How To Travel the World For Cheap! (21 Money Saving Tips)

If you do these money-saving hacks in this video, you will save thousands when traveling, and you won't have to sacrifice any of your experiences, and I can guarantee it. Meg and I traveled the world for a full year on a budget of just $15,000 per person. Now, I know that may sound like a lot of money, but that's only $41 per person per day. And in today's video, we're going to be sharing all the tips and tricks that we learned to make travel way cheaper. The goal of this video is not just to pinch pennies together and sacrifice all the experiences when you're traveling, but rather to help get your priorities straight so that way you can travel more sustainably, therefore traveling more. It really makes me sad when I hear people can't travel because they can't afford it or it's too expensive. And my hope with this video is that I will arm you with the tools and the knowledge to hopefully make travel happen for you. So let's get into how to travel the world for cheap. It all starts with being flexible, and we have found being flexible to be an amazing way to save money. And we'll get into more specifics about how being flexible can actually save you money, but in general, you might notice that the more rigid you are with your dates and times and events, the more money you're going to have to spend, being that you don't have any leeway to change your plans. I know for us personally, Meg and I usually spend the most money on things like destination weddings because we have a specific date and time in mind. First, starting with time of year. Now, naturally, there's going to be certain times of the year that are more expensive, times like holidays, spring break, or summer vacation. You can expect those times to be a little bit more expensive. So traveling in what they deem as the off season, can be a great way to save money on flights and accommodations. Secondly is the actual dates that you decide to travel. Having some flexibility at the beginning or end of your trip can, again, save you hundreds of dollars. And to show you this, we're going to go into a tool called Google Flights, which if you don't know what Google Flights is, please get familiar with it because it is the best database for booking flights, and it can save you a ton of money if you know how to use it. One of the features I really like on Google Flights is their feature called Date Grid. And to access Date Grid, what you're going to do is once you search for your flight and the dates you would ideally like to travel, you're going to look up in the right hand corner of your browser, and there's going to be a spot that says Date Grid. You're going to go ahead and click on that, and it's going to pop up this grid with a bunch of prices on it. And you're going to notice some that are highlighted in green, some that are highlighted in red. The green ones are what you want to look at because that's going to tell you that if you leave a day earlier or come home a day later, you might save $50 to $100 on the price of your ticket just by adjusting those days a little bit. But Date Grid can be a great way to ensure that you're getting the best price as long as you have the flexibility to shift your vacation by a day or so. Next, we have Destination. Most of the time when people are booking a trip, they will often have a destination in mind. And then when they decide where they want to travel, they will go try to find a flight within their budget to get them there. But I'm going to challenge you to do the opposite of that. Oftentimes what Meg and I do is we don't have a destination in mind, but rather we take to our favorite tool, Google Flights, to find us a flight within our budget and let that dictate our destination. And let me show you how we do this in Google Flights. When we go into Google Flights, we're going to use something called the Explorer tab. And to use this tool, all you're going to do is pull up Google Flights. You're going to plug in your home airport. From there, all you're going to do is click on the Explorer icon. It should be right below that search bar. You're going to go ahead and click on that and it's going to pull up a map. And what's awesome about this tool is it's going to pull up a ton of different destinations all over the world and give you the flight prices to those destinations. We will use this to help dictate our destination. As you can see, Google Flights is a super powerful tool when it comes to saving money on your flights. If you're curious and learning more about this powerful tool, I made an entire video going into the nitty gritty detail of how to save money on flights in another video. So I'll make sure to link that below if you're curious and want to watch it. Now bear with me for this next one. This one is a really fine print, small detail tip, but can save you a lot of money. Pay close attention to your transportation times. So your flight times, your train times, or your bus times. It might be advantageous to do a lesser ideal time, meaning super early or super late at night, to save you money on accommodation as well as maximize your time while traveling. Let me explain. Recently in Thailand, my parents and I took an overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. What was awesome about this is it not only moved us to a different location, it also saved us a full night of accommodation. Another example of this is when we went to Seattle, we flew out super late on our way back home, which meant we actually got basically a full another day of vacation or travel without paying that extra accommodation fee. The last tip I have for you, kind of relating to flights, is going to be using a flight deal service. And recently I've been using something called FairDrop, which is exactly what you probably think it is, but it is a service that sends me notifications on various flight deals based on some parameters that I set. What's really nice about this is it takes some of the stress and time and energy out of searching for flights, but airlines are really, really good at getting you to pay full price or even over what you should be paying for tickets. And FairDrop is a great way to make you aware of some of the deals that are out there because they can be really hard to find on your own. Slow travel. Moving quickly is very expensive. Anytime you move, it's going to cost you money because you're going to need a bus, you're going to need a car, you're going to need a train, you're going to need a plane. Anytime you move, it's going to cost you a lot of money. So traveling slow can make your budget stretch a lot further. Walking. I love walking and it's no different when we travel. Meg and I love to walk and lucky for us, walking is free. And when Meg and I travel, we will oftentimes walk everywhere. If it's under usually about an hour to an hour and a half walk, we're doing it. One of our favorite things to do is we make ourselves like a little walking tour when we first get to a city. It's a great free way to see the city as well as move your body. I get it. Not everybody loves to walk or is maybe capable of walking. So public transportation can be a great option when traveling, especially we found when traveling internationally. Unfortunately, the U.S. has just not caught up when it comes to public transportation, but we found in most other countries in Europe or even Southeast Asia, there are tons of cheap and great public transportation options. Travel credit cards. Travel credit cards are great for saving money when traveling for a lot of different reasons. The first one being usually a travel credit card doesn't have any foreign transaction fees. So if you're traveling internationally, you don't have to worry about racking up all these fees. Number two, you can accrue points and miles. This is my favorite way to get free travel. Oftentimes, if you sign up for a travel credit card, they will have some sort of sign up bonus or some sort of incentive for spending money on the card. Now, I don't recommend spending out of your means to get those points, but it can be a great way to redeem free travel if you are somebody that spends regularly on a credit card. Also, number three, travel credit cards come with a lot of travel benefits, whether it be trip insurance or lounge access. Having lounge access is super nice and can save you money. We all know that airport food is super expensive, but if you have access to a lounge that comes with food, again, it can be a great way to save you $30, $40, $50 when traveling and you're going to travel a lot more comfortably. eSIMs. This is a mistake I've made before and I promise you I will not be making again because it has saved me a lot of money over the last two years. I oftentimes get the question, hey, Ian, how do you handle your phone data or your phone service when you're traveling abroad? The answer is an eSIM. An eSIM is an electronic SIM card that you download onto your phone for a fraction of the price compared to getting data through your normal carrier. For example, I have Verizon here in the States and they have something called a travel pass, which gives me data when traveling internationally. It costs $10 a day, which in theory is a great idea, but that's actually super expensive. Personally, I've found the data to be quite slow. Recently, I've been using this company called Airolo, which is the only company I've used, but I've had a great experience with them. It's super easy to set up and really easy to use. So if you're traveling internationally, I would highly recommend an eSIM versus getting data through your carrier. I want to hear from you. What are some things that you do when you travel to save money without sacrificing any of your experience? Let me know down in the comments. Food, food, food, food. That has probably got to be the second biggest expense maybe, maybe third biggest expense that you're going to have when traveling. So we want to make sure that we're prioritizing our food in the right way, so that way we're not overspending. Now, don't get me wrong. It's okay to go out to a nice restaurant, but you maybe don't want to go out to a nice restaurant every single meal. And we'll get into some specifics right now on how you can save a lot of money on your food when traveling. Water. Water is amazing for a lot of reasons. The first reason is it keeps you alive, which is really nice. The second reason is it's going to save you a lot of money when traveling. People don't really realize that a lot of their food budget goes to drinks because it's really easy with dinner or with lunch to get a nice special drink, or even throughout the day to stop by and get a smoothie or something a little fancy to satisfy you. But if you can mix a little bit more water into your travels, you're going to save a lot of money. Now I get it. There's going to be a time and a place for a nice glass of Italian wine, or maybe you're in Ireland and you want to try a nice pint of Guinness. Totally acceptable and you should totally do that. Limit your meals out. Now, I'm not saying don't go out to eat when traveling. What Meg and I like to do when we travel is we try to limit ourselves to two meals out per day. So typically what we'll do when we get to a destination was we'll usually start by going to a local market to pick up some snacks. We'll usually start by waking up having a snack and usually our first meal doesn't come till about 11 or 12 o'clock. So late breakfast or early lunch. Then our next big meal will be dinner. And in between there we try to just snack. This saves us a lot of money so that way we're not eating out three meals a day, rather just two bigger meals a day. Street food is king. That is going to be your cheapest option and you don't have to sacrifice on quality. We love street food whether we're in Southeast Asia, Thailand, Vietnam, they have amazing street food and it's insanely affordable. But even places like Italy, I feel like oftentimes people feel that they need to go to a fancy restaurant to get the best food. You don't. You can get a slice of pizza off the street for a couple bucks and I can promise you it will taste just as good as it does in a fancy restaurant. Ask where the locals eat or notice where the locals eat. Oftentimes local places are going to be way cheaper than the tourist spots. So I would try to ask around versus just going to Google. Oftentimes when you search for restaurants on Google it's usually tourists and travelers that are leaving those reviews and usually the places with a lot of reviews, though maybe really really good, will also jack up their prices because they know that it's a tourist spot. Sometimes you can find some hidden gems by asking the locals and the food will be a fraction of the price because the locals are eating there. Now probably what is the second biggest expense or maybe third biggest expense is going to be accommodations. And in my head there's really three options when it comes to accommodations. You have hotels, you have vacation rentals like Airbnb, and you have hostels. Now there's other options out there but those are probably the three main categories. And let me explain how we strategize deciding which accommodation to book. Whenever we're doing longer stays, meaning a week, two weeks, we usually do a vacation rental or something like an Airbnb because usually they will have a kitchen which is really nice for saving money because you can cook a bit of your own food. Also you have a little bit more space. Now I wouldn't recommend a vacation rental if you're doing a short period of time because oftentimes they will have various fees, cleaning fees that don't really make sense for a one or two night stay. If we're doing usually just maybe a one or two night stay and we want a nicer place to stay, we'll usually do a hotel. That's not always the cheapest option though. The cheapest option is going to be a hostel. Now hostels are not for everybody. Meg and I though will stay in hostels usually if we're in transit or we only have to stay for one night. One kind of cool experience that we had in Singapore was we stayed in a pod hotel which was not only a cheap place to stay, but a really cool cultural experience, something that we don't get here in the States. But especially if you're a solo traveler, I would highly recommend taking advantage of hostels being that you can get places for $5, $10, $15 a night as long as you're comfortable just having a place to sleep with very little amenities. If you're enjoying this video so far and have found it valuable, please give it a thumbs up. It really helps YouTube recommend this to other like-minded travelers and we would really appreciate it. Excursions. Excursions and activities are things that I personally really do not like to sacrifice on because it is honestly probably one of the main reasons why I travel. But here are some things that I've learned that have helped save me a bit of money without sacrificing a ton on the experience. Starting with free excursions. Prioritizing these is a great way to balance your trip out as well as make sure that you can put the resources needed on some of those bigger expenses. There's tons of free excursions or activities in almost any destination you travel to. Whether it be a museum, hiking, some sort of walking tour, you name it, there's usually some free excursions that you can take advantage of. When it comes to booking your tours or excursions, don't be afraid to shop local. What I mean by this is oftentimes there's tour companies that are maybe not necessarily owned by the locals or it's not a local tour company. We have found a lot of success in saving money by booking local tour companies as well as just having a way more authentic and enjoyable experience. A couple examples of this would be the first one being our trek to Mount Rinjani in Indonesia. We decided to go with a local tour company and we did not regret it one bit. You get the flair of the local culture as well as it's a lot cheaper. Pay close attention to discounted or deal days. Oftentimes, places like museums or even national parks will offer days that are either discounted or free entry. One example of this is our last trip to Seattle. Meg and I did this exact thing. We planned our trip around a free national park day so we were able to get into Olympic National Park completely free. Now, I only saved us like 50 or 60 bucks, but that's a nice little savings. Maybe, for example, you might be traveling to Italy and you want to go to the Vatican Museum. Maybe it's a little bit cheaper on Tuesdays than it is on Saturdays. It's something to just be aware of when you're traveling. You might want to adjust your schedule to accommodate for those discounted days so you get more bang for your buck. Pack less. If you've seen any of our other videos on our channel, you will know that I live and die by this theory, which is if you pack less, you'll have less stress, and believe it or not, it'll actually save you a lot of money these days traveling. As we all know, checked and carry-on baggage fees are increasing all the time, so by just packing a personal item or a carry-on item, you can save a lot of money and stress. Travel with friends or in a group. This can be another great way to save money because you can get transportation and split the cost. Traveling with friends can not only be a fun addition to your trip, but like I said, it can also save you money, being that you're sharing some of the big expenses. Now, I had a hard time deciding what to call this next tip, so I'm going to call it networking. What I mean by this is using the people that you know to save a bit of money on your travels, but you have to be very, very careful with it because you don't want to overstep any boundaries on relationships that you have built. That could be a bad thing. What I mean by networking is utilizing friends and family that maybe live in amazing destinations to give you a place to stay while you visit their home city or country. For example, we have some amazing friends that live in Spain that were lucky enough to let us sleep at their house, and it was awesome because we saved money on accommodations. But again, you have to be really careful with this one that you don't overstep your boundaries or overstay your welcome. You can do this with family. You can do this with friends as long as you follow up with the correct communication. Another great way to do this is to actually meet people while you travel. Lucky for us, while we are traveling in Thailand, we met an awesome person who is now our friend named Jack who showed us around his home country when we went to visit in Ireland. It was a great way to save a bit of money on a tour guide because he was our local tour guide for the day. Networking can be a great way to save money as well as add to your travel experience. I am super passionate about sharing the tips and tricks that I've learned to make travel cheaper. I truly believe that there's a trip and travels out there for every single budget. You just need a little bit of knowledge to know how to do it, and I hope this video is a great start in giving you those tools. If you enjoyed watching this video, again, I would highly recommend going and watching the video I did all about Google Flights and how to save money on booking your flights because as we know, that in a lot of ways is the biggest expense when it comes to travel, so getting that dialed in is a great stepping stone in helping you travel more. If you enjoyed this one though, please, please, please give it a thumbs up as well as subscribe to our channel for more content like this. We will see you in the next video.