Traveling within a budget

Getting free flights is nice, but that’s unfortunately not the only expense when going on a trip of a lifetime! Below are a few tips for how you can stay within a budget

1) Don’t stay at expensive hotels! This is a great way to dramatically cut your spending on a trip — even not-so-nice hotels can be pretty pricey, so we often find Airbnb to have amazing deals that are also really cost effective. In addition to that, in the past we’ve stayed in hostels quite a bit (usually in a private room w/ shared bathroom), but feel like we’ve finally hit the age where we try to not do that as much haha. When we do stay in hotels, we’ve found the right fit for us is about a 3-star hotel, which are usually pretty basic, but clean and cheap! One other tip that we have is when we are renting a car, we will often stay a little bit out of town, which saves a TON of money — we’re willing to trade an extra 20 minute drive in the morning to save and that might be a good fit for you too!

2) Don’t buy tons of random things! When I first started traveling, I was drawn to little knicknacks (I just recently gave my Grandma the bell I bought her in Thailand about 4 years ago — hopefully you’re better about using these knicknacks than I am) In addition to trinkets, I also have in the past wanted to try little snacks. These all add up!!!! So just make sure you’re not going a little crazy because the money you are using feels a little bit like Monopoly money.

3) Keep track of what you are spending! When performance is measured, performance improves! That’s a tip for anything in life, but especially for staying within your budget on a trip — it can be very easy to forget about this if you’re not staying on top of it and it can be tempting to want to try and do everything when you’re somewhere new!

4) Prioritize your must does! Whenever we visit a new place, I will usually have researched the top several things we want to do. For example, when we were in Thailand, Alexis really wanted to spend a day with an elephant and I really wanted to ride a scooter. We ended up doing these, but decided that spending a half a day with an elephant would be great for us (and save a ton of money compared to a full day) and we would make sure to do that, as well as ride our scooter and skip some other expensive things we would have loved to do (boat down the Mekong river, for example). Everywhere you go, there will be a million things and restaurants that you’ll want to experience, but if you go in with your priority list, you’ll make sure you do what brings you the most happiness and you’ll stay within your budget! That’s a win win!