My Biggest Financial Mistakes as a Backpacker

hi everyone i hope that you're well in my last video i showed you exactly how much i spent in one month living in tulum and to be quite honest with you it was a lot more than i was expecting and it would have been even more if i wasn't tracking my spending i think when you're traveling and backpacking it is quite easy to get carried away with your spending and i for sure have made quite a few financial mistakes over the years where i reckon i could have saved thousands so in this video i wanted to share with you some of my biggest financial mistakes and i hope that you can learn from some of my mistakes so that you can save your money better than what i have in the past our money is precious and our time is precious and there are subtle changes that we can make and subtle decisions that we can make which is going gonna make our money go so much further and with that in mind before i take you through my biggest financial mistakes while traveling i'd like to introduce you to clara this video is kindly sponsored by claro which is an app which i think is going to be kind of revolutionary with regards to making the complicated financial world more understandable and more accessible to the everyday person like you and me this year more than ever i've been hearing so many people talking about investing you've got to invest you've got to be smart with your money you've got to make money while you sleep and that's all well and good sounds ideal but how on earth do i do that even watching youtube tutorials about it doesn't exactly work because everyone's in a different financial situation and what works for one person most likely will not work for another person so of course i want to be smart with my money i want to make less financial mistakes but how do i gain this knowledge by myself it seems the people who already know how to navigate these kind of things are those who come from families in finance and business many people will never even try to navigate a smarter financial path because the information just isn't accessible and this is where clara comes in as it is a digital financial coach and community that is all about empowering people to make better financial decisions it's like a human in your pocket to support you through the world of finance you can get access to a real human who will work with you to create a plan set goals keep you motivated and develop healthy financial habits they can support you on how to save for your first house but also just simply break down all those complicated financial terms that none of us ever really know what they mean and of course investing is a great goal but in being part of a more holistic financial approach like having a plan setting goals reduce overspending save and then invest something that's also particularly good about clara is that it shows you the esg impacts of your choices this refers to the environmental social and governance practices of an investment so if you want to invest but you want to do it responsibly this is something that you need to consider it's really nice to think that clara is going to be guiding you along a journey which is not only going to make you more knowledgeable about a world previously too complex to comprehend but also to really be smarter with your money so that you make less mistakes waste less save and invest in a more considered way claro are actually a startup in the uk and haven't launched yet but if you are interested in the value of a personal finance support you can sign up to the waiting list to register your interest by clicking the link in the description signing up doesn't cost you anything or lock you into anything but they work in partnership with one tribe and the rainforest trust to protect 25 trees for every person that signs up so it's a pretty nice deal already now my backpacking financial mistakes let's start with purchases that i have made before heading out backpacking which were either unnecessary or a waste of money because it's not just about your spending when you're on the trip we often spend quite a lot of money in the lead up to backpacking to prepare ourselves and i for sure have regretted quite a few of these purchases so firstly clothes that don't make me feel good especially in my early days of backpacking i bought clothes that were practical or so i was told i didn't like wearing them and i thought to myself oh maybe i'll wear it when i'm out there i didn't be smart with your clothing decisions and only pack the clothes that make you feel good and comfortable and confident when you're wearing them in my opinion this is way more important than practicality because if you have clothes in your backpack that don't make you feel good no matter how practical they are you are not going to wear them and they will be a waste of space and a waste of money i'd say over the years i probably spent a few hundred pounds on clothes that i never ended up wearing and then there's technology oh boy maybe it's because i'm a travel blogger but i have wasted thousands on technology the first was a dslr i bought a canon 600d back in 2015 because i thought that i needed a dslr to make good quality youtube videos i realized that i really really hated traveling with a big camera my style of travel at the time it was really just quite an inconvenience but also it hardly improved the quality of my content because my channel is not about being cinematic i got rid of that dslr and i replaced it with a canon g7x which was much better suited to me i could fit it in my pocket i could film all of my videos it was still great quality and it was exactly perfect for what i needed at the time but then i went on to buy a drone oh dear i clearly hadn't quite learned my lesson from the previous year yet i spent about 2 000 pounds on this drone and honestly it just ended up causing me grief it was the dji mavic pro when it first came out so super exciting i was like wow it falls up so small and sure it was a big breakthrough in commercial drone sales but still for me it was a nuisance to carry around this extra piece of equipment in an extra bag carrying that around as well as my backpacks getting on planes and buses trying to charge it in hostels was a bit of a nightmare i was also quite terrible at flying it crashed it quite a few times which led to it breaking i spent 300 pounds on trying to get it fixed but to be honest it never really worked properly again the footage didn't even add that much value to my videos because once again christiane you are not a cinematic youtuber a piece of equipment i've never regretted buying though is gopros because i always use them on a daily basis when i travel it's small it's light it's got a wide angle i can take it in the water however i have probably wasted a hundred pounds or two on mounts that i never use i once bought a bike mount never used it i had a clamp never used it suction cup used it once and there are other random ones which i bought and never use now the only ones i actively use and travel are the shorty stick and the floaty handle and sometimes the dome as well so my advice here is go easy on the mounts with gopro if you think you're only going to use it once it's not worth the purchase now let's talk about backpacks it can be really hard to pick the exact right backpack for you and your needs and i really think that it's something that only you can figure out with trial and error yourself you need to test out a backpack in real life to know that if you like it or if it's working for you or not if you've seen my packing videos you may know that i don't exactly have a reputation for being a minimalist i like having a lot of things with me when i travel so i used to just buy the biggest backpack i could find so that i could bring as much stuff with me as possible and then of course i would always have to check in that piece of luggage when getting on flights and that cost for paying for your luggage adds up over the years i'd say i spent quite a few hundred pounds just on the extra price of bringing checked in luggage on a plane and a year ago i got the eagle creek global companion which is a 40 liter backpack which i have realized is really not as small as i thought and i can make compromises to fit everything i need into a backpack of that size it's lighter and it fits in hand luggage which means i don't think i'm ever gonna have to pay for checked in luggage ever again at least not when i have to pay extra for it moving on forgetting to cancel memberships and subscriptions when i'm not using them there have been a few occasions over the years where i have gone backpacking for several months and i have forgotten to freeze my gym membership back at home that's a few hundred pounds wasted but also subscriptions on my computer that i completely forget that i don't need i realized not so long ago that i was paying insurance for a laptop that i stopped using about three or four years ago this is something that's an easy fix if you remember to do it make sure you're looking at your bank statements before you go backpacking to make sure that you are only paying for the things that you absolutely need and you're not continuing to pay for things which you just don't use anymore flights are something that i like to think i'm pretty good at getting cheap prices for now but that has not always been the case over the years i've learnt quite a few tricks to make sure you're getting the absolute cheapest flight possible i think the one that we already all know is to make sure that when you're searching on skyscanner or momondo that you are searching in incognito mode this makes sure that the cookies on your computer don't remember what you've been doing and they're not going to ramp those prices up without you realizing i always do a flexible search because prices do tend to fluctuate quite a lot day to day so if i see that it's cheaper to fly on a tuesday as opposed to a wednesday i'm gonna fly on a tuesday you can switch your vpn to a country where the flights are being sold as cheaper so bulgaria is a country notorious to have some of the cheapest flights and something i learned more recently which saved me about 50 pounds last year on my flight to colombia is using an app called hopper so hopper is a free app where you can search for flights and it tells you when the best time to book is so for example with my flight to columbia last year i searched for my flight to colombia and it said wait don't book right now because this flight price is expected to go down and lo and behold i waited until it told me to go and the flight price went down saved myself about 50 quid likewise i've searched other flights on it and it has said now is the best time to book this flight price is not going to be going down any lower i recommend you to book right now so it's really quite nice just to kind of cross check your flights on the hopper app to see if you're really booking at the best time not knowing this trick previously has probably cost me quite a few hundred pounds over the years now let's talk about when i'm actually on the road itself when i'm out backpacking what is my biggest financial regret and continues to be my biggest financial regret which makes me wonder is it really a regret can you guess it's not accommodation i'm normally happy to spend whatever price it takes to choose an accommodation that suits my needs it's not travel expenses i tend to always lean towards public transport and just pay whatever price it takes for me to get to the destination that i'm going to it's not so much activities i will assess if i think an activity is worth spending the money that i spend on it so what does that leave us with ladies and gentlemen food and drink it is so easy to overspend on food and drink when you are traveling and this is a struggle that i am constantly battling with and i think the main reason for this is because when i am hungry i think with my stomach a bit how thinking with your genitals can cause you to make bad impulsive decisions in relationships thinking with your stomach causes you to make bad impulsive decisions with your food choices and when i say bad i just mean that you're willing to spend a lot more than you budgeted for because your stomach is just giving you that attitude yes i will pay an extra three pounds for that guacamole on the side yes i will get a whole bottle of wine as opposed to just a glass and yes i would like to treat myself to an argentinian steak for the third night in a row because i deserve this other things that can heavily influence this decision is your friends and who you're hanging out with and what their budget is if you've met some people who are just on a one-week holiday in the destination that you're in they are much more likely to splash the cash and if you are dining with them well you're probably gonna be influenced to splash your cash too and that's fine every now and again but if this becomes a habit you've got yourself a little bit of a problem the easy way to reduce your spending on food is to avoid restaurants as much as possible consider them a treat and don't take them for granted you can still eat amazing food on your travel from purchasing from local street vendors or purchasing the food in a supermarket and cooking it in your kitchen and the same goes for drinks you're always going to be paying a premium if you're choosing to drink in nice bars so consider them a treat to try and reduce your spending on your drinking and other than food and drinks i think the one other biggest financial mistake that i've made on this particular trip so far was with my yucatan road trip i chose to do that road trip whilst i was still paying for my apartment so what that meant is that i was double spending on accommodation because i was still paying for my apartment whilst paying for the accommodation on the road so i probably could have saved about 100 pounds if i had waited until the time in my apartment had ended before embarking on that road trip and something that i used to do which i think i'm quite good at avoiding now is paying premium prices for the most popular activities where you're often herded around like a sheep nowadays i prefer to engage in smaller organizations for tours where normally you get a lot more personal experience as well and often cheaper you also may not visit the most popular sites but lesser known sites that are just as interesting and maybe offer something a little bit different don't let anyone travel shame you for not doing the most popular thing to do in a particular area that's your choice travel is about your personal experience there's no right or wrong way to do it as long as you are respecting the nature and the people of the place that you are in and on that note i hope you guys enjoyed this video and perhaps learnt something new if you do make a big financial mistake don't worry don't panic i really think it's just all part of the learning process and often we need to make those mistakes ourselves in order to realize how we can improve thanks again to claro for sponsoring this video remember you can sign up to the waiting list by clicking the link in the description then you can get updates about the launch of the app and learn more about it and i will see you guys in the next video bye you

Channel: Backpacking Bananas

Views: 158,548

Keywords: gap year ideas, gap year travel, travel tips, travel guide, budget travel, backpacking solo, solo female travel, financial regrets, financial advice, financial support, biggest financial regrets, how to save money, travel money, how to get money to travel, how to travel for free, how to travel cheaper, how to be smarter with money, how to budget, finance tips, money tips, backpacking finance

Id: SCQ2BmrkUwk

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020