#141 - Ask Ben & Ernie: Travel, Debt, and Life After Month Ahead
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How do Ben & Ernie introduce this Ask‑Me‑Anything episode?
I'm Ben. And I'm Ernie. And you're listening to Budget Nerds. You are not alone. No, you are not. All right, Ernie. Today, we are taking questions because people write in with like ideas for episodes or sometimes just a question. And it's like not always enough questions. I mean, let's be honest, we probably could make a whole episode out of anything. Oh, absolutely. It's not necessarily enough to make like a whole episode, but they're good ideas and we want to talk about them. So you've gone through some old emails and found some good questions. So we're just going to answer some questions today.
Yeah, and I think most of these are from the past year or so. So let's start with one on travel.
This is from Jane. It's a good time. It's summertime, right?
It's summertime. And this is honestly a question that we get all the time. We got it at the live fan fests. We get this. It gets thrown on YouTube. It gets emailed to us. So I think this is going to apply to a lot of people. So here's the question. I would love an episode on some different approaches to budgeting for travel. Right now, I have a category with my partner just called travel. Fill to 5,000, but it's empty. And then feel like it won't be a priority until I know what I'm actually working towards.
Okay, that's... Yeah, I really like that because it's hard to fill it up if you're not doing any proper, you don't have actual goals, actual plans.
Right, we talk about this all the time with savings. Savings is tough when you're just saving for the sake of saving. You got to get really, really, really specific.
And it kind of feels like that for Jane here. Yeah.
So I think the first thing Is rename that category. Like what is the name of the trip that you're going on? And we can, we'll like, it'll get more complex from here, but I think at least start with a, a clear category name or group name of what you're doing, what you're actually saving for.
Yeah, I think specifically for Jane, even if you don't plan on a particular trip or vacation in the coming, even like in the next year, just dream something, like dream it up and be like, oh, I want to go to Hawaii or I want to go to the beach two hours away, you know, or whatever it is, right? And just name the category. And I think you'll find it might start attracting some money because you actually like make it real, right? Absolutely. Absolutely.
And this is something that I experienced just recently where for the longest time, Christy and I just had I think it was called like trips and it would include summer vacation and then all these other little one off weekend trips that we would take. And I never – and I was just – we were constantly throwing money in there. But I never had any clarity on how much summer vacation cost. And so a lot of times, we would either overspend – Or I would just find myself like rushing to save on that final stretch. And so I'm like, let's, let's separate this out. So now we have a category just for summer vacation. So I can really focus on how much it costs and getting enough for that before it happens.
And then we have a trips and events or like a, yeah, I think it's called trips and events where it's just all the little one-off things that we do.
And that's been, it's been huge. this is exactly what I do. And I didn't, I don't think I like ever sat down and was like, okay, this is the travel strategy. I just kind of fell into this. Like I, I have a travel category. Um, and yeah, it's just for random little one-offs. Like, um, my wife, like Caitlin went to, uh, Bush gardens, which is, uh, a, uh, amusing park. Like, three hours away from us right she went there with my daughter there she was on a field trip actually so the whole school went but she went with her and she you know spent money there so that wasn't like a big deal right so that just goes on the travel category it's just rolling we always put money in it every every month but we're also saving for a beach vacation in august
And that has its own separate category where we've been stuffing money there for months, right?
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
How do Ben & Ernie introduce this Ask‑Me‑Anything episode?
0:06–8:48
2
What are practical strategies for organizing travel categories in YNAB?
8:48–41:15
3
How can memos, bulk edit and photos help track vacation spending?
41:15–55:25
4
Which true expenses should I prioritize when I can't fund them all?
55:25–1:06:16
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