Travel and Investment Lessons 101
Hack to Save Money!
Everyone on Instagram says, “Travel the world, Ditch the 9–5, Or do a 9–5 but spend all your money and free time travelling. It will add meaning to your life. You don’t need any material comforts. All you need to lead a happy life are experiences. So, go to Goa, Spain, Paris, Iceland!!”.
Now you are like “ Wow, this is so liberating. I don’t have to slog like my parents did trying to save money to buy a house, plan retirement etc etc. I am going to collect experiences by travelling the world. Let me get started. Yay!”
Then you open Twitter and see that every Finfluencer and Entrepreneurship Influencer, Tech Founder and the like saying “Investing in a House is a bad decision! Spending money renting out flats with luxury amenities and balcony views is useless. Only a fool would do this. Invest that money in the Stock Market instead. Buy Bitcoins. Grow Your Money! Achieve FIRE. You do not need to slog at your stressful job all your life if you invest in the stock market.”
Decision Time
You think “ Hmmm. Let me invest in the stock market and grow my money. I can do both what folks on Instagram and Twitter are recommending. God bless them for their generous advice.” You begin with Step 1 of whatever needs to be done to start investing.
A Day Later
You are pulling your hair and crying, “I don’t think I am smart enough to invest in stocks or bitcoins. I give up.”
You log in to Instagram. You still find everybody saying, “Travel the world! Collect experiences and not things. Invest in Travel.”
You log in to Twitter next. Everybody on Twitter is still saying, “Do not invest your money in a house. Grow your money with stocks.”
You put two and two together and find common ground in these two pieces of advice. “Invest in Travel” and “Do not invest in a house”.
You tell yourself, “I may not be able to follow 100% of their advice, but I can follow some of it. Let me go on a vacation. Yes! I now have clarity. I am going to travel. I am going to collect experiences and not spend my life buying things. I am not buying a house. Haah.”
Implementation
You are all set to book that awe-some sea-facing room at “Sea-Shell Holidays” with a sprawling balcony in Goa. It is the same one you saw on Instagram, a friend of yours sipping her cocktail with a gorgeous view in front of her.
You reach the booking website, and it says
Realisation 1
You are about to enter your card details, but you decide to check out pictures of the room.
“ Wait a minute! This room has no windows”. You realise the low price is only for the room with no windows! Arghh!
You think, “Even at my humble rented accommodation, I have a window. But I am going on vacation, so I should be willing to spend slightly more on the sea-facing room my friend stayed in. Not a big deal.”
Realisation 2
Okay, the price for the room you want to book costs 75% of your monthly salary.
This is not what you expected.
So you think, “I will get back to this later, let me book the flight first!
Realisation 3
You open the app/website to book your flights for the days that coincide with your long weekend holidays. You enter your destination and there you go. There is a popup.
Why does this sound weirdly familiar?
Calculation time:
You think, “Okay. I am getting a deal on the flight. I will use the money saved to book that amazing sea-facing room in ‘Sea Shell Holidays’. This works out. Yo influencers, I love you all for enlightening me.”
A few minutes later, another realization.
The 50% off flights have a travel time of 12 hours with a 2-hour layover at a place 6 hours away from the destination, even though the direct flying time from your city to the destination would have only been one hour. The flight that takes only one hour to reach and takes off at a time that works out for your long weekend time constraint costs five times the original price!! You think..
The Vacation
Day 1 Vacation
You are on the way to Goa! You have managed to go. You compromised and booked a room within your budget that is nice but not as nice as “Sea Shell Holidays”. You also decided to take an overnight bus instead of a comfortable flight to work out the costs.
Tired from the bus journey, you reach the hotel only to realise that the room you booked does not look even remotely similar to the pictures on the app. There is no hot water. It is unclean and has the worst service.
You tell yourself, “Don't worry! Dont fret. You will be coming here only to sleep. Enjoy your vacation by spending all your day outdoors. You decide to head to the beach.”
A few hours later
You are stuck in a traffic jam because it is a long weekend. The whole world is in Goa! You decide to cancel the beach and head to the beautiful sea-facing seafood restaurant your friend was dining in on Instagram.
You take one hour to reach the restaurant instead of 15 minutes. Courtesy: Rain, Potholes and long weekend traffic. You are starving. You want to eat lobsters, but you notice the crowd. There is a 2-hour wait just to get a table!!!
The rest of the vacation follows a pattern similar to Day 1. You come back from the vacation more exhausted than before you went on one. You even suffer from lack of sleep and body pain with all the overnight bus travel.
A few days later
You have just signed a rental agreement for the flat you plan to move into next month. With a big cup of coffee to keep you awake, you are furiously writing a story on medium about how you made peace with the reality that 1. You cannot afford to travel like it is portrayed on Instagram
2. You are not enlightened or smart enough to follow investment advice by Twitter Gurus
3. Nor can you afford to buy that beautiful dream house.
So what you do is :
You choose to rent out a flat with decent amenities and a balcony. The balcony overlooks a calm, serene, and green surrounding. You plan to spend your long weekends on the balcony with chai, coffee, cocktails, and doing everything under the sun and the wind surrounded by the greenery of your plants. So basically, instead of spending on disappointing vacations, you have chosen to pay rent.
Moral of the Story: I realise that I cannot “collect experiences” without money.
Vacation != Memory Collection.
Most often, they have to be paid for, like houses, cars and other things. Vacation memories cannot be “collected” for free.
But I do get some things for free
- Lots of Chef, DevOps and Progress Software T-shirts to fill my wardrobe
- Unlimited Ranting on Medium
Disclaimer: This work is part fiction and part real.
