How to Travel on a Budget

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me “how do you travel so often?” or “how do you afford to travel so often?” I would have enough money to pay for my recent trip to Europe—all expenses paid. It took me about four years to fine tune my travel skills, but hopefully this blog will help you fine tune yours in a matter of minutes. I went from buying an $800-$1000 roundtrip flight to Europe to paying $300-500. I wasted my money and time on Expedia so you don’t have to— you’re welcome. So, read on fellow travelers, because the answer to your prayers is here: my secret to traveling on a budget. 

My favorite secret tools are Skyscanner for flights, Airbnb and Hostelworld for accommodation, and public transportation for well, transportation. I would like to preface this post by stating that this is not an ad (hey Skyscanner if you’re reading this please sponsor me), these websites are just my personal favorites and essentially the key to my success—no big deal. 

Flights

 When I travel, I always plan my trip so that the total cost of my flights are the most expensive aspect of my trip while also ensuring it isn’t too expensive. ProTip: Always fly in the middle of the week—never on a weekend—the prices are drastically cheaper. Instead of going to the website of an individual airline to search for flights, I use Skyscanner. This website is fantastic because it searches multiple airlines and it even searches other travel fare aggregators such as Kayak and Expedia. My favorite part about this website is that it allows you to choose your departure airport and put your destination as ‘everywhere’ as seen below.

This tool is particularly useful when you do not have a destination in mind. When the latter is true, you can simply pick the cheapest destination that interests you. This is how I ended up going to Costa Rica for about $300 roundtrip when I was originally looking for flights to Singapore.

Another tool that Skyscanner has that I love is the monthly price tool as pictured below. This tool is especially useful for when you do not have a specific date in mind. It allows you to view the prices for your destination over the course of a month or multiple months and see which dates are the cheapest.

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Most importantly, once you have found your perfect cheap flight, GO TO THE AIRLINE’S WEBSITE. I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT book directly through Skyscanner or any other travel fare aggregators or travel websites, always book through the actual airline. This ensures that you actually have a ticket, and avoids any excess fees that these websites often tack onto the price.

Accommodation

I am a huge fan of saving money—aren’t we all? So here it is, one of my sought after travel hacks: cook your own food. I almost always stay in an accommodation that has a kitchen (i.e. an Airbnb or a hostel). When you are traveling you can save hundreds of dollars by going to a grocery store or local market and buying and cooking your own food instead of going out to breakfast, lunch and dinner. I like to try to limit myself to going out to eat once a week or once a country to taste the local cuisine, but aside from that I typically cook my own meals.

If I am not couch surfing with my foreign friends or relatives, you can bet I will be in an Airbnb or a Hostel. If you do not have an Airbnb account you can sign up for one here (and get $55 in travel credit). An Airbnb can be an apartment, a house, a private room in someone’s house, a hostel, a hotel, a boat, a tree house, and everything in-between. A hostel is a shared accommodation—dorm room style. Most hostels feature bunk beds and lockers in a shared room with a shared bathroom, but many additionally offer private rooms. I have found the websites and apps for both of the aforementioned accommodation services to be incredibly user-friendly and their services are often more economical than a hotel.

A Pro Tip regarding accommodations: reviews, reviews reviews. Airbnb and Hostelworld are possible because of reviews. Before you stay in an Airbnb or hostel, read the reviews and after your stay leave a review for future travelers. On Airbnb, hosts also review guests so that future hosts know which guests will treat their homes with respect.

My favorite tool on Airbnb is the ‘Superhost’ tool. This allows you to stay with hosts who have at least a 4.8/5 rating, have hosted ten or more people, and who have a 90% response rate within 24 hours— which basically means these hosts are awesome. An amazing host can make or break an Airbnb, so the Superhost tool is incredibly important.

Similar to Skyscanner, Hostelworld shows you various different hostels instead of going directly through the website of each hostel individually. Hostels are typically cheaper than Airbnbs because you are sharing the space as opposed to having your own space. They’re great for meeting fellow travelers—who doesn’t want to make international friends—and great for partying. Many hostels have their own bars or offer bar crawls with plenty of drink deals that you won’t want to miss! Again, read the reviews to see if you are getting a loud party hostel or a quiet low-key one.

Transportation

From trains to ferries to busses— almost any form of public transportation will save you money. Saving money is great, public transportation is great, right? Okay, so sometimes it’s not that great BUT it saves you money and this is a budget travel blog after all. In my experience it’s usually about half the price to take the metro or a bus compared to a cab or an Uber—especially when you’re traveling by yourself and do not have anyone to split the fare with. Unless you are traveling in the middle of the night when it is not available, public transportation is the way to go. In addition, it has modernized and expanded a great deal in recent years. Many cities have apps for their transportation system and if an app is not available, I have found Google Maps to be a good substitute. From taking a huge coach bus along the cliffs of Santorini or Mallorca, to taking a water bus across the lagoon in Venice, or taking a crowded train through Tokyo at rush hour. Public transportation may be a nauseating, often crowded experience but it often saves you enough money for other, better experiences.