How can you afford it?

                              


The question I am most often asked when I tell friends I'm going on a trip is, "How can you afford it?".  That's a great question!  As we all know, a teaching salary isn't huge and neither is teacher retirement.  So I'm going to pass along my secrets here.

When I was young, my Dad said:

"The secret to financial success is this - "Spend less than you make."  My Dad is smart and I've always followed his financial advice.  So I have savings.  Thanks, Dad :-) 

But I haven't had to dip into savings for any of my trips so far. 

My secret is that I've spent a LOT of time researching budget travel.  For my trip to Chile and this trip to Australia/NZ, I am using airline miles for the flights, I've researched clean but budget-priced lodging options, and I've found discount deals on food and fun. 

Flight miles on credit cards:  I've learned how to get airline miles from credit cards - Most cards will give you 40,000 or more miles when you sign up and the first year there is no annual fee.  Then you earn miles for every dollar you spend on the credit card.  I've used up all my miles from my United Mileage Plus and my Chase Preferred cards, so I'm going to cancel them soon and find another credit card that will give me a big sign-up bonus of miles and start using that.

I set my credit card up to automatically pay off the balance every month.  So I charge almost everything to get miles and make sure I have money in my checking account to cover the balance each month.

When you book a flight with miles, you have a better chance of getting a low-mileage flight if you book early.  Later, the same flight will cost you more miles. The Points Guy gives great tips on his travel blog.  

Tours are expensive:  I've booked tours, but then I extend my stay in that country and travel on my own before or after the tour.  You can look at tour itineraries from many companies and fashion your own tour from theirs.  It takes a lot more effort to create your own itinerary, but it's much cheaper, it's flexible, and you'll meet more locals.  

Low price lodging:  I've talked before about couchsurfing.com - stay free for a night or two and make new friends!  You could couchsurf for months with various hosts, depending on the country.  For NZ, I have found very few couchsurfing hosts who are over 35, so I have no couchsurfing planned there.  Instead, I've booked many rooms through airbnb.com.

Airbnb.com and vrbo.com (and many others like them) are both sites where the owner of a vacation rental (sometimes a room in their house) can advertise that property.

For New Zealand, I spent HOURS finding really awesome vacation rentals that are cheaper than local hotels.  We could have booked hotel rooms without much time invested but would have paid much more - probably almost twice as much.  My investment of time got us geat prices for unique lodging.

Use Discount Deals:  Use Groupon or other discount sites where available:  I found Groupon NZ and Groupon Australia so we can buy some deals on restaurant meals and things to do while we're there.

Learn from the locals:  The couchsurfing.com site is a fabulous resource for learning about a place because you can email with couchsurfers from that area.  I've learn a lot about the countries I've visited this way. 

When you book a vacation rental, the owner is usually nearby to give you the key and if not, you've emailed with the owner online.  Owners know all about the area and can give great advice about what to see and do there, if you should book ahead or book there, and if discounts are available once you are there.

I always prefer staying with a local person over staying in a hotel - that's just me though.

Choose your destination according to your budget:  Some areas of the world are cheap for us.  You can live more cheaply in a South American country than you can at home. Same for Central America, many Asian countries, and many African countries.  Of course you have to consider your safety and whether it is wise to travel alone where you'd like to go.


Kenya and Tanzania are very inexpensive for us, but I could not travel freely there so I booked trips and then stayed for two weeks on the touristy island of  Zanzibar (which is very very safe).


Chile and Argentina were very safe and slightly cheaper than what I would pay here for the same things.  For lodging I used couchsurfing, volunteered, and rented a room in Claudia's house for 2 weeks.  Food was inexpensive.


New Zealand and Australia are a bit expensive for us - at least the same as here.  But very safe and they speak English! So this is one of my more costly vacations but there will be no culture shock.