By Liam Isola A full 30% of Americans want to save money for travel in 2026. Unsurprisingly, it’s one of the most popular financial New Year’s resolutions. While I haven’t written explicitly about the process of saving money, I’ve certainly detailed how you can save money on your travels.
Whether that’s saving money on hotels, flights, or food, it’s a topic that comes up time and time again. However, I haven’t necessarily detailed how travel can help people meet their goals. Enter the New Year, a time to reflect on what is important and what we want to change in our lives.
Americans have already made their 2026 New Year’s Resolutions clear. We’ll take a quick look at the most popular ones for this year. Then, I’ll note how traveling fits into some of these goals and can help people achieve them even quicker.
Here’s Statista’s list of the most popular New Year’s resolutions based on a recent survey:
- Exercising more: 48%
- Saving more money: 46%
- Eating healthier: 45%
- Spending more time with family/friends: 42%
- Losing weight: 31
- Improving Performance on the Job: 24%
- Doing more for the environment: 24%
- Reducing stress on the job: 22%
New Year’s Resolutions: How Traveling Can Help You Exercise More and Lose Weight
What if I told you traveling, especially in a certain way, could be one of the most effective ways to exercise and lose weight? It might sound too good to be true, but many people have reported losing weight after trips.
It can be difficult for people to find the time and motivation to exercise in daily life. That’s especially true for individuals who work long hours and have family responsibilities. Personally, though, working out is a huge part of my life.
I’ve written about how you can keep your gym routine while you backpack around the world. However, you don’t need to have a gym routine while you travel to exercise more and lose weight.
Let the novelty of traveling motivate you to walk more to see the sights you want to see. The US is a car-dominant place, but some cities lend themselves well to exploration on foot, like New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Washington, DC.
European trips tend to involve a lot of walking, as the vast majority of cities are designed to be pedestrian-friendly. We’ve certainly heard stories of people eating as indulgently as possible during their European vacations but still coming back slimmer because of their 15,0000-step days.
Exercise doesn’t have to be boring and unrewarding. Hiking with a partner, family, or friends, or people you meet at your hostel, can be a very fun way to connect. The great part about hiking is that you get near-instant gratification, with beautiful views throughout the hike, and usually the best for last.
On the other hand, it can be harder to want to exercise when you don’t get immediate results. Still, the healthy walking and exercise habits you build while traveling can and should carry over to your everyday life at home.
How Traveling Can Help You Spend More Time With Family and Friends
Spending more time with family and friends is one of the most admirable New Year’s resolutions. Thankfully, traveling can absolutely bring you closer to family and friends. It’s all too easy to get stuck in a routine and friend and family dynamics that can feel unfulfilling.
Going on a trip with the people you love can allow you to not just spend more time with them, but higher-quality time as well. Also, when your friends and family are scattered across multiple states or countries, going on a trip can be the most convenient way for everyone to get together.
One of my friends has been incredibly proactive about organizing trips to do exactly this. He picks a different North American city every year for New Year’s, which has always been a blast when I’ve joined.
He also plans a yearly European trip and more spontaneous ones scattered throughout the year. Sometimes it just takes one person to be proactive for a friend group to get to spending more time together this way.
It’s also nice to plan trips to cities where I have sights to see and friends/family to visit. It feels like I’m scratching both the exploration and the connection itch at once. It’s even better if friends and family can join me while I’m exploring.
So, in a highly-mobile world where our friends aren’t necessarily in the same place, it’s often going to take traveling to spend more time with the people you love.
New Year’s Resolutions: How Traveling Can Reduce Job Stress/Improve Performance
I think this one is relatively self-explanatory, especially given the work culture in the US. Burnout is all too common and two weeks of vacation every year, if you even get that, lags behind the rest of the developed world.
Taking vacation time is a necessary way to recharge and get out of a rut at work. When work starts getting monotonous, and you’re starting to daydream at your desk, it may be time to travel and add some novelty into the mix.
Incredibly, in 2018, there were 768 million days of unused vacation time by Americans, which is quite astounding. It’s understandable that people want to be high achievers and advance their career to earn more money for their families.
However, working instead of taking vacation can actually reduce job performance. Don’t take it from me, take it from Ernst & Young. A study they did found that for each 10 additional hours of vacation time an employee took, their year-end performance ratings improved by eight percent.
A Boston Consulting Group study also found that professionals who were forced to take time off were more productive than those who spent more time working.
This works on multiple levels. Taking time off reduces burnout and improves motivation. It also improves creativity and the ability to see problems in a different way. Most of all, it can improve mental health, which has clear knock-on effects to work.
Conclusion/What to Expect on Vacation Vulture in 2026
If you’re still not convinced that travel can help you stick to your New Year’s resolutions, then why not try it out for yourself?
In 2026, I will keep sharing travel tips, itineraries, and guides to help you achieve your travel goals. One of my 2025 New Year’s resolutions was to make 52 posts on Vacation Vulture in 52 weeks. I got a late start on that one, but I am on track to have 52 posts done by February.
In fact, it will be 53 or 54, as we had our first guest post on the website this year. A big thanks to Jeremy Kruger, who wrote about a hidden gem beach town in Albania.
There may be another guest post about Japan in the coming weeks as well, courtesy of Leo Hermes!
Admittedly, it has been more difficult than I thought to churn out a post every week. I’ve also done so on TopSoccerBets.com, another website I created.
I don’t want to compromise on article quality just to get a post out every week. So, once I hit a year’s worth of posts, I may scale back and go with a post every two weeks.
As 2025 closes, I’ve been reflecting on the year I’ve had. Thank you to everyone who has read even one of my articles and/or has supported me by giving feedback or suggestions. I genuinely appreciate it.
Happy New Year and get going with the resolutions!