Now is the time. We want to present to you something great we came up with: 'Dedication Money'. Dedication Money is money, which you dedicate to a specific purpose and way you want to spend it (in the future). How does it work and why is it an interesting concept? Let's talk about that now!
You all will probably know these moments where you want to spend some extra money on something special but it doesn't work with your budget. We had this quite often in the past while we traveled. There was this thing we wanted to do but we decided against it. Afterwards we were sometimes unhappy about our decision. So we thought there should be a better way for it! Another impulse came in a discussion with our friend Alina who is a brilliant wedding photographer by the way! She told us how important it is for her to embrace the journey in a way that you don't regret things afterwards - even if it means you come home a bit earlier - but happier!
Whenever we think we want to allow ourself something special we take a look at our list. Is it on there or is there a way how to tweak it in a way that it will work to use some dedicated money? We love the idea of having 'already paid' the money for these extraordinary events and things. With this it doesn't ruin our daily budget. And you can already in advance have some Vorfreude which is quite nice.
One and a half years before we finally started our big trip we began to sell our stuff - step by step. We became really active on Ebay, flea markets and more. Every time we had a certain amount earned we thought about how we could spend this money best. We worked next to our jobs quite hard in the evenings and on weekends to finally sell almost all of our belongings. It felt great by the way and we will write something about that soon as well. So selling all our stuff and to be honest - we all in the western world have way too much - was the best decision we could have made. Not only do we have many great dedicated special events on our world trip - we also feel the freedom of having less things we don't need. We highly recommend doing something like we did yourself - even if you are not going that extreme.
It is awesome to have the Dedication Money for our world trip. Still, it is a bit harder than we thought to actually spend it. We still think that we will spend most of it in south-east Asia or Oceania, let's see. We will keep you updated.
What do you think about dedication money? Would you try something like this for your next big trip? Is it stupid or clever? Tell us what you think, we are curious, especially after opening up about a topic that you normally don't discuss in public.