Solo Travel: How to Save Money Pt. 1

When you are traveling solo, it can seem that the costs just mount up compared to traveling with someone else. Since you are not sharing accommodation costs or can’t split meals or rides with someone else, there are some tricks you can use to make the most of your travel dollars when going solo. 

This is part one of a six-part blog post that will cover the different areas of a trip. I will be writing them in order of how I go about planning a trip.

1. Trip planning
2. Flights
3. Accommodation
4. Things to do on your holiday
5. Getting around
6. Food & drink

Lets dig right into trip planning now.

Have a budget

Yes budgets suck, but if you don’t want to come home in debt, knowing how much you can spend as well as the easiest ways to track it are essential. Plus the more you stay within your budget the more times you can travel. 
Decide how much you have to spend on this holiday. Make sure this includes all pre-trip purchases as well (like that new outfit you know you will buy yourself ;)) From that grand total take off what you spend on your flights and then break down the rest into a per day amount. This way you know how much you can spend on accommodation, food, events and extras.

Yes, you can splurges here and there, this can be put into the budget or have some “reserves”. Knowing your budget will make sure you to not blow the costs out of the water. A great and super easy to use app for tracking your spending is Trail Wallet. I highly recommend getting this app, or use another app that you can track all your spending while knowing what your budget it.

Be flexible with your vacation dates

If you can, be flexible with your vacation dates. Now not a lot of people will want to travel last minute, especially when they are still working, but being flexible in a more controlled manner still works. When you are booking your flights, you can pull up the whole month to see when the cheapest days are to book. To be able to change your dates to these cheaper dates to fly out of and return could save you a bunch of money. Flying on Tuesdays/Wednesdays/Saturdays usually return cheaper prices.

Be flexible on your destination

If you don’t have anywhere specific in mind there are some great tools to use to help you decide where to go based on flight prices. On Kayak you can plug in your home airport and then in the destination put in “anywhere”. This will pull up the prices of places to go from where you are. You can also check on Skyscanner and do the exact same thing except use “everywhere” for the destination.

Travel to inexpensive destinations

If you don’t have your heart set on somewhere very specific, try looking at inexpensive destinations. Decide on the continent you want to travel to and then you can Google “inexpensive places to travel to in Europe” for example. This will pull up a number of articles that you can read through to help you decide. When you are looking these up include the year so it will pull up the most recent articles.

Travel in the shoulder/off seasons

When you are choosing your holidays, always try to travel in the shoulder or off seasons. These times will always bring prices down in those destinations. Not only that, but there will be less people/tourists so you can enjoy your time without the hassle of so many people. Every place will have their own shoulder/off season, so ask Google when those times are for the destination you are going to.

Be aware of transaction fees

Be sure to check out part two, all about flights, next week so you can continue to save money throughout your trip.