How To Travel With A Tiny Budget
Travelling opens a gateway to new people, cultures, food, and ways of life. It’s something that we truly believe everyone should experience. Travel around the world or inside your country! Just make sure you travel. It will teach you things you could never learn from someone else.
Travelling is important but sometimes you don’t always have the funds to do it. We’re experts at travel at this point so we’ve got a few tips and tricks on how to travel with a teeny tiny budget. We’ll go over every detail of how to save money while you’re travelling. Even Mr. Crabs will be envious! We know some of these tips can make planning stressful but remember that some people don’t have a choice and that this is the only way they will get to do it. Also, keep in mind that once everything is set up, all you have to do is enjoy yourself. Happy Travels!
How to Get There
The way you travel, can make or break your budget. Getting to your destination is only half the battle and you’ll still need money for housing, food, and events. Think about where you want to travel and look up all possible modes of transportation. If where you want to travel to is relatively close, think about taking a train or bus instead of a plane. Sure, it may take a while longer but flying is usually the most expensive mode way to travel.
If flying is the only way you’ll get to your destination, then do your research! Check out plenty of different websites and compare prices. A little tip: flight prices tend to be cheaper on Tuesdays. If the flight prices are still way to expensive, look into flights with layovers. If you time it just right, you’ll get to explore two places for the price of one!
How to Stay There
If you’re like us and have tons of friends in different places, ask to stay with them! Not only do you get somewhere to stay for free, but you’ll have lovely company as well. Let’s not forget that they will probably have a couple of the things you forgot to pack. Your friends could even show you how to get around or take you to their favorite places to dance, eat, shop, take amazing Instagram photos. There’s nothing quite like seeing the sites like a local.
If you don’t have any friends in the place you want to travel to, look at Airbnbs. Hotels are usually much more expensive (although the do offer certain amenities). What’s great about Airbnbs is that you can customise your experience. You can rent the whole place or just a room. You will always have the option to get something cheaper by changing your exact location, giving up certain amenities, and/ or staying in a room instead of booking an entire house.
How to Get Around
Based on where you’re staying, public transportation is usually available. Before you go on your trip, try to get acquainted with the maps of the mode of transportation you’ll be using. Walking is and always will be the cheapest (free.99!) but sometimes you can’t walk to everywhere you need to go. Either it will take you too long or it will be extremely strenuous on your body.
If the place you’re travelling to has buses or trains, try to use those wisely. If you plan on going in very separate directions but like running on your own schedule, some cities have bikes or scooters that you can rent. If the place you want to travel to doesn’t offer bikes or scooters and the bus and train schedule is limited, think about renting a car. But only think about this as a last resort! Renting a car is expensive as you have to pay for it per day and have to put gas in it as well.
How to Eat
One thing that can really add up when you’re travelling is eating out. When you travel, you should consider your goals and how to budget for them. Let’s say you want to go to Italy and the main reason you want to go is because you want to try the amazing pasta and mind blowing pizza. Make sure you budget for all of those meals and how you’re going to get to them. In this scenario it’s okay to eat out for most of your meals because it’s the main reason you came.
A different situation calls for different circumstances. Let’s say you’re visiting a friend in New York City and you want to see all of the major sites the city has to offer. We highly suggest, if you have a fridge and microwave, to go grocery shopping for most of your meals. We know grocery shopping is a huge pain and that no one likes to take time out of their vacation to do it but it will save you so much money! Just think, sure you’re eating cereal for breakfast for the next few days but now you finally have enough money to see that Broadway show!
How to Enjoy it
This is how to see and do everything you wanted to do for cheap: do your research! We can’t stress this enough. When it comes to certain experiences and tours, different websites have different coupons and prices. One general rule that we can say is that if you’re planning your trip around one event, try to go to that event at an off season time. Most of the time ‘off season’ correlates with the school year. So you can get tickets for cheaper if less people are going to that event.
If you’re doing any of these tricks to save money we know how stressful it can be. Planning is hard, we get it! But after everything is planned, there’s nothing left to do but enjoy it. Try to stick to your plan as much as possible but if you can afford to stray then live your best life!
We hope you enjoyed these tips and tricks on how to travel with a tiny budget! Let us know where you’d love to travel to next in the comments section below!
Featured image courtesy of: pinterest.com
