Money

5 Simple Ways to Beat Your Travel Budget

Chris Cook outlines five simple ways to whip your travel budget into shape.

Practical Trip Planning (Part 3): Finding Cheap Accommodations

Chris Cook continues with the third installment in his Practical Trip Planning series on how to find cheap accommodations.

How I Saved Over 66% on Airfare in 20 Minutes

Like what you see? Subscribe to the full RSS feed.It’s amazing what you can accomplish with a little investigative legwork these days. You can save on fancy hotel accommodations by finding auctions. Heck - you can save even more by finding ways to stay rent free. You can save on car rental […]

Practical Trip Planning (Part 2): Creating Your Itinerary

Chris Cook continues his series on practical travel planning with a little advice on how to create your itinerary.

Kayak.com: One Travel Search Engine to Conquer Them All?

Are all flight search engines created equal? That is a question I’ve pondered over and over again while surfing - searching and clicking, searching and clicking. Some search engines seem to use only some carriers, while others search different carriers entirely. And from one search engine to the next, I’m sure I’ve seen different prices for the […]

How to Plan a Round-the-World Travel Route That Makes Sense

Amanda Kendle discusses the five most important factors when planning a round-the-world travel route.

Passport Pictures for Under a Dollar

Qatari Passport 1968 © banoootah_qtr As a traveler, very little irks me more than walking into a store and paying $7-12 for passport pictures. You need them not only for passports, but also visas, international driver’s licenses, and other miscellaneous pieces of photo id. At about ten bucks a pop, this cost of traveling can add up. […]

Practical Trip Planning (Part 1): How to Maximize Your Travel Budget

Chris Cook walks through his entire travel booking process to uncover a few tricks to best maximize your travel budget.

Colombia’s Underground School for Pickpockets

© GrooverFW It’s comforting to know that even pickpockets know the value of a good education. The School of the Seven Bells is a legendary, possibly apocryphal, and deliciously plausible school, said to be based in Columbia. Pickpocketing is largely a skilled combination of timing, and distraction, but South American pickpockets are particularly notorious. There is, of course, […]

Frugal Ways to Stay in Touch on the Road

Staying in Touch, Singapore © Delgoff. When I left “home” for a life of travel and adventure, I needed a way for family and friends to stay in touch (and despite the internet age we live in, I have some family members who refuse to venture into cyberspace). I had a smokin’ deal on my cellular […]

Farecast Your Flights for Big Savings

I find booking airline tickets online to be a soul-sucking task. With dozens of windows and tabs open, and search engines galore finding me the “guaranteed cheapest” tickets available, all I find are discrepancies. When I am blessed with an open itinerary, what I want to know is when the cheapest flights will become available, not […]

The Real Dirt on Travel Insurance

Ah … to enjoy your next vacation with or without travel insurance – that is the question. Nothing is going to happen to you when you’re enjoying your vacation, we know that. But what if? As with all insurance, it is a gamble. There are those who have made claims and swear by it, and […]

To Daydreaming Travelers: All That Extra “Stuff” Is Holding You Back

Sane, thoughtful people know that money doesn’t buy happiness. Nothing new there. But sometimes it’s hard for day-dreaming cubicle jockeys to imagine quitting a cushy 9-to-5 desk job to pursue their fantasies of long-term travel. Good news according to a recent article in Newsweek: Psychologists have spent decades studying the relation between wealth and happiness,” […]

Pickpockets in Action: How to Avoid Getting Ripped Off

Pickpocketing and petty theft constitutes the bulk of crimes against travelers. Tips from the pros on how to avoid getting ripped off.

Get The Most Out Of Your (U.S.) Dollar

Rob over at GoBudgetTravel.com has a great posted titled “Where your Dollars aren’t so Weak“, complete with a pretty, color-coded map of the world. He notes: [N]ot all international currencies have strengthened relative to the dollar. The dollar is still the most influential currency in the world today, and when it weakens many other currencies […]

Great Tip Tip: What to Tip in 77 Countries

This one’s quite bookmark-worthy. Justin Glow over at Gadling has a quick reference sheet for What to Tip in 77 Countries.

Budget Travel Costs of 94 Cities around the World

Rob over at GoBudgetTravel.com has put together a list of Budget Travel Costs of 94 Cities around the World. It’s always impossible to know how accurate such lists are and international economies are always changing. But it should provide most backpackers and long-term travelers a reasonable jumping-off point.

Free TV Online: Kill Your Cable Box Once and for All

Brooke from UsVersustheWorld.com brings us TV Links - a website packed with links to tons of free TV episodes online, like Law & Order, The A-Team, and even Man vs. Wild! I have no idea how or if this is legal, but it’s pretty damn cool! Yet another reason to scrap your $70+ monthly cable bill.

Things They Learned From Long-Term Travel

Erin and Brad from (where else?) Erin and Brad’s Travel Blog recently returned from a nine-month globetrotting adventure around the world. They’ve been kind enough to post an unabridged list of their tips on packing, dealing with money, health issues, and more. Check out their shared Google Doc here.

Getting the Most Out of Your U.S. Dollar

On the heels of a gripping and altogether exciting post I wrote last week about currency diversity, Tim Leffel’s put together a handy list of destinations where the U.S. dollar is not in trouble … well not in as much trouble as elsewhere anyway. Good to know. Especially since Canadian currency is almost equal to […]

Seeking Advice From Travelers: Currency Diversity

SEOBlackHat.com had an interesting, off-topic post today on Online Banking and Currency Diversity. My interest is more in the latter. As an American who’s sat idly by, watching the U.S. dollar fall into the worst tailspin in recent memory, the article started me thinking on whether or not it’d be a good idea […]

On Finding Closure in My Breakup With Starbucks

Way back in October, I published the groundbreaking Drink Water - a post that changed the travel blogging landscape forever. I suggested then that cutting back just $2-3 every day on soft drinks, coffee and other beverages could save you over $700 per year. $700 you could be investing in an ING account […]

Consumed by Consumerism: SNL Style

As a perfectly fitting adjunct to a post I made earlier railing against American hyper-consumerism, I found this SNL skit on the wire. A nice little “Friday Funny”. Enjoy your weekend everyone!

Fly U.S. to Europe for $12?

Huh? I like to think I’m a reasonably smart guy. No really - even my grandmum agrees. But there’s clearly something I’m missing in the economics of Ryanair. Guardian Unlimited Travel is reporting that Ryanair is planning to offer one-way transatlantic flights between the United States and Europe for roughly $12US. British Airways said: […]

Don’t Let the Things You Own Own You

In an unintentional yet timely follow-up to this past Sunday’s post, Vagablogging offers this advice via Fight Club: “You buy furniture. You tell yourself this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple of years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve […]

Consumed by Consumerism

As my RTW departure draws nigh I’ve put everything I do, buy, eat, and consume under a microscope. At first, it was a money-saving exercise. But it’s taught me one very valuable lesson: I don’t need to do, buy, eat, or consume even a quarter of the “stuff” that I used to. […]

How to Convince Your Boss to Let You Work from Home

Over on the Productivity501 blog, Mark discusses how to convince your boss to let you work from home. It’s a worthwhile topic for anyone considering not just telecommuting and working in their underwear, but traveling the world as well. For the ADHD readers in the audience, I’ll condense it down: convince your boss why it’s […]

Shopping for Second-Hand Clothes

GetRichSlowly.org has a great writeup on buying and shopping for second-hand clothing. Another great way to save for your future travels! Check out the full post here.

Use Less Stuff

It’s a remarkable notion, I know. But I can’t believe how much “stuff” people overuse. Toilet paper, toothpaste, laundry detergent, paper towels. You name it. I read an article a while back about how companies have gone out of their way to manufacture larger product packaging and to create larger openings in condiment […]

But what about money?

Ah, the eternal question: “How much money should I bring?” The short answer is: only you know the answer. It depends on the length of your trip, your itinerary and what countries you’ll be visiting, your habits, number of people, time of year, alcohol-dependance, whether you’re high/low maintenance, whether Mecury is in retrograde (again), and […]

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