14 Tips for Travelling on a Budget

We love to travel and the fact that you are here, reading our blog every few days says that you love to travel, too. Actually, we can’t get enough of travelling and there’s no money in the world that could pay for all the travels that we want to do because let’s face it – travels can get a bit pricey. This is why we always love finding new tips for travelling on a budget and why we are giving you the list of our favourite ones.

Enjoy reading and take notes…

Travel Off-Season

Travelling off-season, or even when it’s shoulder season can make your trips way cheaper – everything is more expensive in the high season. Usually, high season is in the middle of the summer, but it depends on your destination. So, do your research and plan ahead.

Use Travel Apps

Using different travel apps can help you save a lot of money. For example, using Hopper you can find cheaper flights of you can use our Cultural Places App to plan your trip or to listen to different guided tours. You can find more useful travel apps in one of our previous blog posts.

Stay in Hostels

We strongly believe that travelling is all about the sights you see and the memories you make and not about how luxurious your accommodation is. That is why we never choose expensive hotels, but we rather stay in hostels. Some of them even have free food (besides the usual breakfast), so you don’t have to buy food for every meal – two birds with one stone.

Use the Sales Events

If you’re planning a winter vacation, book your flights and accommodation on Black Friday – it’s not meant just for shopping.

Save Your Miles

Do you fly often? It’s a good idea to join a frequent flyer program and collect miles – you’ll get some discounts on your flight tickets later.

Travel Tuesdays

We always recommend you to research before booking a flight in order to get a cheaper airplane ticket, but from general experience, Tuesdays are the cheapest days for flying. If Tuesdays don’t work for you, pick another day, just avoid weekends – it’s when flights are the most expensive.

Travel Overnight

No matter how you’re travelling, if you travel overnight, you’ll avoid paying at least two nights of accommodation. If you’re up for this way of travelling, the best way to do so is to travel by train with a comfortable sleeping car.

Do a Camping Tour

Go get yourself a good quality tent or rent a campervan and avoid high accommodation prices. You’ll have to pay a little something if you’re going to official campsites or you won’t pay anything if you camp on a beach or in a forest (where it’s allowed, of course).

Be Friends with Other Travellers

There is no better way of learning about your destination than talking to other travellers. They can give you tips and tricks on saving money – where to stay, where and what to eat, how and when to get there… Or they can give you some general advice for travelling on a budget no matter where you go.

Work While You Travel

If you’re a freelancer, you can always bring your laptop with you and do some work while you’re travelling and earn some more money. Or you can find a job that you can do on your destination and earn money over there (e.g. working in a hostel) and stay longer. There are even programs called Work and Travel where you get a working visa that allows you to do a certain job for a few months and earn money and then go travelling.

Choose Budget-Friendly Destinations

Not every destination is that expensive, you can always find some cheaper or underrated cities where you will spend less money in general. We love budget-friendly destinations and love sharing info about them, so you can read about some of them here.

Google Free Activities

Almost every city offers you some free activities, such as free walking tours or free galleries and museums, you just have to find out about them, so (again) do your research 😊

Don’t Buy Souvenirs

We all love bringing home souvenirs that remind us of the good times we had on our travels. But it’s just another cost that is unnecessary. You can always take photos of all the places you’ve seen and maybe grab some free souvenirs – pebbles or seashells from your favourite beach in Barcelona perhaps. It’s all about the memories and not about the things you bring home.

Check Out Unusual Accommodation Options

Besides the usual accommodation options that we mentioned before, you can try couchsurfing – staying in other people’s homes for free, housesitting – watching someone’s house while they’re away or house exchanges – when you swap house with someone else. These are bit unusual but cool ways of travelling and meeting locals, so they promise good times and no accommodation costs.

As we already mentioned, travelling is about new memories and experiences and not about spending a lot of money on luxurious accommodation and expensive souvenirs. So, we always try our best to save money and visit more places rather than spend all the money on one expensive vacation.

Do you find these tips useful? Do you have some other tips on how to travel on a budget that we didn’t mention? Let us know – we would appreciate it.