Don’t eat takeaways for dinner or buy lunches. Cook meals each night and cook extra for lunch.
Create a shopping list and only purchase items on that list.
Setup a separate account for your travel savings and deposit the same amount that you have allocated every week and do not touch it unless its an emergency.
Setup a budget for savings, bills, enjoyment and stick to it religiously. If you have blown or your enjoyment fund on the Friday but there’s something on the Saturday you may just have to miss it. If you dip in here and there you will never get to your goals. Set real budgets and stick to them it will pay off when you are on the other side of the world trying new cuisine and drinks with random people.
Get that credit card debt down. Pay these off first if it’s possible as the interest charged on these are normally something ridiculous like 20% get rid of credit cards altogether if you can and pay these debts off completely.
Ditch the credit card completely. Research has shown if you use your own saved money you are more inclined to manage it better and make it go further than just swiping a credit card.
Booking
If you’re booking to go to festivals or things that can and will sell out. Book that part of the trip first so you don’t end up with a flight and hotels but no festival tickets.
Get travel insurance!!! I can’t believe how many people who don’t even think about this. Don’t wait to get sick or have your flights cancelled and let the panic kick in. Book travel insurance and know how to get hold of them in case of emergency.
Be flexible. Travelling a couple of days earlier or later can save you a lot of money.
Take the red eye or early morning flights. They are a lot cheaper as you generally loose a day or get there at silly hours but the savings are worth it.
If you are a regular traveller, book a year’s worth of travel insurance instead of individual holidays and save hundreds!
You should actually read the terms and conditions on flight cancellations so you are aware what to expect.
Use sites likes Hotel-Combined, Wotif, Trivago, Hostel World to search for the cheapest deals on hotels.
Use sites like sky scanner, web jet to search for the cheapest deals on flights.
Use airbnb to find amazingly cheap deals on whole houses or even just a room at a host family’s house for cheap deals.
Use couchsurfer for free couches to crash on and a great way to meet the locals.
Either book well in advance or absolute last minute for the best prices.
Company’s normally allow cancellations right up to 24 hours before a flight so sometimes you can get crazy last minute deals as a seat that is sold for half the price is better than no sale to an airline company.
Take advantage of free stopovers. Some airlines allow up to seven days without costing you any extra to layover in countries. Iceland, Finland and Singapore to name a few.
Enable your private browsing on your computer when booking flights and accommodation as these sites will see how often and what you search and actually raise the prices on you the next time you visit.
If you are booking far enough in advance and know what sort of price you wish to pay for a flight. Get an app that lets you set price alerts that notify when a certain flight is a certain price.
When travelling as two, pick the aisle and window seats. If the flight isn’t busy the middle seat will be left free but if it is simply ask to swap with the person taking the middle so you can sit next to your friend. 90% of the time they will swap.
Check out seatguru to get the best seat on the plane possible. It will tell you everything about the seat from if it has powerpoints to how far it will recline.
Let your bank know you are heading overseas so that they don’t cancel your cards and lock your accounts midway through a trip!
Packing
Mark your bag with a fragile goods sticker/tag even if it’s not. This will ensure the baggage throwers treat it a little better and will place it on the top of the pile.
Chuck your belts into your shirt collars to keep them on point.
Scan Important documents like passport and driver’s license. Save to your phone and laptop then send them to your own email address so if you lose everything you can still go to an internet café and at least get a copy of your passport.
Have a roll of insulation tape in your bag, it comes in handy for so many things, tying things together, taping up holes, covering lights on your camera.
Get 1 or 2 bunny cords. They are good for holding things together or using as a washing line in your bathroom or on your deck when you need to hand wash and dry.
Place you toiletry liquids in plastic zip locks bags as they tend to leak or explode in some cases.
Grab shower caps from hotels and use them to cover your shoes before placing in your back to avoid clothes getting dirty especially your hiking boots.
Have you tried rolling your clothes instead of folding? It actually saves you a bit of space!
Put your socks and underwear in shoes to save space.
Put headphones and phone chargers rolled up in old glasses cases to save them.
Use a pen spring to protect chargers from bending and breaking.
Fill up travel size containers before you leave with full size containers to save money.
Take a power multibox everywhere. You get first dibs on power and will get praised for bringing one from others.
Use a folding laundry bag to save space and separate your dirty from your fresh clothes.
Alternatively take a spare pillow case and use as a laundry bag or if on your hotel pillows if they smell or look suspect.
Chuck the hotel soap in your dirty laundry bag to help with the smell.
Beeswax will waterproof anything and I mean anything. Coat whatever you want, it won’t be pretty but it won’t be wet either. On a side note Honey never expires. Bees are amazing.
Use a pill container to keep your jewellery safe.
Stash bobby pins in a tic tac container so they aren’t floating around your bag.
Email your itinerary to your family or friends so people know where you are when.
Airport Security
You can’t take more than 100ml through customs but you can take an empty water bottle and fill once you have passed through security.
Now I’m yet to prove this but apparently you can’t bring bottled water through security unless you freeze it!.
If you flight gets cancelled or delayed while at airport. Go to the customer service desk and phone the customer help line. Use whoever you get to first.
On Flight
Purchase a power bank pref light for long hauls so you can charge your phone or tablet if there is no USB supplied.
Carry a pen in your pocket for the airport security declaration. Everyone seems to forget them and flight attendants don’t carry them as they never get returned.
Chuck your phone in a zip-lock bag and hook it onto the tray table handle. It will look stupid but least your hands are free while you watch movies for 8 hours on a flight.
Stock up on food and beverage and snacks to hold you over before you get on the flight.
Wear or carry the heaviest clothes you are taking with you onto the plane.
Try wearing a dark hoodie. It will keep you warm and you can fold the top over your eyes to make it dark and get some shuteye.
Bring at least one change of clothes onto carry on in case they misplace your checked luggage
Wear clothing with an ample amount of pockets so you can carry It all on you instead of rummaging around your bag trying to find everything.
If you’re travelling with kids hit the air hostesses up for free games and activates for the kids to keep them occupied and quiet!
Ask for free drinks! You don’t have to only have the 1 alcoholic/non alcoholic beverage that is served with your meal. Ring that bell and ask for more.
Go toilet just before they announce descend and seat belt light comes on or even as soon as the seat belt sign comes on. They will generally let you go the toilet up to about 15mins after this happens.
You can normally take 7 kg carry on luggage but you can also take a laptop bag, camera bag or handbag as well so make the most of this and load that bag up as well.
Once You Are There
Have a long stopover? You can enter airline lounges by using frequent flyers, certain credit cards or even one off payments if you wish. Ask the counter.
If you need to use the bathroom once you land always use the second or third bathroom in the airport on your way to baggage collection. The first is usually hectic as everyone heads there after a long flight.
Use atms for cash withdrawal. The currency converters in airports are normally average rates and they sting with you with their fee as well.
Google maps can be used without data with a few different methods. You can either load it on your phone via Wi-Fi and don’t close the app or you can type “OK maps” and the area you are looking at will save for later.
In your hotel only take out what you need from your luggage, it saves the hassle of repacking last minute because you woke up late on fly out day.
Once you land head to the grocery store and get some basics food essentials like snacks and water so you aren’t having to use the expensive room service in the middle of the night.
Forget or lost your phone charger? Ask the front desk they normally have a huge box of left chargers. Or plug into the usb port into your TV in your room if you have one.
Bought too many souvenirs? Post them home so you don’t get stung with costly overweight charges
Try to learn at least some basic language as it goes a long way to the locals and could actually help you get deals instead of getting ripped off because you didn’t make the effort to learn some.
Eat local cuisine and not fall into the trap of McDonald’s. It will generally work out cheaper and least be honest you’ve traveled halfway across the world to eat McDonald’s!
Write on a piece of paper when you get to a new destination and take a photo on your phone so photos aren’t confusing when you are trying to work out where they were taken.
Feel like a swim but don’t have a pool or beach nearby? Head to a hotel or hostel that does and act confident, change in the toilets and order a drink from the bar and enjoy the day poolside. No one will ask questions if your confident.
Its best to learn the local number for emergency services in countries but its often something that is forgotten so 112 will call emergency services in most countries free and without the need of a telephone provider.
When you check in to your hotel grab a business card especially if you are in a country you don’t speak the language so you can just hand to the taxi driver to get you home.
Free Wi-Fi passwords can usually be found by checking comments on FourSquare.
Have your phone unlocked before you head overseas and grab a cheap simcard to use while you’re away. Roaming is outrageous and unnecessary. Even if you are running a business and need to take calls it will be cheaper to divert to your local sim number than using roaming.
Try to walk everywhere, it may be a hassle but you can save so much money from taxis. If it’s too far to walk take public transport as obviously will be so much cheaper than taxi.
Jetlag is easily dealt with simple exercise. Go for a walk/jog/run and feel good again.
Travelling solo but want some company? Join meetup group and find like minded people who are keen to find new friends!
Carry a dummy wallet in you back pocket with a lovely vivid and graphic note to the wananabe thief. And carry your real wallet in a hidden area. Seems silly but muggers/pickpocketers will run away once they have your fake wallet, they aren’t going to stick around to see what is actually in the wallet.
Follow a pub crawl. Their easy to spot and you can generally tag along for free as everyone there is random and have some of the best nights you will ever have while seeing the best bars and probably scoring a few free shots or drinks at each bar.
Need an emergency light? If you have kids or you just never grew up crayons will burn for half an hour and provide an impressive amount of light.
Ask your hotel for a free upgrade at check in. It is uprising how often they will actually say yes if you just ask!
