TOP 3 Questions to Ask Yourself When Planning a Vacation

By Anjum Choudhry Nayyar

This post was sponsored by pcfinancial.ca however; all opinions expressed here are my own.

As the summer holidays approach many of us masalamommas are looking forward to road trips, vacations abroad or a few hours away or even vacations born out of obligatory family weddings!

But these vacations, ‘spontaneous’ or otherwise can incur costs our wallets may not be ready for. Some of the questions you may ask are: “How much cash do I take on our trip? How do I budget for in-laws travelling with me? How much do I budget for gifts to give to relatives that we may visit?”

If you’ve started thinking about these financial questions you also may want to find out if the bank you’re with can actually support your summer plans.

1) Cash or Credit?

The biggest piece of advice most say to follow, is to always have a plan for financing your holiday. NEVER charge it on credit without a thought to how you are going to pay it off. In a survey conducted for PC Financial, 79% of Canadians say ‘good banking’ is a bank that saves them money BUT only 35% of Canadians say their bank delivers.
Half of Canadians (49%) say ‘good banking’ is about simplifying their lives. With PC Financial, you can save up to $200 a year compared with the big banks, with no fee daily banking – money you can spend on whatever you’d rather be doing

2) A package deal or a-la-carte? 

Just like your bank, a vacation is best budgeted for when there’s a ‘package deal’ an all-inclusive. When you know all the costs upfront it’s a lot easier to budget for that spontaneous vacation, or even one that is one of two you may take all year as a family.

When looking for vacation ideas, destinations or timing, make sure you’re not just researching airfare and hotels, but also cabs, ground transportation and meals and even those ‘oops’ moments where you have to purchase something you didn’t realize would come up. Sometimes that ‘oops’ moment can be one quarter of your trip cost.

3) Should you set up a vacation account?

Yes! Wouldn’t you love to see the dollars go up in a ‘vacation fund’?

The best way to do it is to have money regularly transferred into an account you just never see until you really need it. But you really need to make sure you know how much you can afford. If you’re doing take-out every week for 20 dollars, wouldn’t you rather see that money go towards next year’s pizza on the beach?

Saving money is everyone’s top priority and a bank needs to be your ally in doing just that. A recent Leger survey found that banks are not delivering on Canadians’ top need: saving them money. Only a third say that their bank actually does that. Saving money is important to Canadians; in fact, over half of the respondents say they would switch banks to save up to $200/yr.

If you want to spend more you’ve really got to save smarter.

• PC Financial offers no fee, no catch daily banking and a no annual fee PC MasterCard
• Great rewards: More than $1B in PC points redeemed for free groceries and merchandise in 16 years

Perks:

For a limited time, earn 2.5% interest on new deposits and up to $150 worth of PC points.

Save time by banking when you shop for groceries, at almost 200 Loblaws & Loblaw banner stores.
Earn everyday rewards with PC points, redeemable in-store for free groceries and merchandise (over $1 billion in rewards redeemed to date.

Visit pcfinancial.ca to learn more.

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