KEY POINTS:
At certain times in our careers, our jobs can involve a lot of travel. It might just be the weekly trip to Wellington, which becomes more like a glorified bus journey than the exciting jaunt to the capital it seemed in the beginning, or it might be some
more full-on Asia-Pacific tours.
Travel tends to come in clumps. You might be working on a deal to buy a company in Singapore, so you're in Singapore every other week. Or you might be taking a group of clients on a tour of a certain region for a week.
If you are young and unattached, travelling with your job is something you virtually beg for at the interview stage. It's a great way to chalk up some international experience for the CV, a must these days, and there's another upside. The expenses. Normally your company will pay you a daily rate for expenses and the chances are you will never spend it all, unless sitting in restaurants by yourself eating three-course dinners really is your thing. You are more likely to grab a sandwich and collapse in a heap in the hotel room at night.
If you spend wisely, you can accumulate a nice little nest egg, says financial adviser Lisa Dudson. She saw a client recently who was being given $8000 net a year in expenses thanks to his marketing job, which took him to a number of cities in New Zealand and Australia and beyond.
He regarded this $8000 windfall as a good opportunity to spend more money while on his travels and at home.
"They say, 'Why shouldn't I?"' says Dudson.
The financial adviser soon disabused him of this idea, although she understands the temptation to treat yourself while on an overseas visit.
"When you work and travel and you are far away from home, you see all these cool things, and you can spend more than if you are at home," she says.
"You really have to watch it," adding that there is no reason to buy the full duty-free alcohol allowance every time.
Companies are usually generous with expenses, conscious that they are disrupting your usual daily life.
"In a lot of respects, you need to budget and not spend it all. Because your lifestyle is more erratic, it makes managing money that bit harder," says Dudson. "If you make a conscious decision to go to a salad bar or do a grocery shop, you can find that you have quite a bit extra you could save to spend on other things."
Chalking up expenses on your credit card can be dangerous. The company will put the expenses owed into your bank account and then when you go to pay your credit card a month later, you have spent that extra part of your income. If possible ask for a company credit card.
Engineer Mark Hastings saved enough money to enable him to retrain and go back to university after saving his travel expenses, probably not his employer's intention.
He used to go the United States for weeks at a time to help install equipment, and during the trips all his expenses were covered. "There was a daily allowance for being on site - that was an extra $1000 a week. Meanwhile, food and accommodation was all covered," he says.
"So while I was paying my rent at home, my bills were next to nothing because I wasn't living at home much. I wasn't racking up phone bills, shopping for food, or catching the bus. I would end up banking, rather than spending half a month's salary."
