🏝 Economic Travel Hacks

Planning for a trip? an international trip? or just a domestic trip? I got you covered with some fantastic travel tips.

One thing that I can and will spend without hesitation is travelling. But travel can sometimes be intimidating. Have you ever dropped travel plans because one of your friends couldn't afford the budget? or the climate is bad? Chills, I have got you with a list of amazing travel ideas and tips.

The Biggest Culprit

So while making a travel plan, the biggest culprit for the failure of plans is the BUDGET. It is absolutely a myth that travels make a dent in your savings. The actual fact is - it isn't. Travel is one of the cheapest leisure that even the poor can afford. You don't need an expensive Maldives trip to say you are a travel freak. There are a lot of amazing places to visit around you. Start exploring them with as much as a small budget that you can afford. Plan your budget and then plan which place would fit your budget. Planning your travel and trying to fit that into your budget is very misleading.

Let your budget decide your destination!

I know that someday I will wake up from a random morning and decide to travel to Norway to view the Northern Lights but until then I am making trips that I can afford and I hope it is the case with most of us.

According to me, one of the major stuff that skyrockets your budget is your flight ticket and visa. Fact says that your flight ticket and visa should only accommodate only 50% or lesser than that of your entire budget. In order to book a cheap air ticket -

• Use Skyscanner to search for low priced air tickets. And there is one amazing feature in Skyscanner where you can get threshold alerts which will notify you when the price of an air ticket for the specified destination drops. There is a great search feature on this site where one can search for the cheapest month and the cheapest destination.

• Always browse for tickets in incognito mode. Most of the travel sites feed cookies into your browser and the next time you search for the same air ticket, the prices are jacked up a little bit.

• Try to book your tickets on Tuesday evenings. Oh wait, I am not a superstitious person. But many of the airline companies announce amazing deals on Monday evenings. (IDK why)

• There are a lot of visa-free nations for Indians such as Nepal, Bhutan, Indonesia, Maldives, Fiji. So you can save a ton of money here by avoiding visa charges.

• Check Seatguru which is an ultimate source for airplane seating. You can see which seats give you the most comfort and whether the airlines provide you with complimentary food and drinks.

The Daily Costs

The next biggest nightmare is the daily costs that you need to spend while travelling. You need to be very cautious here as these are very intangible costs. You can target your air ticket but you can't predict the daily costs that too in a foreign nation. For example, air tickets to Dubai from India are damn cheap but the daily costs such as food and stay are very pricey.

To avoid these,

• Use BudgetYourTrip website which helps you to calculate your daily spending per person per day.

• Stay in hostels. Not the cruel hostels that you stayed in when you were studying. Hostels are basically dorms where you share your room with a group of other backpackers. I just love to stay in hostels rather than in fancy hotels or resorts. I will tell you why. Firstly, they are dirt cheap and it is perfect for backpackers and when you travel with friends. Then you can meet a lot of new people from different states and sometimes even from different nations and there is a whole new level of vibe that you can connect with because they are like-minded. Thirdly, there are a lot of activities during the night like people will be partying, drinking, camp firing etc. in the common area and it is a great place to start a conversation with new people and to discover a new culture.

• Where to find cheap hostels? Wait, got you covered. Booking.com and hostelworld.com are the two personal sites that I prefer to book dorms and hostelworld is a more curated one to find cheap hostels. You can also check out Airbnb when you are travelling with a larger group.

• Hit the local markets or street food when you are hungry. Since I am not a big fan of fancy restaurants, I prefer eating street food or home-cooked while travelling. In fact, this is the fun part of travelling. You can taste some authentic food from that culture when you are gonna stick with the street food. And by the way, street foods are super cheap and you won't return home poor.

Bonus Tips

• Use splitwise app to track your spending and spilt the bills among your friends.

• Use currency converter apps for international trips.

• Get a local SIM card with data right from the destination airport.

• Make public transport your friend. Use carpooling often. (Cabs are super expensive everywhere). Or rent a car from zoom and there are a lot of bike rentals now which I would prefer the most. In the worst case, make walking your best friend. Walking is the best way to explore a new place.

• Carry buffer cash.

• Do shopping on the last day of your trip. This will let you shop only with the extra cash that you have and probably you can avoid over-shopping. Prefer shopping in the airports at the duty-free shops where you can get food and drinks at a comparatively cheap price.

• Make sure your credit card has lounge access where you can enjoy free food if you have a long layover.

• Roll your clothes if you are using a backpack or rucksack and fold your clothes if you are using luggage. This trick can save you a lot of space.

• If you are poor at planning an itinerary prefer Tripver, and TravelTriangle if you are planning a romantic trip.

Comment down if you have some more exciting travel tips so that the community can make the best use of them.