I just got off a short vacation. Spent two days off the grid and now I’m bursting with so much work energy. It’s unnerving; I woke up in the middle of the night last night and my mind was awake, thinking about work already. I thought about the things I left behind and more ideas for the projects that I am currently working on. Is that a good thing? Tee hee, you decide.
My last real vacation happened last February 2011. My partner and I went to Boracay and spent an awful lot on that getaway. After that, I jumped on a big time project and it ran very well. Seems like vacations really have that magic to turn one’s boring, tedious life around. LOL it’s funny how I am an event organizer and sometimes it’s my own vacation I can’t even plan right. Haha! Anyway, cheers to more vacations. 🙂
Now, you might think that vacations are only for those who are earning 5 digits a month. That’s not true. When I was earning P8,000 a month, I was paying for utility bills. I saved and still managed to go on short vacations. With perfect planning and a little resourcefulness, you would be surprised at how far your savings could go.
So, tip #1: Save. Really save for the vacation. If you keep a coin bank or a bank account for personal savings, specify one more savings account for vacation alone. Say, if you can spare P100 for today, divide that into 2—the proportions, your call—and put a portion of it in your vacation fund. If you have little projects on the side (a.k.a. raket), also make it to a point that you donate a portion of your income for your vacation fund.
Tip #2: be on the lookout for promos. Most of the airline companies hold unbelievable seat sales almost every week. My Boracay roundtrip ticket cost only P1600! What a steal! I also booked a roundtrip ticket for Cagayan this coming October for less than P1200. The good thing about these seat sales is that the travel dates are usually a few months before you booked them so you have more time to save up for your pocket money. Aside from seat sales, resorts hold room sales too. Don’t worry, keeping an eye for those sales isn’t that tiresome. You can just log on to your Facebook/Twitter account, visit the accounts of these resorts/ airline companies and wait for the promos to be published.
Tip #3: believe. Okay, that sounded like a beauty pageant tip but really, you have to believe that it will happen. Sometimes, you will be hit with a financial tornado which will really take your vacation savings down. It happened to me too. Sometimes, it’s not the “tornado”, it’s simply lack of financial discipline. Align all your goals and efforts to making it happen and trust me, it will. Book your leave early, buy apparel early (try to score discounted products too) and get a mindset overhaul when it draws near. Put yourself on vacation mode.
There are a lot of reasons why vacations will always, always be beneficial to one’s body, mind and spirit. You can just search them online and you’ll be convinced in less than an hour. Besides, we all know how a vacation feels, right? Like I said a few paragraphs ago, cheers to more vacations.
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