Balling on a Budget: How to Travel and Save $$$

“I don’t have time. I can’t afford it. It’s out of the budget I built out.”

To be fair, we believe we at one time said all of those crutch lines to avoid us from committing to travel and we always hear people say, “if you stop drinking your lattes, you will save $XYZ in a month.”

Well they are kind of right!

The reality is that we say these things because we fail to prepare our trip. Let’s face reality. In order to go to a new destination, you have to consider the core of every travel:

• Airline Price OR Rental Car
• Hotel / Your Accommodations
• Food and Drinks
• Taking a piece of the culture with you in a form of souvenir 
• Etc… 

Let’s start at the top. Airlines are tricky, right? One moment you see a trip to Italy for $750 and you think to yourself “Hell yeah! Let’s lock that in…but let me check on a few things and if it makes sense, I’ll come back to it.” You go “check” on those things (more likely mulling over numbers) and come back, only to see the flight jumped up in price by hundreds of dollars (YIKES)! 

Here are a few tips:

• Highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend utilizing kiwi.com or skyscanner.com for all airline travels
  • Why:  Don’t know where you want to travel? Easy. We love using Kiwi and Sky Scanner’s function of from your location To ANYWHERE in the world. This will allow you to view all pricing to anywhere in the world at your affordable price. Trust me, we have ended up in locations we never expected simply due to the affordable pricing on Kiwi or Sky Scanner. 

Pitch to Passport tip of the day: “Always clear those cookies after your search for dates and airlines. If you are consistently looking at dates through airlines and are not ready to make a commitment right away, those airlines might “magically” rise in prices.”

• If you are like us and love to drive to the destination to few the scenery of the country, then we always go with Enterprise.
  • Why: From a numbers perspective, it surely is not the most affordable. However, from our experience, Enterprise is the most reliable.  We have always received the vehicle we want (or upgraded vehicle for free), in the time we want, the coverage we want and make the experience as turnkey as possible. Also—They show you the projected spending of your trip when you pick up the vehicle and only charge you after you travel (clutch). 

Now onto sleeping arrangements. For us, we always consider a few variables: location, safeties and budget. For us, these two always are the go to sites:

• Hotel Tonight
  • Why: We have booked so many hotels an hour before we reached our destination (that’s right, we went to our destination without even knowing where we’d sleep. Ballsy.)
    
    Hotel Tonight will pull a list of hotels that are having deals on rooms that are not occupied that night. It will show you where the hotel is located, all the amenities included and set everything for you to simply check in when you arrive. 
    
    • On our trip to Toronto, we stayed overnight in Syracuse, New York. An hour away from getting to Syracuse, we snagged a Hotel room that was 25% off regular price. Go ahead, give it a glance. 
• Airbnb
  • Why: Especially when you are traveling abroad, why wouldn’t you want to live like they do in the culture? Seriously! You have the ability to live in someone’s home and live in the community. This is our pick for anyone who wants to get the full cultural experience. As many have used before, Airbnb will provide location, budget and amenities included with each search. 

Now we get to the piece of the trip that can rack up the bill or create a ton of savings: Food.

Let me start off by saying that we love food. Seriously, love it. Anywhere we go, we are always trying to get the best cultural cuisine. However, here is what we have found to work the best.

• Pick a stay where you can cook.
  • Why: Nothing like going to the local market and picking up ingredients to cook for yourself. Everyone knows eating at home saves a ton of money and why not, you also get to learn how to make certain recipes as well! We actually take this as an opportunity to grow stronger in our relationship and learn a new way of cooking.
    • What we are not saying is to eat in every day.
    • What we are saying is stay disciplined.
    • Perhaps pick one to two meals out of the day to eat at home or pack food. While you save one or two meals to try a local cuisine spot. When we went to Colorado Springs, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, etc, we always hit the grocery store and prepped meals. Not only did this save our wallet some pain, but it also saved us a ton of time that we would have spent at a restaurant, when we could have been exploring. Think about it. 

Last, take a piece of culture with you. When we hit Chichén Itzá in January, our local tour guide, Hector, said something that will always resonate with us.

“If I were you, whenever I travel, I want to get something that is made by the locals. I want to get something that will stick with me for a lifetime, so that whenever I look at that piece, I remember this moment. I remember the people I engaged with and purchased that item from.” – Hector

Now, was that his sales pitch? Absolutely. Did we buy something from him. You bet. Some of you are chuckling saying “suckers” while in reality, Courtney and I bought that Mezcal Tequila on the bus because we are saving it for our one year anniversary to consume, laugh and remind ourselves of the beautiful wonders of Chichén Itzá. 

Why: Again, what we are not saying is you have to buy something everywhere you go.

However, what we are saying is budget accordingly for a purchase or two.

Like Gabriel’s Momma always says “Buy it. After all, who knows if you will ever be back to that country.”