Most people delay traveling because they have to live on a tight budget, but this is an excuse you shouldn’t make anymore. You should take absolutely every chance you get to go somewhere, visit a completely unfamiliar place, learn more about foreign cultures and widen your horizons. This is soul food, and as your body needs meals, so does your soul! By checking out the next seven money-saving tips, you’ll be able to learn more about how to lower your overall traveling budget.
Explore All Your Options
If you don’t want to waste your money, you need to use your time more wisely. Before you even start packing, you need to do some serious online browsing, and you’ll be surprised by the amount of discounts, cheap traveling plans and last minute offers you’ll encounter. However, you shouldn’t book or reserve anything until you’re absolutely sure that a particular offer is the best one you’re able to find.
Travel in Low Season
Traveling during the peak of the high season simply can’t be healthy for your budget. That’s exact period of the year when everything is overpriced and ridiculously expensive. The only thing that’s absolutely certain about traveling during the high season is that it’s going to be crowded, and waiting in lines is probably the one thing you’ll remember about your whole journey. So, be smart and travel in low season when prices are reasonable, and when you’re able to hear yourself think.
Take Indirect Flights
If you’re traveling to a distant location, you shouldn’t really bother with other types of transportation, especially if you don’t have any time to waste – we all have jobs and families to get back to. However, instead of taking a direct flight, you should settle for spending a bit more time in your plane, so you can save a significant amount of money. If you’re willing to go a step
Book Your Accommodation in Time
This is the golden rule – renting a room in a hotel just after you’ve arrived somewhere will undoubtedly reflect on your accommodation billing. As a matter of fact, you need to avoid hotels, and search for alternative solutions. If you’re going to an exotic city, like Amsterdam perhaps, that’s crowded with tourists practically any time of year, it’s obviously not a good idea to enter the first hotel you see and ask for a room. Instead of doing that, you should search for comfy apartments – you’ll have more room for yourself, and it’ll definitely be cheaper.
Consult Your Smartphone
The time of guides has passed – everything you need to know about a certain location is in your smartphone. When people are unsatisfied with someone service, you can be positive that they’ll leave their comments online. Also, this kind of critic will show you how to eat, drink and move around a specific city like a local, and they always know the cheapest and the most efficient ways to do so.
Stay Busy
This is another way to handle your budget – don’t stop working. Now, working full hours simply isn’t smart, but a couple of hours per day should do the trick, especially if your job only requires a good internet connection, like a lot of them do nowadays. If that’s not the case, I’m sure you’ll be able to find a seasonal job where you’re going – something simple, like handing out flyers. Even if the only job you’ll be able to find is waitressing, you’ll be able to find out a lot of things from the locals, and spend time with all kinds of people, which will obviously help you get to know their culture better.
This is just a beginning. Once you start exploring different ways to save money while traveling, and adopt them as a part of your routine, the whole experience will be a lot different and – cheaper! One last piece of advice – planning is everything, so you’ll definitely need to work on your organization skills, and upgrade them, but trust me, it’s worth it.