My husband and I love to travel. Before we were together, I had only been to handful of places (think a child’s hand). But since he introduced me to international travel, it has become almost an obsession. We don’t travel as much as we’d like anymore, since we have small children and very little vacation time compared to theirs, but when we do, we try to do our best to save money wherever we can without compromising on quality. Here are 8 of our money-saving trips for traveling abroad:
Buy tickets ahead of time. Unless you are planning on flying within 48 hours and don’t mind going to whatever location has the best deal — booking in advance can save you heaps of cash. When we booked our trip to South Korea and Japan, we purchased the tickets in August — for the end of March. We bought tickets that had a flexible cancelation policy, which makes the tickets technically more expensive (though by very little), but when compared to purchasing tickets a couple of months before the trip — the savings are enormous. In December, tickets for the exact same flights and dates cost $300 more than we paid, in January another $100, and for sure a couple more hundred by the time we flew. This money covered the entire cost of our hotel in Seoul plus a large chunk of our hostels in Japan (I will get to this later). Had we been with a few kids above 2, this would have been an enormous difference (we traveled with a lap infant)Fly off season. Obviously this tip doesn’t apply to families flying for Christmas or Thanksgiving. Last year we flew in August and found that certain weeks were cheaper than others because of camps and school. As our kids didn’t have camp or preschool anyway, and were on vacation already, it didn’t really matter to us which week we flew. As it turned out, the cruise we chose was also cheaper during this week than the others.Use Kayak to search for flights, specifically the +/- 3 days feature. This is how we found out, for example, that two of our destinations were significantly cheaper (by over $100 per person) if we flew Wednesday through Saturday instead of Thursday through Sunday.Stay in hostels if you are going to Japan. The price is significantly cheaper, but more importantly, the experience is superior to a hotel. The staff all speak English at a very high level, are very knowledgeable about their towns and travel, and can recommend so much. Additionally, you meet other travelers who can also give you important insight (for example, in Osaka we discovered that a site we wanted to visit was under construction and simply not worth the visit). There are so many more reasons to stay at a hostel in Japan, but I have already written a post so just read that. :-)Low cost flights aren’t necessarily better. We are flying to Paris this summer and when we booked (late) we saw that we could save $150 per person, meaning $450, if we flew low cost rather than a major airline. However, since we are flying with two toddlers and a young child, we would need to fly with at least 2 pieces of luggage, probably three, since we won’t be doing laundry on a 3-night vacation. The cost of 3 pieces of luggage, plus the additional fee for assigned seats (so our 4 year old wouldn’t be on the other side of the plane) made the difference insignificant.Check your credit/debit cards beforehand. Specifically — check your currency conversion fees. They can run anywhere from half a percent to 2.5% and more, which can be very significant. When we flew to Asia for 4 months (pre-kids), I didn’t check this and my fee was a whopping 2.5%, which I only found out in the middle of the trip. My husband was paying 1%. This means that on every $1,000, I was paying $25 while my husband was paying only $10. This can add up to a lot of money on longer trips, but also for anyone who is paying for the plane tickets in a different currency than their home currency. Check around and see which cards have the best rate. Additionally, check with your bank to see what your fees are for ATM usage. I am charged $4 per withdrawal overseas, so it’s best to stock up on as much currency as possible. Alternately (and additionally), using your credit card is usually free so that’s a good course of action. (Bonus points: this usually only comes out of your bank account when your card charges you and not immediately).Don’t stick to known hotel chains. Chain hotels, such as Hilton, feel safe because you know the level of service you will receive, however nowadays, with TripAdvisor and other travel sites, you can read reviews and also know what to expect — and pay a much lower price without sacrificing quality.Couchsurfing. I saved this for last because first of all — I would only do this without children, and second — it is important to understand the community beforehand. Couchsurfing is a way to stay 100% for free at someone’s house (think AirBNB with the owners home and for free). Other than the free aspect, however, Couchsurfing has some amazing bonuses: your hosts know the area very well and can give you great recommendations. We couchsurfed almost exclusively through Australia and a bit through Japan and it was amazing — our hosts sent us places we would have never known existed and some were the best part of our trip! Since the community depends on hosts, when we returned home we also hosted travelers and it was just as fun (we stopped when we started having babies, but will probably host again once they are older and sleeping through the night). It’s customary to give your hosts a small gift from your home country, so take something local along with you if you can. While some people do couchsurf with children, ours are still very, very small (4 and 1.8 year old twins) so this isn’t something we would consider for the time being.
The aforementioned tips are only the big ones we use when we decide to travel. There are many other “smaller” tips, such as buying food at supermarkets and not only eating at restaurants, checking beforehand what reasonably-priced venues are in the areas that you will be in every day, and bidding on hotel rooms, but these are the big ones.
Do you have tips to share as well? Let me know in the comments, we are going to be flying again soon. 🙂