My Favorite Budget Travel Planning Tips

My travel math is cheaper travel = more travel.

I am an avid budget traveler. No matter the destination you can find me scouring the internet for deals and employing the following tips to make my money go further when planning trips. What started as a necessity for me when I traveled as a broke college kid became a standard as an adult so I could stretch my travel dollars further. I believe in making travel work for you regardless of your budget, so I’m sharing some of my favorite money-saving tips for the planning stage of travel with you!

Get a travel credit card.

I’m starting with the most important budget travel tip first. Get a credit card that offers rewards or points for travel. This is the most effective budget travel tip I can give you: using a travel rewards card for daily purchases is effectively contributing to your next trip for free. I use a travel card for everything. Every meal out or bill paid or grocery trip gets me more points. I cash those points in for flights or travel-related purchases later. I have purchased entire flights with my points multiple times!

There are so many options for this type of credit card. Shop around for which one fits your needs best. Some of the most popular are the Capital One Venture series or Chase’s Freedom Unlimited. Do your research and make this card do the most work for you. For example, I only go for cards with no annual fee, and I make sure at least one of my travel cards offers no foreign transaction fees so I can use it when I travel internationally. Some cards offer more points for certain types of purchases like eating out, and some cards offer extra deals on travel purchases.

Pro tip: get the best card for your lifestyle and use it for everything; then pay it off at the end of every week. You’ll be saving so many points for your next trip, and you’ll keep that credit card paid off at the same time.

Plan trips far in advance.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that planning trips in advance is the best way to find good prices. This is for obvious reasons. You have more choices of accommodations— all of the cheaper places won’t be taken yet. As for the other big purchase, flights, you can watch those flight prices and jump on your ideal flight when prices dip. Giving yourself advance notice when planning travel usually opens yourself up to the potential of finding more deals.

Plan last minute trips.

I realize this hack is the direct opposite of the previous one. But you must be open to both types of planning! Though planning in advance is usually cheaper, last-minute travel deals do exist, and I have scored some really cheap plane tickets this way. The key to this travel tip is having flexible plans. Maybe you’re going to visit a friend who lives in a cool city and you can flex the dates of your visit. Maybe you found a refundable place to stay, so you can wait until a couple of weeks prior before really committing to the trip. However it works for you, being open to last minute trips grants you access to more great deals than solely planning far in advance.

Airlines, hotels, and other travel booking sites (Airbnb, Booking.com, etc.) will often put unsold flights or rooms on sale the closer it gets to that date in an effort to fully book. This is how I swung a last minute trip to Seattle recently: a route that usually costs at least $600 dipped down to $200!

Use Google Flights.

Speaking of scoring great flight deals, use Google Flights to do so! There are some great cheap flight email blasts out there that you can sign up for (i.e. Going formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights), and I have dabbled in several of those email lists. When all is said and done, Google Flights does the trick for me every time. Google Flights has several great tools you can employ to plan your next trip like email alerts that will send you a message when your flight price drops or a comparison tool to help you find cheaper travel dates.

99% of the time I find the perfect flight deal using good ol’ Google Flights. It doesn’t have to be your only flight shopping tool! But I recommend adding it to your arsenal and double checking flights you’re shopping on this website.

Travel with friends.

This is the most fun (and maybe obvious) budget hack. Travel with friends and split the cost! Sharing accommodation with friends is a huge budget saver. From hotels to airbnbs to old fashioned bed & breakfasts, I have been able to travel so cheaply in amazing places like the south of France by splitting the cost with friends! Beyond the cost of accommodation, you can split groceries, bottles of wine, parking, rental cars, and lots of other small expenses when you’re traveling with a group. Start the conversation with your friends now! Is there somewhere you all want to go together? Plan it! Dreaming up the trip and shopping hotels together is such a fun anticipatory planning stage.

Pro tip: the bigger the group, often the bigger the savings, but someone might have to sleep in bunk beds.

Know when to splurge.

I offer all of the budget travel tips and tricks above with this caveat: know when to splurge! Sometimes in travel, quality is better than quantity. You could take fifty trips next year but if you don’t go to any museums or nice restaurants or sign up for cultural experiences, was it worth it? I always go to local restaurants, wine bars, and coffee shops when I travel because, for me, eating and drinking in a place is how to truly experience that place. Often a nice meal or a bottle of wine as a souvenir is my only splurge on the trip. Maybe it means I wait an extra month or two between trips in order to save up again, but every well-thought-out splurge on my travels has been worth it.

Knowing when to splurge led me to the cooking class in Oaxaca, the many art museums I’ve visited, winery tastings, great meals, and some of my most favorite souvenirs.

I hope these budget travel planning hacks prove useful to you! Do you have any favored money-saving habits when you’re planning travel? Let me know below!