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YOLO travel on a budget

Travelling is a norm these days and it seems to be only getting cheaper. Imagine a flight ticket plus accommodation to Europe in the past is almost double or triple the price these days. As cheap as it is now, people are still complaining that they are not travelling enough. And what could possibly be holding one back?

MONEY! Majority of the people will say that. “I don’t have enough to travel”

Well, the fact is, you don’t need to have a lot of money to travel. I can’t say you can travel for free but one can definitely travel cheap. Save enough for that desired solo immersive travel and learn some tips to travel cheap.

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Earn them cashback

Many knows we can earn cashback simply by booking our flight and accommodation with our credit cards, but many may not know this. You can earn cashback on top of cashback. YES! Certain websites partners with a wide range of services that includes hotels and airlines, and even online hotels aggregators to pay you to book flights and hotels through them, and give you cashback as low as 0.5% to as high as 10% during special deals.

Imagine a $1,000 spending giving you hard cash back of up to $100 and potentially more. Online hotel aggregators like Hotels.com even reward their registered users with 1 free night of stay for every 10 nights of hotel booking.

 

Fly off-season

Yes, we all love to travel and visit countries at their best seasons but that would also mean that travel fare would likely be more expensive, we will see more tourists, spend more time queuing for anything and everything. So why not travel off-season and get cheaper airfares, explore more with less time spend waiting in queues.

Enjoy a free flight – You must be thinking it sounds surreal. As a matter of fact, it is achievable. I always advocate accumulating free miles. Just go sign a few travel or air miles credit cards that offer sign-up bonuses in points (convertible to miles) or miles. Combine the miles from all these cards and you can easily have enough miles to fly somewhere in comfort.

 

Target spending

Always look out for extra miles earnings from what you spend. Some credit cards give extra bonuses miles for spending at their member stores or partners. You can even earn more miles based on the type of spending, like dining out may earn you more points or miles than your groceries spend.

 

Referral Bonus

Some credit cards like the American Express Krisflyer cards do offer referral bonus to their card members on promotional basis. Say per member you refer who sign up for their Krisflyer card will earn you 2,000 miles.

 

Miles purchase

Miles can be purchased via websites like themileageclub, LifeMiles, to name a few. I commonly use these as options to top up my miles to redeem a full return flight. However, such websites do offer great offers from time to time, where you can get 1.5x miles per dollar spent or car rental services that pays you miles.

 

Embrace the culture

While we travel, we always want to immerse ourselves into the culture of the country we are visiting, learn where the locals go, what they do, etc. One good way would be to know the homegrown locals there but how do one do that. Well, we can simply go there and know the locals, right?

Head on over to websites like ShowAround.com and register as a user. There, you can find homegrown locals from over 200 countries whom you can book them for free or for a small fee to bring you on a tour in their territory. You can even read reviews that other users have left to see if the “local guide” suits what you are looking for in your trip.

 

Eat the locals’ food

You are in a foreign country to experience the culture so stop going for those touristy restaurants that you would normally go back at home. You would simply be in your “comfort” zone for doing that. Get out of your comfort zone and learn to blend into the local scene. Look out for that dining place packed with locals. They do serve better food for much lesser money.

 

Transport Killer

Transporting between Point A to B within the country or states may be costly at times, dependent on where you are. Plan out your transport carefully to find out whether rail passes vs. single tickets travel, or bus rides vs. train rides are more worthwhile. Slow travel does not equate to time wasting as you get more viewings of the city itself too.

If you need to travel on long distance between states, instead of taking domestic flights, why not take an overnight train ride that offers a simple yet comfy bunk bed option to save money on hotel accommodation.

All in all, it is ultimately possible to travel cheap as long as you know the tricks to it. Just try not to follow blogs that talks only about touristy places if you really want to go in for an immersive trip to experience the local unique experience.

Now, do not forget to get the most important element of your trip, and that is TRAVEL INSURANCE. You would not want to fall sick or come across unforeseen circumstances or be pickpocket with nothing to fall back on as a backup, right?

 

 

 

This article is kindly contributed by GoBear and is published on ZUU Online.

 

Choosing insurance and financial products was once a complicated and dull process. It was filled with tricks and different terms and conditions. Andre Hesselink didn’t think that was fair. He thought comparing insurance and financial products should be simple, straight forward and transparent. So, with the help of like-minded people, they solved this problem, leading us to GoBear.

(By Gobear)

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