How to Travel When You’re Broke!

Once upon a time, I was a college student with a massive amount of debt and I wanted to do something different the summer before my senior year. I was sick and tired of working and sacrificing and studying and having seen my three years of college fly before my eyes without doing anything fun. I had wanted to travel abroad like many of my friends and peers, but unfortunately, hadn’t been able to afford it. I wanted to see places, experience new things, do more than sit in a library. But how? I didn’t have very much money to spend besides my weekly living budget. And that’s how I began my journey into budget traveling. And even now that I am working and have a little more money on my hands, I still use the tactics below to get the best deals when possible. If you’ve been in my shoes, maybe the tips below can help you on your own journey like they helped me on mine:

• Skyscanner
  • If you’re flexible on your timing when you want to travel – even on when you can travel within a month or a week – it’ll greatly benefit you in finding deals. Usually – but not always – traveling on a Tuesday or Wednesday is cheaper than on a Friday or a Monday. I now request that my time off from work are in between weekdays, if possible (i.e. starting Wednesday to Wednesday instead of Monday to Friday) so I’ll have a greater chance of finding a good deal if I don’t know where I want to go yet when I am scheduling my vacation time
  • The trick is though, if you have no particular place in mind, you set your “departing from” destination and then “everywhere” in your arrival destination. Then select cheapest month. Then your realm of possibilities open up. And I wouldn’t be so quick to knock out places that might look boring – some locations are close to a desired location (i.e. Detroit, Michigan is four hours away from Niagara Falls and Las Vegas is like three hours away from Zion/Grand Canyon National Parks).

• EscapeATX
  • If you don’t have time like me to constantly be checking skyscanner (jk, I don’t really have time but I’m obsessed so I do it anyway), check out the series of Escape Facebook pages. There might be one catered to your city. They post good deals that are below the average and not budget airlines as soon as they happen. I use EscapeATX and EscapeHouston as those are the closest airports for me. Sometimes on EscapeATX they will post deals going out of San Antonio as well.

• Airbnb
  • Airbnb in my experience, has been mostly positive and can save a lot of money, especially if you just need a place to stay for a night and don’t really care much about the benefits of an accommodation like you might for a hotel. That being said, I tend to make a selection with a host that has positive reviews, is a Super Host, and doesn’t require sharing a space, just to be on the safer side. I’ve had my best experiences with Super Hosts. Be also aware of the amenities provided (sometimes things you would think would be available, aren’t, like shampoo and soap).
  • Here’s a link, https://www.airbnb.com/c/farahnh?referral_share_id=8c49e16e-4478-436d-87eb-e7f979c94a59, where you can get $65 off your first visit if you don’t already have an Airbnb account. However, disclosure, this will allow me to get a $20 credit as well. The same goes if you have a friend or family member who already has an account – they can send you an invite and they get a credit and you could split that credit and use it to make a reservation for the same trip.

• Camping/HOAs/Wal-Marts
  • On my road-trip across America (a post for another day), as we were car camping, sometimes you just need a place to stay that feels somewhat safe. Being three girls under 22, that was kind of a priority for us. We just parked our car at campsites and HOAs and stores (i.e. Costco). Would I recommend being the only person sleeping in a car in a store parking lot? No, absolutely not. If you’re going to do so, let’s hope you have a camper or are with multiple people.
  • This app shows where Wal-Mart locations allow free (1 night) overnight stays: https://www.allstays.com/apps/walmart.htm

• Rewards, rewards, rewards!
  • Join every possible rewards/point systems that you can get that are free. Hilton rewards or Marriott rewards or Hotels.com rewards are just a few. But if you’re going to stay at places – and have already stayed at places for work travel, then you can rack up points – maybe not as quick as you want, but at least you can start somewhere! Extra Tip: be careful when you book hotels on Expedia. Marriott seems more friendly in letting you add in your Marriott rewards number after you’ve booked your hotel through Expedia when you check in at the hotel, however, from experience (purely anecdotal evidence) Hilton is not as friendly.
  • Discount Den
    • As I am a major proponent of budget traveling, Spirit and Frontier have been my go-to travel airlines  (however, my experience with Spirit has been a lot of canceled flights, so if possible, I wouldn’t go with them, at least out of the Austin airport). I have a Discount Den membership – but this will only be beneficial if you have spread out the cost over several plane tickets and if the alternative is more expensive, with the cost of the membership in mind. In my case, it was. Also, if you have a membership, they let a friend fly free – and sometimes, like in my case, they offer a $40 voucher just to join as well. I haven’t yet used the voucher, so I’m not quite sure what the experience is when the voucher is used, but I have heard that it only covers the “flight fee” but not the taxes, which is usually the majority of the costs with Frontier anyway. Anyways, I’ll update you guys when I find out when I book my next trip with Frontier.

• Car rentals
  • It can really hard to find a good car rental – and it can be dependent upon which city you’re flying into. For example, I wanted to go on a trip to Yellowstone this summer and since it was too expensive to fly into cities in Wyoming, I came up with a couple options – either flying into Las Vegas or Denver. Then I compared the car rental rates (it’s good to have an excel spreadsheet for these types of things) and realized that I could have a trade off of driving two more hours but also having a car rental cheaper by $100. So always compare car rentals between cities if you have the time and flexibility.
  • Be sure to make a reservation for a car rental in advance (as long as you don’t have to pay up front) – and then check in a week before your trip. Sometimes you can get better deals. I have read that if you book a car on a Sunday you’re likely to get a lower rate, but from my experience that hasn’t been too accurate, however, my evidence is merely anecdotal.

• Points, points, points!
  • I left this as the last tip because I feel like everyone pushes using credit card points – and while that is great, it is not always a feasible option, especially for those who have bad credit or no credit. Or those who have already have opened 5 credit cards in the past 24 months, and have fallen under the 5/24 rule, which many of the best credit cards now require you don’t fall under in order to be approved.
  • The trick is to have your purchases reimbursed and add whatever you’ve reimbursed that has reduced your credit card bill to your travel budget (i.e. I owed $50 in a credit card bill, used my points to get all of reimbursed, and now have a $0 credit card bill. The $50 I would’ve used to pay for that bill I can now use on anything travel related!).
  • If you’re going to book with a hotel to get points, I’d recommend checking to see the prices on the hotel websites themselves – sometimes you can get a better deal, especially if you are military or have certain affiliations.
  • Hilton has a 2x points rewards for several credit cards – so if you’re going to stay at Hilton hotel, look into using your credit card rewards there (but then again, don’t book on Expedia if you plan to do that).

I hope the tips above will help you on your budget travel journeys. If you have any other tips to share, please do so in the comments below! I’m eager to hear what you guys have learned as well!