Budgeting is a key part of saving for a trip. Photo / Unsplash
Budgeting is a key part of saving for a trip. Photo / Unsplash
Opinion
OPINION:
A popular travel platform has launched a tool to help you save for your holiday, but is it really that helpful? Sarah Pollok gives it a go.
It may come as no surprise to hear that the cost of living and the price of flights is higher than it used to be. This means two things for travel-hungry folk; your trip abroad will require more savings and those savings will be harder to, well, save.
As one such person, I was curious to hear about Kayak’s ‘Vacay Valuator’. Launched on May 19, the calculator “helps travellers find out how far they can go by making small savings” according to the website.
The landing page opens with a paragraph describing a recent study done by Kayak. Results found that 65 per cent of travellers from the UK are finding it harder to save for a holiday, and 85 per cent are “willing to forego non-essential purchases such as takeaways and daily coffees” to save.
Kayak's new Vacay Valuator aims to show travellers what holidays they can afford after saving on everyday costs. Photo / Kayak.co.uk
Scrolling down, I’m asked to enter the number of months I can save for and select from a list of 15 items I am “ready to abdicate”.
The list includes many items that feature in almost every discussion about savings; takeaway coffee and dinners out, Netflix and new clothes.
The list covers food (takeaway coffee, alcohol, dining out), entertainment (Amazon Prime, Netflix, Football matches), health (Beauty products, gym memberships) and miscellaneous.
Most items are ones you’ll see on any ‘budget-cutting’ listicle but I am surprised to see the somewhat essential ‘community and transport’ as an option, as well as the unusually luxurious ‘professional cleaner’. I may be off base, but if you pay a professional to clean your house or car, you probably have a pretty sophisticated budget already.
Each item is assigned a cost, based on the average price. After making my selection, the tool multiplies the average cost for each item by the months I can save to produce an estimated saving. A map below then displays the flights I could book with this amount.
Travellers can choose from 15 different items, each with an 'average price'. Photo / Kayak.co.uk
If I give up takeaway coffees, dining out, alcohol, nights out, Netflix, beauty products, and new clothes for two months, I’m told I “will save around £626″.
This is where things fall apart a little.
Each item is assigned an average cost and Kayak is clear the tool is based on UK survey data and uses UK prices. Off the bat, this means the tool isn’t that helpful in New Zealand, where goods can vastly differ in price.
However, even if I lived in the UK, the tool would be a little more than a gimmick for me.
Because, as much as I’d love to have a budgeting shortcut, the tool doesn’t accurately reflect my spending, making it a fundamentally flawed ‘valuator’.
For example, I spent $25 eating out last month (not the $112 it suggests) but my gym membership cost $110 (not the projected $80). If, as the tool suggests, something as small as a takeaway coffee can add up, so do these discrepancies.
On the plus side, it is a helpful reminder of how items that may feel essential are actually luxuries and ones we can ‘abdicate’ to save for travel.
However, if you are serious about putting money away for a future trip, a more accurate budget, which you can regularly monitor, will go far further in helping achieve your saving (and ergo, travel) goals.
This doesn’t have to be anything fancy either. Over the years, I’ve used a simple Google spreadsheet to track my spending and forecast future finances, so I can travel around the world.
