6 awesome tips to enjoy cheap vacations
Travelling is something that almost everyone aspires to do at some point in their lives. You probably go on a few family holidays when you are younger and have seen a few different places. But, as you grow up and start learning about all of the fascinating places further afield, you start to get the urge to really push yourself to go and explore other countries, much more far flung than you had previously been exposed to. Travelling can be a truly enriching experience, absorbing other cultures in your own understanding of life, meeting new people, travelers and locals alike, eating new food, and spending time outside of your comfort zone, something which can help you grow as a person.
A lot of these urges for experience will happen as you leave your teenage years, right around when you would be at college. This makes total sense: you want to experience the world and what it has to offer, and you feel independent enough, as a young adult, to go out and do that. What’s more, it’s easy to start feeling restless at that age, tired of being in the same country, same city even.
The only draw back with this is that all of the travelling you want to do comes at a cost and, if it’s around the time you are in college, then you more than likely have student debts and not much spending money. That which you do have will mainly go to support your college lifestyle. However, by using a few of the following tips, you should find you can shave the costs of your trip down enough to give yourself the chance to travel on a very small budget. So, let’s take a look at how to achieve that.
1. Save, Save and Save as much as you can for cheap vacations
Obviously, I hear you say. Saving is actually a complex thing, especially when your income isn’t likely to be more than a small amount a week, since working full time and going to college is impossible. The best thing to do is to start a savings account. Swear to yourself that you won’t touch any money that goes in it and then just start siphoning off what you can. This can mean getting rid of something you don’t need to by. Cut back on the beer budget, cook for yourself a bit more etc. etc. Anything you can do to start filling the coffers.
2. Travel With One Friend (But Not Two!)
Most of the time, travelling with one friend is going to be a great way for you to cut costs. “Whilst buying your airfare won’t be helped by this, since you can’t share one seat, so many other things can be helped by having a friend. You can split the cost of food. you can split the cost of a bedroom, a hire car, a tour guide, the list goes on.
Plus, it’s just nice to have company”, says Rachel Howard, travel writer at BritStudent and WriteMyx. However, as the old saying goes, two is company but three’s a crowd. Adding a further person to the trip will likely then reverse some of the benefits of adding the original person, since a lot of experiences are built for two people. So, be wary of this.
3. Go To Your College For Help
Now this is a very situational piece of advice, but an important one, nonetheless. A lot of universities will offer grants and funds for people to go travelling whilst in the course of their degree. For you, this represents an opportunity to knock some of the costs off your trip. It might mean that they decide where you would go, which obviously doesn’t work unless it’s somewhere you want to go, and you may even have to write a paper about it or something, but that’s a small price to pay in return for some of the generous grants that institutions can afford to offer.
Alternatively, you ought to have a look at whether your university offers a study abroad program. Again, it puts you in one place for a long time but, you may find that it puts you close to other places that you can pay a visit whenever you want. For example, study abroad in Paris and you can explore the rest of France, Germany, Spain, Britain and basically anywhere else in Europe all by train. So, definitely look into this.
4. Pack Smartly
A lot of budget airlines, the sorts of which you would be looking at, your plan for cheap vacations failed if you carry extra luggage because it will add extra during flight. To a budget airline a check in bag definitely counts as an extra, so it is important that you do your absolute best to manage with just a carry on. Alternatively, if you’re bringing that buddy along with you, you can check one bag in for the two of you to share, another advantage of bringing a friend.
The other benefit of not having a great big check in bag is that all the other modes of transport that you will likely be utilizing, trains and buses, will be much easier to navigate. Travelling light feels good as long as you are as smart as you can be about it.
5. calculate your budget before start
Planning a trip is more than saying ‘Let’s go to Japan’, buying tickets and then setting off. And, whilst there are a whole host of good reasons why anybody ought to be carefully planning their trips, it is vital if you are in the business of saving money. If you plan your trip in advance and you know all of your movements throughout, then you can book things early, which usually saves money, and you’re able to control your spending.
Knowing what you will be doing on a day to day basis gives you the opportunity to budget for each day as it comes, which gives you nice parameters for your spending, and control over your money which will help you save in the long run”, advises Mark Slater, lifestyle blogger at Australia2Write and NextCoursework. Planning can actually be really fun, since it gives you a nice feeling of anticipation for all of the exciting things which you will do in the course of the trip.
6. choose Cheap Places To Go
A final, this is very crucial, point to finding any cheap vacations. If your heart is set on visiting Milan or New York or Paris or Singapore or Sydney, then fine, just be aware that it is going to really be a challenge to save the sort of money you need to exist in those cities. Picking cheaper countries and cheaper places within those countries doesn’t just save on travel costs, it saves on everything: food, accommodation, activities etc. etc.
Conclusion
So, just remember throughout that it is possible to have a really amazing trip, with all sorts of varied and incredible experiences, in a country far from your home, without needing to take out loans. You have to work harder for it, but, at the end of the day, that just makes the experience of making you dream a reality all that much more satisfying.