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Intentional Spending

Let’s Talk Money, Honey: Honeymooning On A Budget

The wedding bells have finished chiming, the once-chinking glasses are all back in the special cupboard and it’s time for a little one-on-one, just you two. But how do you think about honeymooning on a budget when everything seems geared to cost so much?

On one of the most memorable trips of your life, the biggest planning hurdle is usually money. Different wants, mixed with varying expectations for each couple means that meeting-in-the-middle money management can suck the joy out of planning.

How much do we take? Is it possible to save on anything? What’s an average daily spend – particularly in different countries? What should we splurge on?

It is possible to honeymoon on a budget if you follow a few simple rules. Most importantly, remember that the honeymoon is your experience. There’s no right or wrong way to do it and no amount to spend that justifies it as a ‘honeymoon’.

We included our honeymoon in our wedding budget from the get-go, and clearly segmented how much we wanted to spend on each. This really helped us not to go over on either category, knowing it might eat into the other.

And although we didn’t ask for gifts for our wedding and made it clear it wasn’t expected, many people thoughtfully left us cash which helped pay for our trip. If you’re still in the wedding stage, I would highly recommend this over a registry. Experiences over things.

No rush, wait it out.

If you’re married in peak season, you’re probably travelling in peak season (if you go straight after the nuptials). So, don’t go right away – wait until low season and travel then, it’s much cheaper. Our wedding was in October but we didn’t head off on our honeymoon for another 7 months afterwards, and this also gave us extra time to save.

Keep a cash reserve to take advantage of deals.

Jump on deals as soon as they pop up, which might mean having a cash reserve ready. Virgin Australia announced a round-the-world ticket for $999 early in the year, and it was for two days only. Every other ticket I’d looked at beforehand was triple the price, so I jumped on it. Likewise, we booked a Eurail ticket at 33% off on a flash sale.

On a side note: we railwayed our way around Europe and this alternate mode of transport saved us a bunch – had we flown between every destination, we would have spent thousands extra. A simple flight from Vienna to Germany was over 400 Euros. Certainly not conducive to honeymooning on a budget. No thanks.

Plan what’s important to you.

I can’t stress this enough… agree on what honeymoon you want. This does the heavy-lifting of your budget for you.

  • Adventures and tours: Will you be out and about a lot? Consider that most attractions (even state-run or national trust) will have entry fees.
  • Hotels: Do you look at the details of hotels – the amenities, the towel thread count – with an eagle eye? If so, a more luxe hotel might be where you want to divert your funds.
  • Food and alcohol: Mega foodies need to make sure they have a significantly higher daily food budget.
  • Shops: Buying big-ticket items can be great to do overseas if the local currency is weak and the tax is refundable when you go home.

We got super clear on the honeymoon we wanted to have in three words: adventurous, exciting and busy. One of the few must-haves on our shared “joy list” (the things we’re happy to spend on) is travel experiences, so our budget had to account for that.

We were happy to stay in quirky hotels, not luxe ones. Food wasn’t a priority because I’m pregnant and vomiting food up really is a fun game of Will-I-Won’t-I? (Best-Get-A-Bucket-Just-In-Case). Shopping included a couple of items we had been looking at and researching for over a year (we saved hundreds buying overseas).

Limit eating out.

On the vein of food, eating out is actually really boring after a while. Traipsing around to find somewhere that suits both dietary requirements and looks like somewhere you’d actually want to eat three times a day sucks. We had at least one meal a day from supermarkets or deli counters which saved us an absolute bomb.

Look at travel sites as a guide only.

I never look at trip forums when asking the question “how much do I spend?” Why? Because it’s like asking a stranger how long a piece of string is. What constitutes a shoestring, average or luxury budget is completely dependent on the person and the variability is way too high. That, in money terms, is risky.

Instead, I research individual things. I look at the cost of restaurant menus of places we’d eat at, I look at attraction or entry prices for things that would generally interest us and the cost of transport for varying trips. When you’re honeymooning on a budget, this builds a picture of what it would really cost to be tourists, holidaying in the way that you want.

Ditch the plastic.

Unless you have an amazing travel credit card setup, I’d ditch the plastic completely.

Otherwise, expect foreign transaction fees, standard merchant fees, cash withdrawal fees and high markup currency exchange rates (this is a mid-market rate, aka “buy and sell midpoint rate” with a margin). Instead, use cash as much as possible and leave cash deposits at hotels instead of a card authorisation. Even if the charge is held, your bank may well still charge an international fee for hypothetically processing the amount into sterling (as all non-sterling currencies need to be).



Pay online in advance as much as possible.

Even if you only know what you’re going to do the night before. Look online and see if there’s a cheaper ticket for pre-booking – then pay by PayPal or reserve your spot to pay in cash at the deal price when you arrive. We did this for a number of experiences and saved anywhere from 25-60% on any given thing. All of our hotels were booked ahead of time through deal sites like Trivago and Booking.com, scoring us some great hotel rooms for $100 a night.

Share with everyone for the freebies.

Share the news, far and wide when honeymooning on a budget. Honeymooners can boast things like room and experience upgrades, champagne, dessert and sometimes even gifts. But only announce it when you arrive – upsold honeymoon packages are a major rip-off in my opinion and I wouldn’t bother with them.

Other tips:

  • Look into the travel or hire car insurance that comes with your credit card (providing you pay for those things on the card). Some people don’t like credit card travel insurance, but we used our Suncorp Platinum insurance on a hasty return from a recent trip to India and they paid us back everything without any hassle. It depends on the underwriter.
  • Don’t feel guilty for not going out. We had entire days (sometimes in succession) where we’d stay in bed all day, reading, watching Netflix and napping. Enjoy each others’ company – I know my husband so much better now because we spent so many hours just talking, and that was my favourite part of the trip. You don’t have to be out all day, everyday just because you’re on your honeymoon.
  • Stay close to transport routes as non-conventional transfers to remote places can be expensive. The days you travel can also make a difference, so be open to taking unusual flight paths if they work out significantly cheaper – especially if you have extra time. And travel overnight if possible (night flights and sleeper trains – they save you on hotel costs).
  • Create two budgets. Live-Like-A-Local and Make-It-Rain. Use the first 70% of the time and the latter 30% of the time (…even while honeymooning on a budget, splurging occasionally is okay). Travelling should be equal parts plan and spontaneity, because what’s worse than spending guilt on holiday?
  • Keep a tally on your phone of how much you have left each day. It’s purely an admin function to help you keep it in check (you’d be surprised how fast you’d go over budget otherwise).

While it’s important not to debt yourself for a honeymoon, investing isn’t all about what you can grow tangibly. Emotional development, increased self-awareness and personal adeptness are also significant measures of growth you can bank in different ways.

I believe travel makes us better citizens, and directly increases our earning potential. We become more capable under pressure, stronger in experience and empathy (how we work with others) and better educated – all crucial soft skills for making moolah.

Travel is in my top-five fave investment vehicles, and by honeymooning on a budget you’re off to a great start.

July 9, 2019/0 Comments/by Michelle
https://thatgirlonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/architecture-building-color-1902755.jpg 3648 5472 Michelle https://thatgirlonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/That-Girl-On-Fire-Web-Logo-Header.png Michelle2019-07-09 19:06:582019-08-23 15:34:32Let's Talk Money, Honey: Honeymooning On A Budget
Financial Independence

We Didn’t Start The FIRE: Our Journey To Financial Independence

To start off our financial independence story, I’m going to take you back to a smaller version of me.

Still as curly-haired, still as gappy-toothed, but much less wrangled by the world. I would read books widely and voraciously (thanks for making reading such a big part of our lives, Mum), and had a particular penchant for books about magic, mystery and grown-up women kicking ass.

On the latter side of things, this usually came in the form of stories of young women entering the workforce for the first time.

They were well-educated, worldly, ambitious, strong-minded and unafraid to take risks and meet challenges head-on. Mostly, they were university grads, working an internship in a fabulous company – climbing up the career ladder to success, perhaps falling in love en route, wowing their boss, befriending the “uncool” colleague, and sparring with a major competitor (always female… why?!).

I wanted to be her. Not her, as a person, but what she represented. I wanted more than anything to work. I was hungry for professional grandeur. I was a diligent student, I enjoyed learning, I enjoyed the routine and the discipline and as someone who, despite a rebellious streak, tends to want to please people inherently – working was the perfect environment.

So, I studied hard, thought long about what I wanted to do, and eventually got my degree with a number of other voluntary professional achievements that would bolster my graduate applications.

As I turned out, I wouldn’t need to apply for much. I was offered a job with an events company right before I finished Uni – which was hell on earth, and I left within the month. Imagine being thrown to the wolves with zero training to organise a huge national conference, and then being asked two weeks into the job why no-one was signed on as a speaker yet. I bowed out pretty in a pretty undignified way from that gig.

Enter stage left the little voice in the back of my head: “Imagine having to feel that anxious for forty years?”

Be quiet, I told it. That’s not a good example, it wasn’t the right job. You don’t even want to work in events. That’s not what you studied. It was a stop-gap.

Next, a job as an editor that came after a writing internship. Difficult work, difficult people (that’s high-fashun for you) but rewarding. And there’s that little voice again: “Wow, I can’t believe you have to work this hard for forty years.” Again, I silenced it. Not a good example, remember – I won’t be here much longer. I’m cutting my teeth writing and I’ll overlook everything else for now.

Then, a dream job. Amazing boss, a revolutionary startup in the technology sector, an opportunity to build a team and solve a genuine problem to improve the lives of other people.

And what a ride it was for the next two years (I often credit this job to most things I know about leadership, growing ideas, communicating well and pivoting well from bad or stressful situations). Follow that by a few different roles within another startup, all with great learning experiences and relationships of its own.

But still that voice. “People die at 70, you know? Like, the time you’re supposed to retire. People die. You never know. Crazy that we all just accept that, right?”

Yeah. Right. Actually, yeah! Right! Cue emotional breakdowns in my living room at 10pm at night if I wasn’t too exhausted by the workday, sobbing into my husband’s arms. To me, there was just no other option. You work. You work. You work, says the robot. You must work until you’re old. And I didn’t like it, nor understand it. Something about it turned my stomach.

As a little bit of background, my husband and I had been good with money up to this point. This is not a typical story of being terrible with it, living with the silent marriage-ruiner; unsecured and personal debt, and making bad financial decisions.

Since we’d been together, we’d be saving routinely and often. By the stage of said emotional breakdowns, we had just moved into the home that we had bought in Sydney’s inner-west fringe (with a 20% deposit) during the peak of the property market in 2017, we were salary sacrificing for super, we had a nice little share portfolio ticking away, we had paid for our second-hand, but very nice Mazda CX7 in cash and were also about to cash-flow our new kitchen, and some of our wedding.

So my concerns weren’t about having enough money. In fact, it’s never really been about money at all.

Rather, it was the emotional weight of the longevity of work. It was the unknown of my future – what would happen to me, or my husband, my family, or even children we might have? Why wouldn’t we want to maximise our time and the hours in our day to enjoy the things we loved, now, rather than wait until “the golden years” later?

No-one could anticipate where we’d all be – and considering the known statistics on how people’s health and energy deteriorates by that age, being dependent on something external and out of my control to get there felt just so… illogical. But to my knowledge, there was no other way – and so I emotionally, and begrudgingly, just accepted it for many years. We had been saving and investing – but for a retirement we believed was out of reach for many decades yet.

When I first found out about FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early), I remember the warmth in my body, radiating and heating upwards from my toes to my head. It was Mr. Money Mustache’s blog and it was a passing recommendation made to me from one of the smartest people I know; an old colleague, and now (along with his wife) a good friend.

I remember reading his words, his maths, his reasoning, and just… everything clicked. The rest of that day (sorry old boss) I got my hands of every piece of material I could about him. Every podcast, every interview, every TED talk, every everything. And that was Pandora’s Box. It was the tip of the iceberg in terms of what the financial independence, retire early community was putting out there. There were bloggers! Women! Like me! My age! My income! Doing it (or already having done it).

FIRE opened up a world of possibility that defied the typical ideas of working for the exchange of time for money. It gave people, like me, a sense of control and financial empowerment. It gave people a tangible timeline, it allowed them to find abundance in simple things, to shake off the consumerist coat they were sweating in, and find joy in their daily work – knowing it wasn’t going to be forever.

For many, it allowed them (as they wound down to their financial independence date) the opportunity to volunteer, travel and work to completely better the life or someone else, without fear of lack of a paycheck. It allowed them to spend more and more time with their children, enjoying the little developmental things their children did that they otherwise never would have been around to notice; or relish in those important final days in a parent’s, or a friend’s, life.

Some people decided to keep working. Some had the flexibility to take time off to search for a job they had always wanted to do, but had never had the time to apply or network for. Others started their business, knowing it might not be profitable for a year or even more, and not worried about that in the slightest. Some filled their days gardening, turning a hobby into something they could monetise, or even not at all. But that beautiful notion of choice is inherent in all of these.

And something I have come to believe that every human fundamentally deserves. Because sure, we technically can do all of those things outside of a full-time job. But when you factor in the commute, the energy-sapping day, the after-school routine, the random life admin you only have time for outside of office hours and weekends… how much time do you really have? Not opportunistically. Not “make it a priority and just do it if you’re that unfulfilled”… how much time do we really have?

In 2018, I started my copywriting and communications business, Wordy and Smith. And to say that starting a business is the best thing I’ve ever done in my career would be an understatement. It is absolutely incredible. I love my work, I love how I have total control of my time, who I work with and what I earn. But that little voice you read of earlier? Still there. Loud and clear.

So it’s also incredible in another way. It proved to me that I was on the right track, and that my feelings and discontent with work were valid. That I don’t want to be spending my time working, beyond another decade at the most – but at least I can really enjoy the journey to get me there.

How does my husband factor into all of this? He’s not quite as emotional as I am, but this is certainly something he’s excited for. Did I get him onto the financial independence bandwagon? Yep. Did he teach me a lot about money management on the way, though? You bet he did. We complement each other in a lot of ways, and we’re now completely dedicated to this journey. He might have taken a little longer than me to come around, but what matters is he’s here now – and he’s really excited for the future of being financially free (he even has a few business ideas he’s mapping out).

We didn’t start the FIRE, but you know what they say, FIRE always spreads with a spark.

Hopefully this is yours. Welcome to our journey to complete financial independence.

February 27, 2019/2 Comments/by Michelle
https://thatgirlonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/TGOF-Heart-And-Envelope.jpg 3446 3446 Michelle https://thatgirlonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/That-Girl-On-Fire-Web-Logo-Header.png Michelle2019-02-27 14:18:202019-07-09 21:18:17We Didn't Start The FIRE: Our Journey To Financial Independence

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