Traveling is the great thing anyone can do with their time. It’s the most magical way to expand your mind, open your eyes and make your heart pound with unabashed excitement. It’s the best way to make memories as a family, lasting memories, the kind that will fill your mantlepiece and walls and turn your home into a living, breathing memory box. It’s the most thrilling way to help your kids grow and develop. Traveling is heart-stirring, spine-tingling and awe-inspiring. But it’s also super-expensive.
Sure, it’s got a whole lot cheaper since the days of the Titanic (where you needed to hand over half the family coffers to afford a room with a view), but it’s still packed full of hidden costs. Airport drop-off fees, holdall luggage fees, booking fees, transfers costs, high hotel prices and a thousand other little costs that add up to one massive headache.
That’s why you need to sit down with a pen and write these genius travel hacks into the first page of your passport-slash-diary. Trust us, you’ll save so much on your next holiday, you’ll be able to book three more the second you get back.
- Find Flight Alerts
One of the most disruptive technologies to change the world of traveling is Skyscanner. But unless you are willing to trawl through each airport option and each day of each month, it can be a tedious process. Our advice: sign up for flight alerts from Scott’s Cheap Flights or Jack’s flight club. You’ll save hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
- Change Currency Elsewhere
The worst place you can exchange currencies is at the airport. They are notorious for their daylight robbery. In fact, their rates are so bad you’ll go from happy holidaymaker to blood-boiling tyrant in a matter of milliseconds. Our advice: exchange your money at the bank. For not a lot of extra effort, you’ll save a significant amount.
- Love Day Passes
If you’re going on some interrailing adventure that passes through 45 countries in five days, then this hack may not help you. But if you are going to be in the same city, town or region for a few days, then you’ll want to take advantage of the multi-use, all-day passes you can get. You can use them as many times as you want to get around and see the sights while pinching a pretty penny in the process.
- Taxi-Free Vacation
We know that taxis can offer a much-needed lifeline when you are in a foreign country, completely lost and don’t know how to say “A to B” in Spanish, but taxis are expensive. Like really expensive. Just look at Ridester if you don’t believe us, which details just how much cheaper the likes of Uber and Lyft are in comparison. What we’re saying is, use Uber or Lyft instead.
- Big Lunches Rule
For one, everyone loves that feeling of having a big lunch, laying down all afternoon and then only having a light bite in the evening. It’s one of the best. Secondly, you can save a ton of money by eating off a lunchtime menu compared to a dinner one.