Worried about your finances after treating yourself and your family well during your recent vacation?

Vacations these days cost a lot, regardless whether international or domestic, and may end up with you feeling even more stressed out than before. This may even be the case despite you having thought you had everything under control. Whether with your family, friend, or on your own, vacation spending adds up quickly!

Instead of having regrets and remorse, let’s focus on setting our sights on moving forward. Now that your vacation is over, let’s go over steps you can take to recover financially.

#1: Record All Expenses

The first step that you can take is to take stock of how much did you really spend during the holidays.

It would be great if you had been diligently keying in your spending in an expense tracker. If not, do not fret, you can start by examining the cash that you have currently compared to when you first started your vacation.

If you started off with RM1,000 in your wallet and you are down to about RM100, you would have spent about RM900 in cash. Cross-check this with the receipts that you have for any cash purchases, and record down all the cash expenses.

Next, download your credit card bills for the month and identify all the expenses spent during that time period. From here one, it will be ideal to record both the cash and credit card expenses in a spreadsheet. Additionally, as many of us uses e-payments these days, a history of your transactions can be obtained from them too.

If you went for a family trip, then you will need to also record expenses spent by your spouse and children.

#2: Lessons Learnt – Evaluate Which Expenses Were Essential and Non-Essential

Going on a vacation probably meant that you (and your family) were focused on enjoying it, not stressing about which things to buy or not to buy. However, as cost of living gets more expensive, evaluating whether the expenses you incurred were essential or non-essential allows you to improve your purchasing choices for your next vacation.

Determining between essential and non-essential may sound simple at first but in practice there are plenty of grey areas which require some practice. You probably would want to have a serious discussion with your spouse/partner to better understand how these expenses fit your household definitions of essential vs non-essential.

For example, spending on meals, transportation, and accommodation can be considered essential, but only if there were no frills. Fine dining every evening would add up to plenty. Even buying snacks as treats can run up to quite a sum, especially in tourist locations. The same principle can be applied to accommodation, where you don’t need to stay in 5-star hotels every single night and certainly don’t need to be ordering in room service regularly if there are other options available.

Certainly life is more enjoyable with some none-essentials. As you work through categorizing your expenses, consider setting a reasonable limit on how much you and your spouse would like to set aside for non-essentials on your next vacation.

#3: Pay Off Credit Card Bills

You would have surely racked up quite a sizeable amount of credit card bills during your vacation. Make sure that you repay them first, as overdue charges could come up to quite a big amount, putting you in further financial troubles.

If you don’t have autopay services set up now, it might be a good time to do it now. Don’t let the banks and credit companies take more of your hard-earned money.

Stay on top of your credit card bills always!

#4: Cut Back On Spending For Now

If your vacation spending has put you behind in your finances, cut back on your spending for the moment as you work on recouping your losses.

Work on deciding which are essential versus non-essential expenses in your daily life to more easily identify what to cut. For example, putting more effort into making home cooked meals rather than eating out, or opting for teh-tarik instead of bubble tea.

Set aside a fixed amount for your savings account first before deciding on your purchases. Stay disciplined and focus on building up your savings again.

And, it is also very important that you learn to say no if you are facing financial peer pressure from people who are less understanding and less supportive than they should be.

#5: Plan Your Budget for the Next Few Months

After recording and evaluating your expenses, and paying off your credit card bills, you can plan your budget for the coming months. Start by identifying what are the expenses that you definitely need to incur such as housing, transportation, food, and insurance.

Do the same also for your spouse and children. Arrange them from high, medium to low priority categories, and focus on budgeting for the highest priorities first.

Finally, you can also start planning your budget for your next vacation! Take your lessons learned from the previous vacation and apply them for the next one.

#6: Work Some Side Hustles

While this may not apply to everyone, side hustles are a great way for you to earn some extra income to recover from strained finances. This reduces the pressure to cut back drastically on your spending, and also enables you to learn new things.

You can try side hustles such as e-hailing, food delivery, freelance writing , tutoring / tuition, and many others more. Pick one that doesn’t take up too much of your time because after all, you are still holding down a full-time job.

You never know too, maybe that side hustle could become your main hustle and fund your future vacations!

Conclusion

Coming back from a vacation, refreshed and energised, could sometimes come with a fair degree of stress on finances. It is important to consider how to recover, learn from experience and plan ahead for your next vacation so you can better use your time without needing to worry too much about money. Learn your financial lessons, take the steps to recover from it and come back stronger and ready for your next break!

 

Interested to know more about how to recover financially after a vacation. Let us know in the comments below!

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