Over the past 12 months, I have traveled from my home base of New York City to upstate New York, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Nantucket, Washington, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Utah, San Antonio, Germany and the Netherlands. Next up is New Orleans, and I’m eyeing Chicago and Denver before the year’s end.
As you can tell, I love to travel and do so as often as my schedule allows. The only way I’m able to make travel so much is that I keep my monthly expenses the same on the road as I do at home. That means I’m able to travel within my regular means, rather than having to save up for a splurge.
So how can you travel the country or the world without altering your basic budget? Here are my three basic tips:
Eliminate housing costs. The simplest way to save money while you’re out of town is to sublet or rent out your living space. As a professional actor, I often have to leave my home for months at a time. To save myself from paying for a space I don’t live in, I rent out my apartment, either through a simple Facebook status or the occasional AirBnB listing.
Not long after using subletters for professional reasons, I started using them for my personal trips, as well. Even if it’s just a vacation, I’ll try to get a renter for at least some of the time I’m away. In the past six years, I’ve had well over twenty subletters, saving me thousands of dollars that I get to put towards other expenses instead, like more travel.
In addition to eliminating housing costs at home, I try to eliminate housing costs on the road as often as possible, too. Many of my travels have been facilitated by work, which makes everything easier as employers provide both housing and per diem expenses. Otherwise, I reach out to my networks, often via social media, to find a place to crash. And it works! I’ve had free stays everywhere from Davis, California to L’viv, Ukraine!
Finally, I’ve also done what many would never dare to consider and used couchsurfing.org to crash for free in cities where I don’t have friends or family. Even as a young, short, 20-something female traveling alone, I have never had a bad experience during my many couchsurfing adventures.
Eliminate transportation costs. As long as I have you thinking that I’m totally nuts for couchsurfing, let me double shock you with my next savings tactic, which involves ride sharing. I’ve only used this method once and it wasn’t my favorite experience, but it was safe and got me where I needed to go, so I wouldn’t eliminate it from consideration altogether. Websites like erideshare.com make it easy to match up with potential drivers.
For those averse to relying on the kindness of strangers, I recommend travel hacking. I flew to Germany in April for $25 and just booked a round trip ticket to New Orleans for $11.20. Both trips were courtesy of credit card sign up bonuses. If (and only if) you are a responsible credit user, you can find credit cards that offer major incentives, like 50,000 miles credited to your account after spending $1,000 on your card within the first 90 days of using your credit line. Just to give you an idea, my roundtrip from New York to New Orleans was 32,500 miles, so I’ll probably wind up getting three total flights out of that one sign up bonus, just for spending money like I do anyway.
Don’t alter spending habits. Something about being away from home turns even the fiscally responsible into totally impractical spendthrifts. I mean, do you really need to buy another useless figurine from the overpriced souvenir shop to take home and create more clutter on your shelf?
If you can be as smart about your spending on the road as you are at home, by doing your research, taking public transit, price comparing and using coupons, for example, then you’ll be able to make your budget stretch a lot further. The more you practice normal habits during travel occasions, like going to the grocery store rather than eating out every meal, the easier it will be to make travel your norm.
Now expenses are admittedly only one side of the equation, and if you really want to make travel a full-time lifestyle, then you’ll also need to develop a strategy for earning income consistently, regardless of where you are in the world, but that’s a post for another day.
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How to Travel the World on a Strict Budget originally appeared on usnews.com
