can get reservations for the best restaurants. Major cities and more popular destinations will often have places that take resos pretty far in advance. It helps to know where you want to go, and set alarms to make reservations before it’s too late!
• Constantly thinking about the next adventure put things in perspective as well.  If you’re thinking about buying those new shoes, having HBO, etc… you can think to yourself, do I want new shoes, or do I want to do a cooking class in Italy?  It helps to keep your trip budget in mind and prioritize what you think is most important to you.