Budgeting for an international trip: Research shows what costs Kiwis would cut

Kiwis are willing to cut costs or delay purchases in order to afford international travel, one study shows. Photo / 123rf

Kiwis are making significant sacrifices to afford overseas travel, according to new research by global technology company Wise.

Travel may have become easier over the past year or two but it certainly hasn’t become cheaper, prompting Kiwis to sacrifice major purchases and monitor everyday spending to afford travel, according to a recent survey.

Aucklander Sahri Thomson had been saving up to buy a new car for a while, eager to upgrade from the old one she’d bought years ago. Then, she and her husband started planning a five-week trip to Europe in June this year.

They would spend two weeks working remotely in London, seeing friends and family, and then explore Spain, Croatia and Italy. Soon, plans for something as mundane as a new car were firmly on the back burner.

Sahri Thompson in Italy during her recent holiday.

“Upgrading the car was one big thing I would have loved to do but I had to hold off just to be able to afford even the simple things like flights,” Thomson said.

Many smaller “luxury” expenses, such as eating out and buying new clothes, were also cut before the trip.

“We definitely started to be a lot more conscious of what we were spending our money on,” she said. “I definitely had to tighten those purse strings.”

Thomson isn’t the only Kiwi willing to make sacrifices and delay expenses to make travel dream work, according to research from Wise.

A July survey of more than 1000 Kiwis found 72 per cent planned to travel internationally in the next three years and 52 per cent said they would need to make financial sacrifices to afford it.

What people said they would delay varied; 20 per cent said buying a home, 29 per cent said buying a pet and 27 per cent said they, like Thompson, would delay buying a car.

Even then, Thompson warns this may not be enough. Despite budgeting and saving months in advance, she still needed to dip into emergency savings while abroad.

“It was very expensive and a lot more than I expected. I definitely had to transfer money while I was over there as well,” she said.

“Even at the end of the trip, we were trying to budget while we were there by going to the supermarket more than nice restaurants every night”.

As miserable as scrimping and saving can sound, Thompson said it’s easier when you have an exciting reason to save and understand the value of what you’ll be spending money on.

“I sacrificed other things like dinners out, getting those winter clothes that I usually would and thought ‘Well, I’m gonna save that up and maybe when I’m over there I can buy things overseas’,” she said.

“You can get so many more experiences and try lots of new foods and even the quality time with people, you can’t really replace that with anything else.”

That being said, Thompson said it would be local trips only for the next while.

“You can only really afford to do one trip a year, especially overseas.”

Tristan Dakin, country manager at Wise, agreed that Kiwis don’t let much get in the way of holiday plans but said people should also consider ways to save while abroad, such as Thompson’s grocery shop hack.

Other easy ways to lose money while abroad include international transaction fees and hidden conversion fees.