How to Plan Your Next Trip

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See How to Plan Your Next Trip! Simple tips and reminders from experienced travelers!

How Planning Trips Has Changed

Right now, things are a bit up in the air. Planning a trip right now might sound amazing, yet scary at the same time. Unfortunately, the coronavirus outbreak is not just having an effect on travel at this very moment. This effect is longer-lasting, at least for the foreseeable future.

The slew of cancellations keeps extending farther and farther into the year and a lot of summer trips have now been cancelled. If you want to plan a trip, however, please do not be scared to do so if you feel comfortable with it. You can also do a staycation instead of taking a flight. Make sure your car insurance is up-to-date before doing so.

The key when it comes to travel right now is to be flexible! Yes, things are up in the air, and yes, you do need to be cautious, but you can still plan. In fact, planning a trip might be good for you – for your mental health, especially.

If you want to plan your next trip, here are some tips to do so safely:

Consider The Risk And Reward

First of all, consider the risk and reward when it comes to potentially planning your travels. Please do not start to travel just because you see your Instagram friends doing so. Weigh the pros and cons and consider each risk and reward for your family specifically before making any decisions at all.

Do you have a high-risk individual in your family? Are you willing to catch COVID-19? Are your travel plans mostly outdoors, or would you be spending time with a lot of others in crowded spaces?

There are a lot of things to consider and you need to think each thing through, before you plan. Also, I highly recommend looking for any guidance from the CDC before going to a certain location.

Also, please keep in mind that I am not telling you that you should travel. This is a decision that each individual has to make for their own family. If you are planning to travel, I am just trying to help you think it through first, so that you are able to have fun while also keeping your family safe.

You Could Scale Back

If you really wanted to go abroad this year, why not push that off until it is safe to do so (depending on your comfort level) and instead, scale back?

You could do an RV road trip with your pets across the state instead, visiting parks and other beautiful outdoor spots. Or, if you do not feel comfortable traveling across the country, you could plan a staycation.

To me, a vacation is all about relaxation and spending time with the ones you love. You can still do that at home! Take off work, put down your phones, and plan a fun weekend at home, in an RV, or at an airbnb if you feel comfortable. There are quite a few outdoor travel spots that you could consider. A couple of my favorites have been Stone Mountain and Crystal River!

Tentatively Plan Your Next Trip

Like I mentioned above, the key to planning your next trip is to be flexible. Instead of setting strict dates, tentatively plan your dates and itineraries. The great thing about travel right now is that there are a ton of deals and companies are being really flexible with cancellation policies.

There are two ways that you could tentatively plan your trip: book everything and risk having to potentially cancel and/or postpone (maybe get travel insurance???), or plan everything in your head and write down your tentative travel plans and then book everything once you feel comfortable to do so.

You cannot go wrong either way and it is all dependent on your personal comfort level!

Save Up

A great thing about planning your travel on paper and not booking things quite yet is the fact that you have time to save up! One post that I wrote that might help you is this one on traveling on a budget.

Saving up and/or traveling on a budget is really important right now, especially since a lot of people are concerned about the economy and we really are not sure how it is going to look tomorrow, or in a month from now.

So, when you are saving for your trip, plan everything out (especially costs) and then find a way to budget, save, and potentially make extra money to meet your goals. The longer you save, the more elaborate your travel plans could be!

Tell me – are you comfortable traveling now? When will you be planning your first trip?

Thanks For Reading!

We hope you can take a few of these tips and use them to help Plan Your Next Trip. Are you planning a vacation for this year? If you have tips for fellow travelers, leave us a comment on the blog post here or on Facebook to help share tips and any changes that travelers may have to make! Be sure to check out the links above for travel inspiration!

Happy Traveling!