4 Travel Hacks to Help You Save Money

Millenials and a good number of people nowadays are keeping a list of their next travel goals, so they save up just to spend a lot to turn these wishes into a reality.

What if our goals included not spending most of our hard-earned budget for that dream vacation we’ve been planning for several months already, and for some, even years. If that sounds just about right for you, then continue reading…

4 Ways to Help You Save Money on Your Travels Abroad

1.      Be prepared to cook at least half of your meals from your AirBnb kitchen.

Travelling to other countries comes with the best and worst experiences. If you’re not too keen on your travel expenditures, especially on costs you can cut down on such as food, then a supposedly exciting experience might just turn for the worse. Having real-world life skills such as cooking can pay dividends in the form of saving you some good money, especially when travelling to other countries where the cost of living can be frustratingly higher!

This is particularly important if you’re planning to visit European countries such as Denmark, France, Norway, and Switzerland, where dining out is considered a luxury (literally!) by most people. You’ll know you’re neither eating cheap nor fancy food when a mid-range meal costs somewhere around S$30.

2.      Drop your Ideas of shopping for or buying souvenirs.

Before you leave for your next travel, take a long and good look at your luggage. Convince yourself that you will not be buying any souvenirs, not for yourself or for anyone.

Doing so will save you long hours and a lot of money spent on shopping for little trinkets or memorabilia in thrift markets or shopping malls, unless it’s food or something that you specifically needed  to be there for in the first place. Moreover, you can bask in the experience of the place rather than scoping out for items to buy. After everything has been said and done, you’ll only have yourself to thank for anyway for the kind of experiences you invest on yourself. And to be honest, that doesn’t involve much spending on things other than the trip itself.

3.      Plan your Budget before You Fly out.

If you’re like most people who plan for their travels abroad, you’d realize that the closest thing you’re doing in planning your budget is simply comparing airfare prices.

But once you get overseas, you suddenly lose control on how you spend your budget on a lot of things: food, clothing, sightseeing, and so on. Maybe it’s the effect of being in a foreign country. But whatever it is, the exchanges in currency and credit card transactions definitely do not help your cause at all!

Therefore, just as you would plan for your monthly budget at home, you also need to use some sort of system to manage your cashflow when traveling abroad.

Get the total amount for your airfare and accommodation, and then set an amount for how much you’re willing to spend for your living expenses overseas – you can even do it on a daily basis, just to keep you grounded. Set individual budget allocations for meals, transportation, sightseeing, and the like. The more specific you are, the better your budgeting will be.

Just to set your expectations, your travel budget might come out to be on the tighter end after doing all this, but with that in mind, you can better plan the things that you will do and can do without before, during, and after you trip overseas.

4.      Book your flight tickets using a credit card that offers great rewards.

What’s great about booking flight tickets especially for more expensive and long-haul travels is that you get to spend a hefty amount of credits enough to meet your credit card’s minimum spending requirements.

 

But don’t just go for cards that offer big rewards for travel bookings.  Most people nowadays book their travel tickets on the internet, so consider getting a card that would likewise reward your air miles or has a cashback option for transactions done on-line. If you play your cards right, you’ll find yourself at a comfortable position, budget-wise.