How To Travel With Debt

Wondering how to travel with debt? Ignoring debt to travel is not the right answer, but there is a way!

When I graduated from massage therapy college in 2010 I had about $17,000 in debt. I knew I had to make more than the minimum payment in order to pay it off faster, so I upped my payment and then left it to do it’s thing. Through all that time we travelled whenever we had the money to do it. After my husband graduated paramedic college in 2014, we did the same thing. At times I did think about how much faster we could have paid off the debt if we didn’t travel, but I wouldn’t trade any of those trips for anything.

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Now since we have declared war on our debt, I have been struggling with how to travel with debt. Should we wait until it’s paid off? But I am a travel addict and the thought of not going anywhere for 2 years is torture! I have still been saving a little money for travel, and just booked my ticket to meet my best friend in Vegas at the end of May!

Read about our debt repayment here

I don’t feel bad about traveling because I’m not going into debt to do it.

Life is all about balance right? I could definitely make some progress paying off the debt by using the money I have saved for travel right now. It might cut a few months off of our debt repayment, but I just can’t stand the thought of not traveling.

I’m definitely not saying you should go out and spend whatever you want because YOLO, but if your not putting yourself further into debt, and you’ve saved for it, then I think you should enjoy. Paying off debt may take you years, and if you deprive yourself you’re more likely to give up.

How To Travel With Debt

Save For It

Save for it. DO NOT take on more debt to travel. Don’t ruin any progress you’ve made to take a trip. Start by figuring out how much you will need to take your trip and transfer money monthly or bi-weekly into a sinking fund in order to save up enough to take the trip. Building travel into your budget is the best way to make sure you get to travel!

You can read all about saving for travel here.

Keep Paying Off Your Debt

You should never delay debt repayments in order to travel. Trust me, you’ll be able to travel so much more when that debt is gone! Read about how we’ve paid off $26,500 in 21 months!

Travel Locally

One thing we’ve started doing more is travelling within a couple of hours of where we live. We can drive, so that avoids expensive airline tickets, and if you do a day trip you can avoid hotel costs! We have learned so much about our city and province over the last few years just by visiting overlooked towns!

Move Abroad

If you really want to travel and can’t afford it, consider moving abroad. Of course you would have things like immigration and visas to figure out, but consider teaching English in another country for a year; you’ll get paid and also get to experience another country!

Final Thoughts

I hope that if you have debt you haven’t lost hope on traveling. If you’re on track in your debt repayment journey, you’ll have all the freedom to travel as soon as the debt is gone!