While I am still a little embarrassed to say I am part of the group of people who never made it out of the travel WhatsApp group, I am happy to report that I know exactly how I will handle it the next time I find myself in the same situation.
Hands up if you’ve ever been part of a WhatsApp group where a trip was being planned, only for it to never make it out of the group. Or worse, the whole group ended up not going at all. Guilty!
Not making it out of the WhatsApp group is something we could discuss for a long time and get many laughs from. If it were up to me, every person and every trip would make it out of the group, and more people would go from saying, “We should go,” to proudly saying, “We went.”
Before you judge me for not making it out of the group, let me say this: none of us did. The trip simply didn’t happen, even though we really wanted to go. In our case, it came down to timing and budget, which are probably two of the biggest reasons many group trips never get beyond the planning stage.
We didn’t make it to our final destination, but I know we would have eventually if we had calculated all the costs upfront, known exactly what we were in for, and started saving early enough. We could have set up a travel stokvel to hold ourselves accountable each month. In fact, I would suggest creating a stokvel before you even know where you are going. That way, when the destination is finally chosen, the budget is less likely to be the reason the trip falls apart.
