OUR TOP 9 WAYS TO SAVE MONEY ON TRAVEL

Tips You Won't Expect...

If you’re diligently working through our ultimate budget guide for long-term travel budgeting, welcome to Part III.

• In Part I, we talked about budgeting basics and shared our free travel budget template.

• In Part II we got specific about how much money we spent on travel expenses and other costs in our own adult gap year.

• Now in Part III we cover the best ways to save money while traveling.

• If you want to check out Part IV, you'll read about the 10 products we think are actually worth buying for international travel.

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If you’re on a tight budget, these are critical to know. And even if your budget is more flexible, why not take advantage of these travel tips? Being strategic and getting the best deals will leave you with extra money to splurge on fun experiences on your trip, after all.

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These travel tips go beyond the obvious. If you’ve made it this far, you know that taking public transportation instead of using rideshares will save you money. You know that traveling in shoulder season (instead of peak tourist season) will reduce costs overall. You probably know how to compare plane ticket costs using Google Flights.

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That’s why these tips are go beyond the obvious. We talk about travel credit cards, about keeping your bank account flush by avoiding exchange rate scams, and great ways to reduce the cost of hotel stays.

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Here are our favorite ways to save money while traveling – and ways to save money before you even leave.

Tip #1: Cooking: a great option to save money, but only in some places

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Cooking is one of the best ways to save a lot of money while you travel. And, if you’re a good cook, it might make your trip even better. Personally, I find that exploring grocery stores and local markets really helps me feel like I’m getting to know a place. You can learn a lot about local life there! It’s not easy to cook everywhere in the world.

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In some places – like Southeast Asia or Morocco – it’s harder to find cheap accommodation with a kitchen or that are near local grocery stores. In other places – like Europe – it’s an absolute must in order to travel affordably. Unfortunately, in Europe, regularly eating out at local restaurants can cost an arm and a leg.

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If you do choose to cook, here are a few pro-tips from us:

• Before you go to the grocery store, check if the kitchen has oil and basic spices. It’s also helpful to check what tools the kitchen has. Whether or not the kitchen has, for example, a cheese grater or a coffee machine might impact what you choose to buy.

• Spices go a long way towards making a cheap meal better. Buy the ones you like the most and keep them with you for as long as you can.

• If you’re traveling in the developing world or have reason to suspect the food sanitation standards, remember you probably don’t want to eat raw foods. When you shop, make sure you can boil, cook, or wash all the ingredients.

• Avoiding alcohol, meat, and fish can save you a lot of money. (If you do choose to drink though, it’ll be way cheaper to buy your alcohol at the grocery store than at the bar.)

And if you want to occasionally splurge on a nice time at a local restaurant, we recommend eating out for lunch instead of dinner. Prices will be lower, and restaurants will be less crowded.

Tip #2: Head to the Local Bakery for Breakfast

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In places where cooking our own meals wasn’t a regular option, we sometimes still managed to make our own breakfast in the morning. We purchased baked goods from the local bakery (which was often extremely cheap relative to other options in the area) or from the local grocery store, made instant coffee, and munched on this before we left our hotel room in the morning.

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Every once in a while, our hotel would offer free breakfast, and we certainly took advantage of that! But since we mostly stayed in private rooms in Airbnbs, which often cost less than hotel stays, that usually wasn’t an option.

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One pro-tip: there are sometimes coffees available in tea-packets that you can dip into hot water available in local grocery stores. These are much, much better than instant coffee, so if you’re snobby and don’t have access to a coffee machine, check these out.

Tip #3: Compare Prices Between Airbnb, Hotels, & HostelWorld – Every Time

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Booking a private room on AirBNB was often cheaper than booking a private room in a hostel. I have no idea why this is, and I always recommend comparing prices. As far as I’m concerned, the AirBNBs were often much nicer than hotel stays too. Remember that when you’re booking accommodation, you have three go-to options (noted below) and you shouldn’t just look at one. Always compare between the three and pick the best, cheapest option that suits you. For us, it turned out that we found great deals over and over again on AirBNB for private rooms.

You can compare between:

• Airbnb

• HostelWorld (for dorms or private rooms)

• Hotel websites (or websites like Expedia that aggregate them)

Don’t skip reviewing HostelWorld because you don’t want to stay in a dorm room. Plenty of hostels offer private rooms, comparable with what you’d find on Airbnb’s platform. Many hostels are really nice and will help you book cheap local tours as well.

Tip #4: Negotiate the Rate for Your Airbnb for Major Travel Savings

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No one does this, and they really should. Having done it on numerous occasions, I’ve yet to find a time when no one was willing to make a deal. And, in the process, I’ve saved thousands.

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Americans often worry about coming across as confrontational in these interactions, but nothing could be further from the truth. I share a script here for how to negotiate your Airbnb rate in a way that is diplomatic, respectful, and polite. It also works and can lead to major travel savings if you do this on a regular basis. (And you don’t need to wait to travel long-term to practice this. Try it on your next vacation.)

Tip #5: Credit Card Points – One of the best travel hacks, IF you know what you’re doing

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If you know what you’re doing with credit card points (i.e., if you’re an experienced “travel hacker”), you can truly save a ton of money. There are tons of good deals out there on hotel credit cards, airline credit cards, and travel credit cards. With careful planning, you can get incredible deals like free flights (well, close to free), and free hotel stays.

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When we took our own adult gap year, we strategically accumulated sign-up bonuses over two years and used points quickly so they wouldn’t get devalued. We accumulated about 800,000 points and used them to book nights in hotels in Italy and Singapore and to keep our flight costs low. We paid for flights mostly using points, and my rough estimate is that we would have spent at least $10,000 in addition had we not used points for many of our flights, along with about $2,000 for hotels booked on points.

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All that being said, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can cost yourself a ton of money trying to become a travel hacker. We’re not in the business of encouraging anyone to take on credit card debt and don’t know your specific financial situation! So, don’t jump into this lightly and consult the experts if you’re diving in for the first time. We’re decidedly not financial experts and don’t offer financial advice, so we recommend turning to the resources we use (and love) – Nerd Wallet and The Points Guy.

Tip #6: Wash Your Own Laundry – Spend Less Time on Laundry & Save Money

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We bought a Scrubba laundry bag and paper detergent (that dissolves in water), which allowed us to do all of our own laundry through Europe and Africa. (In Southeast Asia, it was so cheap to do laundry that we paid to have it done instead of doing it ourselves.)

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A Scrubba is a water-tight bag with ridges that you can put your laundry in with some detergent to clean your clothes. In our experience, it’s pretty effective when you follow the instructions, though paying for an occasional washing machine definitely helped give our clothes a much-needed deep clean occasionally.

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It also saved us the hassle of waiting around at the laundromat. I never had to worry about getting back in time for the end of a dry cycle or about someone stealing our clothes. We just did our laundry quickly in our Airbnb about once a week and let our clothes dry while we explored.

Tip #7: Group Travel

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Group travel will typically lower your travel costs, though this is not always the case. If you meet friends on the road (or have friends from home joining you for a leg of your journey), you can expect to negotiate better rates (because the overall amount of money you’ll be spending is higher) and to split the costs of activities and meals between more people. 

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You can also join organized tours, as we did in Africa. (In fact, taking an overland participatory camping safari through Africa is probably the cheapest way to see the continent.) This can both bring down the overall cost and give you a very clear idea of the total cost in advance. The tour company you travel with may simply charge a flat fee for everything, or they may charge you a fee for certain costs and tell you that you are responsible for the other costs. Either way, they’ll guide you as to the current prices you can expect locally.

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On the downside, you’ll be traveling with a random group and may or may not get along with them! One mean person in the group can bring everybody down. You’ll need to weigh travel savings from group travel against being annoyed by other travelers on a regular basis. If you’re worried about irritating tourists potentially ruining your world trip, skip this tip. (PS – This goes both ways. You can also make new friends equally committed to a life of travel on group tours! And, for a solo traveler, this can be a way to fight loneliness.)

Tip #8: Renegotiate Your Storage Unit Price

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Storage unit companies know that you’re using them for a reason. You’re going somewhere for a long period of time, and you probably can’t empty out the unit easily. You’re at their mercy, in other words.

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It felt like every month we found out the cost of our storage unit was increasing. Having rented with a unit at a major storage unit company, we realized this was the business model.

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So, I started calling.

Every time we got an increase in our monthly rate, I called the storage unit office and asked if they would skip the increase or reduce how much the increase was. I got a “yes” about half of the time, saving us tons of money in the process. While I can’t guarantee all storage unit companies operate the same, I would strongly recommend trying this if you’re in a similar situation.

Tip #9: Don’t get screwed on exchange rates – 3 useful tips for getting foreign currency

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There are three ways I hear travelers most frequently overlook that they are getting screwed on an exchange rate. Done repetitively, these mistakes can add up. And who wants to throw away their hard-earned savings on unnecessary fees and scams?!

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When you’re traveling for a long time, you MUST know how to handle these situations so you can keep the cost of exchanging money low.

Mistake #1: Not knowing how exchange rates work when paying by credit card

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If you’ve ever seen the screen that asks if you’d like to pay in USD or another currency while you’re traveling and wondered what to do, keep reading. This ties to something called “dynamic currency conversion.” In essence, for the benefit of telling you right then what the total cost will be in your home currency, dynamic currency conversion will offer you a rate on the spot. This rate comes from the point-of-sale machine (the thing you’re swiping, tapping, or running your card through), NOT from your bank. What that means is that the rate is typically much worse than what your bank is offering. The best rule of thumb here is to select “local currency” every time.

(Psst – We’re not financial experts and can’t give you financial advice, so we highly recommend turning to the experts we referenced in researching this and the following point so you can make your own informed decision! Check them out here, here, and here.)

Mistake #2: Getting swindled by ATMs (and having no idea)

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When you withdraw cash abroad, chances are that the ATM you were using offered you an exchange rate. It might have even used language that made it seem like you had no choice but to accept the rate or the transaction would be canceled. (This was probably a lie).

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ATMs often offer exchange rates to consumers but they are typically FAR worse than the rate that your bank would give you if you declined the rate offered by the ATM. What a great way to waste your travel budget!

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Over and over, withdrawals in which you accept the rate offered by the ATM can add up to lots of lost money to poor exchange rates. Instead, it’s best to follow the rule of thumb to always reject the ATM’s proposed exchange rate.

Mistake #3: Overlooking Foreign Transaction Fees on Your Credit Card

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Oh boy does this one add up. Foreign transaction fees are typically percentage-based fees that are charged by your credit card for expenses incurred abroad. Often as high as 3%, these fees unnecessarily increase the cost of your purchases while you travel. They are also easily avoided.

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Simply googling whether your credit card charges foreign transaction fees will help you determine if your credit card is going to nickel and dime you for expenses incurred while traveling. (Though is 3% really nickel-and-diming? 3% adds up very quickly.) You can find a credit card you like that advertises that it does not charge foreign transaction fees to use while traveling instead. This is one of the easiest ways to keep your costs lower while traveling!

Our Favorite Ways to Save Money BEFORE You Start Your International Trip

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OK, we lied. We have more than 9 tips. Saving money for your trip starts before you travel.

You can also save money by not blowing up your expenses before you even head out the door. It’s amazing how many products are marketed towards long-term travelers and digital nomads. You don’t need all of them. In fact, you probably need very few of them.

That’s why we broke down what you should actually pack on your grand adventure here. Be sure to check out the “what not to pack section” for guidance on what to skip buying. We also talk about the 10 products that we DO recommend for most travelers here. (That’s right – 10 products, not 75.)

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Separately, we strongly recommend reviewing at least your last 3 credit card statements for recurring expenses. (Better yet, if you have a budget you use at home, refer to it.) Check for any expenses that you don’t expect to need while you travel and consider canceling them.

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We reviewed expenses like the below and strategically canceled services to save thousands while we traveled. Plenty of these we restarted when we came back, but we saw no need to keep paying monthly fees for something we wouldn’t use for a year!

• Car Insurance – We didn’t cancel this since we didn’t get rid of our car, but we were able to meaningfully reduce the cost of our insurance because of our lower expected mileage.

• Credit Card Fees – We strategically canceled ones we didn’t plan on using during our trip so we didn’t have to pay the fees.

• Streaming Services – We didn’t cancel all of these but we canceled quite a few since we didn’t expect to spend much of our year vegging out in front of the TV!

• Internet services

• Recurring grocery services (Amazon Prime, Costco, etc.)

Not sure where to start? It might help to talk to us directly! We work with clients 1:1 both to plan their dream trips but also to build realistic, accurate budgets to set their trips up for success. You can always set up time with us here.