How to Save Money to Travel the World: 3 Ultimate Tips
Many people wonder how I manage to travel so often.
How do I have enough money to travel? Do I save a lot or just earn a lot?
Well, I’m not a millionaire (yet), and I travel much more than my friends earning about the same and asking those questions.
To answer them and you, I’m giving a list of tips on how to save money to travel the world.
One of the first posts on my blog was about tips to travel the world cheap, which went viral. Not a surprise, as it had 50 extremely useful tips from the collective knowledge of 15 experienced travel bloggers from around the world.
I also created a step-by-step guide on planning a perfect trip in the way I plan them.
However, even for the really cheap trips, you need money.
And, where does this money come from?
From saving them on something else!
First things first. To have enough money to travel, you need to find out what you spend your money on and on what categories you can save some cash.
How?
Budgeting Apps
Sometimes, you don’t understand where all your money go. They’re simply…gone.
To find out the main categories of your expenses, you should use a budgeting (personal finance) app.
There are some for laptops, some for Android and some for iOS. You can find the list of the best personal finance apps here.
Cut Unnecessary Expenses
Just use one at least for a month and analyze the results. Check the largest categories of your expenses and think of ways to cut such costs.
Do you really need this $4 Starbucks coffee every day? Do you really need to eat out so often?
Why wouldn’t you choose a cheaper kind of meat (eg. chicken instead of turkey)?
There are lots of ways to cut costs on small everyday expenses. Check some money saving perks here.
Find and Cut Main Travel Costs
When you travel, you usually have more or less the same categories you spend money on.
The main ones are usually plane tickets, accommodation, and transportation.
Think of ways to save money on those expenses in the long term.
Let’s do it step by step:
- Plane tickets.
If the places you want to go to are relatively far away and you definitely need to fly there, you can find some airline memberships that you purchase once and then save money every time you fly.
An example of such a membership program is Wizzair Discount Club. This Hungarian company has low-cost tickets anyway, but if you pay for their membership fee, after two flights the fee will return to you and every next flight, you will only save money! Isn’t it great?
In case your target destination is not so far away, you can think of other ways to get there.
What about trains? Busses? What about buying a campervan and saving money in the long term? You can check some options here.
- Accommodation
Another big expense when you travel is accommodation. Very often, staying in an apartment is cheaper than a hotel. You can get a 25 euro discount off your first accommodation booked on Airbnb using this link. If you are traveling to Seattle, you should know that the average rent in Seattle is between $1,592 and $10,156. This should be included in your budget planning.
Apart from that, here is the same idea: you buy something to save in the long term.
One option is a timeshare. This is when you have your house/apartment in your target destination for a week, month or for the whole summer every year.
With this option, you save lots of time finding a new destination and planning a trip there. Moreover, you save lots of money, as such timeshares are cheaper than just one-week or one-month options in similar houses or apartments.
If you prefer staying in hotels, there are worldwide hotel chains like Hilton, Marriott, Meininger and many others that you can find in many different places. Many of those chains have membership clubs and bonus programs where you can collect points from staying in their hotels and use them later in another hotel of the same chain.
And, again. Campervan. This option not only saves you money on getting to the place you want to go but also on accommodation. Moreover, you can stop in the most beautiful place you find on your way and just stay there with a sky full of stars above you.
I tried it on my trip to Portugal and it was amazing.
- Transportation
Here, I mean not getting to your target destination, but traveling around the city/country/state of your choice. This is usually an inevitable expense, as you won’t always walk in the city that you visit because of large distances.
You’ll need public transportation or a taxi.
How to save money on this travel expense?
For public transportation, there are always options to buy a weekend or a 1-day pass to travel without limits for a certain period of time.
The second option is buying a city pass/card. You pay for such passes once, and they allow you to use all public transportation in the city and enter a number of attractions gratis (included in price).
In many cases, a good option is renting a car. If you usually use a taxi when you travel, this would drastically decrease your travel expenses.
And, yeah, campervan again. It is not the most convenient option in the case of cities, but if you’re going to the countryside, want to see some natural wonders or having a surfing trip along the cost, this one is perfect.
I hope this article helped you to save lots of money to travel the world, and you’ll start traveling as much as I do! If you’re not convinced, check the benefits of traveling the world.
