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Showing posts from December, 2016

Travel Budgeting!

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We all know that traveling has the potential to be very expensive. One of the most effective ways to ensure that you don't spend all of your money on a trip is to create a budget. Setting a budget is one of the tips I outlined in my video / blog post about 5 major ways to save money while traveling. Budgeting is one of the more straight-forward ways to manage your travel money, but can sometimes be difficult to manage. Before You Plan... Before you begin to figure out a budget, you have to ask yourself if there are some things that you know that you want from your trip. Is there a specific amount of time you want to spend on your trip? Are there places in particular that you are already starting to plan to visit during the trip? Having a vague idea of your trip will help you to set a viable budget before you start the specific planning. For instance, if you know that you want to spend a week camping, you know that you’ll need to pay for a week’s worth of food and campsites

Enjoying the Little Things...

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1:00pm      There's no way around it-- from August to May, I'm stuck in the Chicago suburbs for the school year. I get restless. This only increases as the time goes on, particularly in the winter time. Travel is hard, and frankly, I'm a baby when it comes to the cold. What am I to do? How am I supposed to get my nature fill when I am trapped in middle-class subdivision-warehouse-department store-chain restaurant-land? The only thing that one could do in this situation is enjoy the little things.      As I type this out, we are receiving the first snowfall of the year. On most years, the first snowfall comes quite a bit before December 4th. Attribute the lateness to climate change, abnormally mild weather conditions, or coincidence-- I kind of like the timing. There was no snow until the start of meteorological winter, and I'm okay with that. Plus it's a Sunday. I don't even need to drive in it.      Anyway, I've been able to spend my Sunday morning work