20 Best Tips and Tricks for Travel Budget | Money Saving Travel Hacks

did you know that according to the World Wide Web you can teach an old dog new tricks it takes us a little longer to learn but it is possible well our life is full of trial and error and as we've traveled the world we're always trying to teach ourselves new tips and tricks that make us better Travelers over the past several years we have figured out a few things that have enabled us to stretch our travel money so we can do and see more our family motto was always cheap is good but free is better that's why we made the kids eat at Costco every Saturday morning well we did have five kids isn't that what everyone does that has five kids so in today's video we're going to share 20 things that we do to save us money and make travel more enjoyable we've saved thousands of dollars using these strategies and you can too we're John and Beth and we are the retirement Travelers we are a senior travel couple traveling the world for the past few years we also have a website retirementtravelers.com so be sure to sign up for our newsletter for all the latest travel information have you ever gone to the grocery store and they offer a sale item buy one get one free they're called bogos well believe it or not there are a lot of beautiful exciting destinations that we call bogos too when you compare the cost of living in the United States to other places in the world there are many destinations where you can get so much value for your money it is as if you're paying for one and getting double Columbia Romania Vietnam Albania Thailand are just a few we've traveled to all of these countries and more and it is so much fun to spend our money in a place where you get so much value of course you can get inexpensive hotels but you also enables you to go luxury for half the normal cost restaurants and excursions are Bargains too and you can even hire a personal guide for a whole lot less we have found that people in these countries are eager to help are friendly and aren't tired of tourists their economy they're trying to come back from the pandemic and tourism helps them just like it does Us in the U.S even though these places are less affluent to our standards they all have modern accommodations exciting restaurant experiences and public transportation that is easy to manage Our advice is to add these countries to your bucket list and stretch your money we all want to see those iconic travel destinations but more often than not they are located in a place that we call spendyville so our second recommendation is to visit spendyville during the shoulder Seasons this is the month or two just before or just after the peak Seasons now Santorini and Greece is a great example we went in April just before Easter and we were able to save hundreds of dollars on our cave house every night the downside was that it wasn't really warm enough to go swimming in the ocean but we love the fira to ear hike which would have been way too hot in the summertime the worst experience we have when we travel is being in these iconic places having paid a premium to get there and find out that they are packed Santorini isn't the only place you will find this problem in all the world's biggest tourist attractions people are traveling and they are going to the hot spots in peak time remember Carl the camel well hump day was a big day in the Working World but in our world it's called travel day we move from place to place on Wednesdays for several reasons but most importantly because we can save money and it's less crowded usually Wednesdays are the cheapest travel days for flights the business traveler is busy with work as is the weekend warrior Wednesday's awesome allow us to stay in a city over a weekend and take advantage of festivals and other fun events we don't want to miss midweek is also a great time to cross borders if you're like traveling on a bus or a car usually the locals are Crossing Borders on weekends and we have a smoother experience by Crossing midweek so Carl hump day it is did you know that package tours are on average roughly two and a half times more expensive than planning your own trip we recently did the rocky Mountaineer train in Canada with some of our friends it was a luxury experience with every detail planned for us but it wasn't exactly budget friendly now while we've been in Norway we took a rail and fairy Loop to see the fjords for a fraction of the cost of that rail trip it was very easy to plan using real ninja direct fairies and booking.com the experience was incredible you know for our three-day trip we paid about 500 each for hotels and transportation we rode the flam train we saw probably a thousand waterfalls gorgeous fjords and stayed at an iconic Resort Hotel doing it ourselves makes us feel empowered like the sky's the limit on our experience next time we're getting a local fishing guide and bringing our grandsons packing light doesn't just save your back it can save your pocketbook now if we checked our bags we would spend hundreds of dollars extra each year hauling more stuff than we need around the world we have a couple of packing videos on our channel so check them out you might be surprised at how we travel hacked a few of these things that help us pack very light the other things we Embrace for a cheaper ticket are long layovers or multiple flights since we are retired we have more time to spare for travel so we think nothing of a five hour layover or an extra stop in a different city than we expected we just go to the airport lounge and hang out eat and catch up on our work this can save a lot of money by agreeing to a layover you're helping the airline and they oftentimes reward you for doing so by offering a cheaper ticket who knows how much we save by doing this but it's a lot you must travel with a great attitude attitude is everything speaking of lounges you need to get a good travel cred credit card like the Chase Sapphire Reserve this card gives you access to Priority pass lounges at the airport while the card has a large annual fee it pays for itself many times over for us each year it enables us to get into airport lounges where we can eat for free we also chose a card that gives us maximum points for the things that we buy you know for us we get three times the points for travel and restaurants so we are earning points for the things that we buy the most you know we get tons of other benefits we did a video on this too so check it out on that video we also told how we get huge savings on hotels using our Chase card so we thought we'd share that again now the way this hack works is that you open a world of Hyatt account which is free of charge you transfer points from your Chase Reserve card to this account and then you use them to book free rooms at Hyatt Hyatt offers huge bargain to their rooms when customers use points it's a perk because Chase is a partner when you earn points on Chase you can take advantage of this perk too without ever earning points at Hyatt this feels like a BOGO for sure and in some places we can use our points to book stays at half the normal Cost Plus we're actually getting the room for free using the points it's a win-win for us and it feels as good as two for ones at the grocery store some Airlines around the world offer a free side trip the way this works is when an airline has a regional presence like Malaysia Airlines they work to encourage travel to other regions in their Network in this case you can fly to Kuala Lumpur their Hub and get a free round-trip flight to one of their other destinations it's called a bonus side trip we've seen this several times with other Airlines and we plan to use this strategy more going forward this is another BOGO two for one it's pretty good cruising can be a great way to get to locations that are costly to travel to on your own we Embrace cruising for this reason Transportation island hopping is especially easy on a cruise it's like last year we went on a cruise across the South Pacific and this year we're taking one in the Mediterranean that will take us through the Suez Canal and Deliver us to the Middle East next year we're taking a transatlantic cruise on a luxury ship so that we can return back to the States now this is a great way to get to Europe in the spring and return home in the fall these are called repositioning cruises and tickets are usually much cheaper it's a two for one for us because it allows us to hop on their cheapest lag we get the experience of a great luxury liner and also return to the states it's a win-win our second big savings on cruise ships is to pick interior rooms and rooms at the bottom of the ship now we are a hundred percent confident that we go to all the same destinations as the more expensive rooms and at a significantly lower price we also like the rooms being dark for that you know the occasional afternoon nap and the interior Center rooms are also better for motion sickness you know we are rarely in our rooms anyway so giving up a balcony saves thousands of dollars and and we're fine with that there's nothing better than finding a place in the world with good public transportation offerings that connect you to the surrounding sites or cities this is a great money-saving tip rent a place for a month get the monthly discount and work your way out and around much like a wagon wheel Italy and much of Europe offers great opportunities for this because they have such a great extensive train system you know we've learned the hard way that you must book a hotel close to the train station to make the most of your day trips imagine finding a little home in Tuscany for a month and traveling to Bologna Venice Pisa Florence Parma all on day trips the sky's the limit if you plan carefully when we travel we rarely Rent A Car recently we rented cars in Ireland and Scotland and highly dislike the experience of driving on the left through narrow crowded roads in the rain now don't even ask me where we parked we would have been better off with trains and day trip tours you know we never dreamed that we would Embrace public transportation like we have and ditch car travel Subways and metros all over the world are so easy to navigate and trains offer a much more relaxed experience rental cars and taxis can explode your spending so give public transportation a try and save all of that money take public buses when trains aren't an option I know this sounds a lot like a repeat of number 12 but last year while we were traveling in the Balkans we hired drivers to take us across several borders you know this was a great service but they weren't cheap one day we made a change to our plans and Bev suggested that we take a bus turns out it was fabulous the seats were comfortable the drive was pleasant and on time and we even had Wi-Fi you know these buses are very popular with college Backpackers and we even met a West Virginia Mountaineer on the ride from Albania to Montenegro go mounties when we stay in a short-term rental with a kitchen we have a few go-to meals that we have pre-planned we love breakfast tacos and we love Veggie bakes these are two of our go-to meals that we know we can buy and have no waste in few ingredients Our advice is to take a couple of recipe cards with you when you travel that you know you can throw together to save big on restaurants one way we save a lot is getting out of the habit of three meals a day you know we've surprised ourselves by not needing to eat as often as we did at home we try to book hotels that include breakfast and our habit is to eat as late as we can in the morning then we try to eat an early dinner in the Summers we can get easily distracted by gelato stands and other Treats but this can add a lot to our expenses so if we need a cold snack we just pop into a convenience store and buy an ice cream bar foregoing the expensive gelato we've been very fortunate to be offered a spare bedroom in someone's home as we've traveled we get very excited about this because these are often our very best travel days on our journey there's nothing better than a local who shares their Home and Community with us so if you get offered a room to stay with someone jump at the chance but be warned if you offer us a place we will take you up on it so proceed with caution we couldn't exist without our WhatsApp before you go on a trip make sure everyone in your Posse has joined it's owned by meta but you don't need to be on Facebook to get it it's a free service you can make free calls and video calls while on Wi-Fi we are able to talk to our moms our kids our grandkids and sometimes tour guides and other people abroad without incurring roaming charges this is a big hack for us some people only think of their home airport for long-haul flights but we've discovered that you can get big savings by searching all airports we also like to fly long-haul flights and business class if we can find a bargain you know if a flight is longer than 10 hours this is our preference but it has to be big savings for us to do it yeah earlier this year we flew to New Zealand from the East Coast this ticket was unaffordable for us in business class from Orlando but we were able to find a first class ticket to Bogota Colombia for less than half the cost we took a short flight to Bogota a new city for us and enjoyed a few days before we headed across the Pacific this flight was on Latin Airlines which is a SkyMiles partner so we earn points on Delta we earn points on our credit card and we got to lay down flat on a flight to Santiago Chile and also on the flight to Auckland one thing we have learned is always pay in the local currency when you use the Chase Sapphire card or certain other cards your bank will cover your foreign exchange fees if you pay in USD you'll get a very bad exchange rate another way you get scammed in foreign countries is to use ATMs that are in the tourist hot spots they have very bad exchange rates so we only use ATMs that are located at a bank you know once you start the transaction they disclose the rate so do a quick you know Google search to make sure you know what the exchange rate is before you step up to get your money another hack is always set up your Apple pay with your credit cards you can pay in most places without having to pull out your wallet our credit card number was recently stolen and we were able to cancel our card while traveling our Apple wallet updated our new number and we could continue traveling without the physical card we have a backup card but we wanted to take advantage of Chase Reserve so off we go our last tip is to never take a trip that you have to go into debt for it's never worth it and it will always cost you much more than you intended incurring debt and interest payments negates every savings you can get from the above items so save pay cash and enjoy your trip we hope you've learned something from our experience the next video will be our packing secrets so stay tuned for that be sure to hit subscribe and follow along on our retirement Journey around the world

Channel: Retirement Travelers

Views: 41,347

Keywords: saving money on travel, best strategies for saving money on travel, how to afford to travel the world, world travel tips, money saving travel, money saving travel hacks, travel hacks to save money, travel abroad hacks, budget travel hacks, affordable travel tips, world travel hacks, 20 best tips and tricks for travel, best tips and tricks for travel, save money traveling 2024, travel on a budget in 2024, money saving travel 2024, 2024 travel tips, travel tips and tricks

Id: jwRBqONJd1g

Length: 15min 52sec (952 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 02 2023