I really love to travel on budget. I don’t see the point of spending a lot of money on luxury hotels, fancy restaurants and expensive fun activities. Main goal for traveling for me has always been the willing to explore magnificent nature of our beautiful world and to see the difference of different cultures. Before I start to share my traveling stories, I wanted to share some tips and tricks how to travel on budget:
- Plan your trips. I always plan my trips. Most importantly – I plan them in advance. It could be 3 months or half year in advance. And believe me – the time will fly and your vacation time will be here faster then you expected. Spontaneous trips are needed and good as well, but if it is spontaneous, it is almost never cheap. Last minute accomodation and last minute plane tickets are never cheap.
- More then one desired destination for a vacation. I always chose more than one place where I want to go on a vacation. Almost every country have the time when it is “their season”. Obviously on this time the tickets will be more expensive then when it is not their season. So my way of planning is to check when it is their season for the countries I like to visit and to choose the less requested for my applicable time slot.
- No specific time. People often ask me – how it is possible that the cheap plane tickets are available exactly on your vacation, you must be so lucky! But that’s the thing – I’m not! When planning my trips, I always adjust my vacation to my trips not my trips to my vacation. I always choose the time slot (f.e. april – may) when I will want to go on a trip and then I am searching for the cheapest destination country (from my list) within that time slot I chose.
- Don’t fly to your destination country directly. If you are living in the small country like me, I strongly advise you to search plane tickets not directly from your home country but from how I call them “big country airports”. For example, from my home country, it is very cheap to fly to London, Frankfurt, Milan, Brussels etc. From these airports the tickets are cheaper also to my destination places. I will give an example. I have always dremt of visiting Gran canaria. I checked that from my home country the ticket only to Grand canaria costed 192 eur at my chosen time slot. Then I searched via “big airports” and found ticket from my home country to London for 23 eur and from London to Gran canaria for 20 eur! This little research saved me 149 eur!
- Don’t fly directly back to your home country. Obviously, you will not always be that lucky to get cheap plane tickets back from your destination country to your home country. Obviously you will not always be that lucky to get cheap plane tickets to the “big airport” country from which you got there (In my case – London). Why is that so? Because now you have a specific time slot, right? You know how long your vacation will be and you have specific time slot when you need to go back. So my suggestion is to not search for tickets via another “big airport”, but to search for other options, for other destinations where you can get from your destination country. I will give an example again. After I found these cheap tickets to Gran Canaria, I was happy but not for long because tickets back where very expensive. So I checked another destinations and found that there were very cheap tickets to Barselona. I had never been to Barselona and wondered – why not? I eliminated some days I had planned for Grand canaria and added for exploring Barselona. This trip started to seem better that I expected! Lucky for me – tickets from Barselona to London was cheap and the tickets from London to my home country as well.
- Pay your bookings gradually. In order not to feel like this trip is taking all my money, I like to pay my bookings gradually. This way – I don’t feel like I have to spend a lot of money for my trip immediately. I told you already that I plan my trips in advance, so I usually have 3 – 6 months until the trip. I usually use Airbnb to find accomodation. Luckily Airbnb offers you a chance to pay later and not immediately. My advise is to pay one accomodation fee every month. For example, I started to plan my trip to Grand canaria and Barcelona 5 month in advance, at first month I bought plane tickets, second month I payed for booking in Gran canaria and at third month I payed for booking in Barcelona, I had two more month which leads us to the next chapter.
- Save money in advance. While planning my trips, I usually save specific amount from my salary for my trip. I advise you to save it somewhere else, do not just leave it at your bank account while imaganing it that it is there and you will not spend it. It is better to save it somewhere else, you can either take it out or transfer to another account.
- Some points to remember:
• The thought of spending some hours in the “big airport” does not convince you? Think about money that you are going to save by waiting, you can think for your self that you are earning this money because you could have spent it for this direct flight, but now you earned 149 eur in couple of hours. Not so bad after all, right?
• If this still doesn’t convince you, you can always search for a flight to your destination country for the next day and explore the “transfer” country.
• I usually try to plan my fights at night – if you are organized enough, you can also take the first flight at your last working days (before vacation) evening, I usually do that, because I love to sleep in planes and also – I am exausted after working week and I would sleep anyway, so why wouldn’t combine those?
• Always try to plan flights with at least 5 hours between arrival time of first flight and departure time of second one. Remember – this is not a transfer, you planned this. If the first flight is late, the second one will not wait for your. Also this time slot is nots o long and it also gives you time to stretch your legs between flights.
• Another risk to consider is that this trip is planned completely by you and there is a risk of cancelled flights an so on, because – when one is cancelled, the whole trip is cancelled, but it would be like that if you have bought the expensive flight as well, isn’t it?
Please let me know in the comments if this was useful and what are your tips and tricks for traveling on a budget!