Keep Calm and Save Money

In order to keep travelling I had to save money.

You can save slowly and go on a trip once a year, or maybe once every two years..

But I wanted more, much more! The last two months of 2012 I’ve been to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia! I loved it, it was my first solo travel and immediatly addicted 🙂

Keep Calm and Save Money!!

In 2013 I did some small trips in order to save for 3 months travel in the start of 2014.

Those small trips were 6 days to Torremolinos in Spain, 6 days Marrakech in Morocco, 6 days on Ibiza and 6 days to Naples, Italy! Those were great trips and the best experience to knowing how to cut costs and doing what I love! And 2014 my second big trip!! Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, The Philippines and Indonesia were part of that great trip!!

Well how did I do that?

Whithin 1,5 year I have travelled for 6 months

and

my bank account isn’t empty 😉

Keeping a list!

• Knowing where you spend your money and on what kind of things..

I started to write down everything I spend. And I mean everything! So daily writing down from the soup for lunch till the chewing gum and so on. Only because if that I started saving. Why?? I didn’t want to write down every day a cup of soup while I easily could’ve bought it weekly for so much less! I used a lot of 0,5lt drink, started to drink those little bottle’s at home too.. So started to buy big bottle’s again. And not the A brand anymore.

Do you know why?

Some things you buy are so not necessary and even stupid. You will only see that when you need to write it down and you actually don’t want to.. I spend so much money on lunch, cup of soups or snacks. When I was concious of that it just immediatly stopped! Also my lust for it dissapeared.

I stopped buying bottles of water but bought just one reusable one. I stopped buying lunch at work but made sure I had something at home upfront which I could take with me. It saved me a lot without feeling that I missed out on something!!

• Eating what is in the kitchen!

Not only eat what I like at the moment. When you do that you’ll end up throwing away a lot of food because you choosed other things to eat. So it’s better for your wallet but also for the environment. I got very good in mixing all kinds of food to a great dish!! And sometimes I do eat ingredients that doesn’t fit together, that is not bad at all.

I use the freezer more often. I’m not the biggest meat eater so I freeze small portions of meat so I can add it later to pasta or noodles. Otherwise you would eat it in one time, now I cut some more vegetable to compensate, which is cheaper and healthier!

• Doing weekly groceries.

That way you cut on impulse buying. When I won’t come in the supermarket on an almost daily base I can not buy as much as I otherwise probably would. Don’t tease yourself by constantly seeing what might be nice to have or would be tasteful eat

Keep Calm and Save Money

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• Take care of diner for late shifts.

Not ordering pizza or frites. I’m a police officer and so I work irregular. I stopped ordering food in my late shifts. Taking care of some easy to prepare food in my kitchen like noodles, salad or bread was easy to do. I can always pack that and add some tomato/olive or some other things like mozzarella or fetacheese. It will do for diner and save at least 3 to 5 euro at a time!

• Asking myself the question: Do I really need this??

While shopping I do ask myself often the question: what if this is in my house, when or how often will I use it. I must say that most of the times I won’t buy because of the answer.

Cutting on monthly costs!

• Getting a cheaper mobile subscription

I use my phone a lot but not for calling or texting. So I lowered my subscription to a minimum. This year I didn’t took the newest mobile. I can do another year with my Samsung Galaxy S2. It makes good pictures and it does what it needs to do 🙂

• Having a sportingroom and not paying for sportschool monthly!

I bought some great attributes for my sportingroom online. Yes they are secondhand. Most are as good as new and were probably  impulse buying from seller 🙂

I can get good free applications on my tablet to get some workouts I can follow. Most of them with music and good examples for healthy posture and exercise. Why paying monthly when I sometimes only get 1 or 2 chances to go sporting over there. In my home I get the opportunity to do it when I got an extra half hour somewhere.

And last…but the best!!

• Quitting my most expensive hobby, smoking 🙂

First of all I quitted smoking in 2009, I have smoked for 20 years… I used to smoke a lot. So the best way to save a lot of money was this!! It is ofcourse also good for my health as I did have some problems till then, smoke related probably.

Saving for another big trip!!

Keep Calm and Save Money

And now I’m already saving for my third big trip hopefully starting in the end of next year!

But First I’ll be taking some great short trips 🙂

Keep Calm and Travel the World

Do you think you can use these tips?

Share them for others too!!

If you save you money the whole year through you can pay for these travels!

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