Be Your Own Hero: 8 Tips to Make Your Travel Goals Come True

The benefits we get from traveling are many, ranging from broadening your horizons, building new social relationships to self-discovery and boosting your overall confidence. It’s no wonder that many people would do anything to reach their travel goals.

Traveling is also a way to gain freedom, relieve ourselves from stress, and just get away from the mundane or usual reality in order to experience new and exciting things for a while.

It doesn’t even matter whether you travel local or international, all that matters is that you get to fulfill your travel goals.

Here are some tips to make those travel dreams come true: 

1.  Replace “someday” with “right now.”

If you can travel today, why should you wait for tomorrow? Right?

Stop delaying your trip and always saying that you’ll do it someday when you’re free of debt. Or you’d do it eventually when you can already enjoy your work freedom. Or probably sometime when you can relax and not stress about work.

Well, what if that someday won’t come, right? You’d end up regretting not reaching your goal at all or in the nearest time.

Besides, traveling requires a plan, and each waking day you get time to prepare. Stop with the delaying tactics. Grab your pen and start making arrangement for your travel already.

Get ready to cross out another line from your bucket list… NOW.

2.  Know your reasons for needing to travel

We all have different reasons why we want to visit a new place:

• To relax from all the stressful things at work.
• To learn a new culture.
• To meet new people.
• To cross out another bullet from our bucket list.

The list goes on and on. It never ends.

By knowing why you want to travel, it will motivate you more into reaching that goal. There will be some kind of gravity that will convince you that you should go. Like, there's a secondary goal that you'd want to achieve.

So, whatever reasons you have for wanting to travel, note it down clearly. That matters because sometimes, all we need is a reason.

3.  Identify where you’re going

Of course, we can’t have a travel goal without knowing where you want to go. For sure, you probably already have a list of places you’d want to visit at least once for your lifetime. If you don’t know where you want to go first, figure it out already.

Would you like to go on a local trip or a trip abroad? It’s up to you.

Identifying where you’re going will make it easier for you to plan your trip out. You would also be able to visualize yourself in that place, and it would make you crave more to get there and to make it happen. 

The same applies if you want to experience a place in a specific season. Do you want to experience the Cherry Blossoms in Japan? Visit during the month where the cherry blossoms bloom.

Knowing your travel destination will allow you to visualize it, dream it, and reach it faster.

4.  Ditch unnecessary bills

Traveling costs money. And depending on where you’re going, you might need to spend more than you wanted or would want to make it happen. So, be sure to start cutting your extra spending now to make your travel dreams come true.

Ditch the unnecessary bills. Are you sure you wanted to eat on fast food or would it cost less if you cook your meal? Do you need your groceries delivered, or would it save you a lot if you do your groceries?

You might think that a $5 on top of your groceries is small, but accumulate that on the number of times you have your grocery delivered and you’ll realize it’s a lot. Save that money instead.

Yes, it can be an inconvenience on your part to cut extra costs, but a slight disadvantage today is better than not fulfilling your dream to travel, right?

5.  Create a travel budget

Aside from ditching unnecessary bills to save for your dream trip, it’s wise to create a travel budget. The expenses that you need to consider are:

• Transportation costs
• Accommodation costs
• Food and beverages
• Activities (Tickets to fun parks, etc.)
• Others such as travel insurance

Since you already know where you want to go, you can easily research how much will be the estimated expenses you’ll have.

6.  Start saving now

Save now, not later.

Once you have created a travel budget, estimate how much money you’d have to spend a day from your daily earnings. You might need to cut off a lot of luxury here to save enough, but that’s normal.

Besides, you’d want your dream vacation to be worthwhile, right? A few months of sacrifice won’t hurt.

7.  Think about it as a priority

Now, this might sound selfish, but prioritizing what you want is also healthy.

Remember, this is your goal. It's not something that you can just set aside at any time. It should be your priority.

If you have this kind of mindset, then you would likely do everything just to achieve this goal. Go back to your reasons why you want to do this if it makes things easier for you.

8.  Get to know your fellow travelers

Having some company while traveling not only makes the trip fun, but it also makes it more memorable. And it can also be safer to travel with people you know and trust.

So, think about who you want to go with you. Is it your friends? Your family? Special someone? It’s up to you.

But what we recommend is to bring a company that has the same desire as you. The same people who would love this adventure as much as you. Someone whose reason is as substantial as yours.

This way, by the end of the trip, both of you got to enjoy the adventure, and the memory will be much worth remembering.

With the tips above, you’re sure to fulfill your goals at any time you want (perhaps before the year ends). And since this will not  be your only trip, it’s best to choose the best carry-on luggage to bring with you anywhere you go.