Saving is one end of getting ready financially for a vacation – on the other end is spending. You can spend less at home and use many of the long-term tips or saving for an RTW trip even if your trip isn’t that long. Another way to give yourself more room to save and lower how much you actually have to rack up is to visit one of the places in the world where your currency will go further. You can figure out those cheap places to travel and make it easier to save by using some online tools and breaking down the information into smaller pieces. As most of our tips here, they begin with pick the places you really want to go. Don’t let your budget decide before your imagination does.
Border Hopping
Take a look at all of the countries you want to visit and look at the neighboring countries. Often you’ll find one that’s really hit it off with the tourists around the world and a cheaper nearby cousin waiting to be discovered. Prices in tourism, just like anything else are based on supply and demand. Less tourists means usually lower prices. Borders also don’t usually isolate cultures and you can get a taste of Southeast Asian culture in Cambodia as well as Thailand for much less in price. Also, you can plan an excursion or a cheaper side trip to that expensive place you really wanted to visit, nobody is preventing you from doing that. Your budget will thank you and finding a cheaper place to travel can relieve you of some pre-trip anxiety.
Use Online Tools To Calculate Currencies
Traveling to a place where your currency is stronger is a good way to have more money without really having more money. You can calculate a single day easily by asking Google “what is $5 USD in Euro” or whatever your two currencies are. It will give you the latest data but when it comes to finding a cheap place to travel you’re better off looking at trends over a long period of time. Since saving for your trip should begin as early as possible, the currency trends can tell you what prices will be like when you actually travel and not just right now.
- The Economist’s Foreign Exchange Map lets you see how any two given currencies are moving against one another is a nice map graphic. You can set the map to give you data over the last day, week, months, or in years.
Aside from the Economist’s map and Google itself, you can also use the news to find out the political situation in a nation, a factor which weighs heavily on local economies. Places that are stable tend to be expensive, war zones too dangerous to visit, but recovering and modernizing places a good blend in the middle for great prices.
Think Outside The Box
Expand your knowledge and consider places that you didn’t know existed or you never considered visiting. Your budget research in figuring out the cheapest places to travel can greatly expand you horizons both figuratively and literally. Don’t leave anything off your plate, conduct thorough research, and talk to people on the ground to get the real story before scratching anything off your list. There are some amazing, cheap, and great places to travel out there just waiting for you to discover them.
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