You obviously don’t have to ask me these questions, because you might already know my answer: yes, yes and again, yes! If you’ve readen my FAQ Series already, you will notice that you don’t need to be rich for travelling around from time to time. Now, I want to concentrate again a bit on this financial aspect, because I see a lot of people worrying about me sometimes, and they totally shouldn’t.

Alright, so you decided to go travelling for a couple of days, let’s say, a citytrip. But you might had to pay taxes (I’m using a very random example here 😉 ) and your budget dropped down from 1000 to 100. Well, lucky you! I’m sitting in a train right now, which will bring me to Geneva Airport, and I didn’t choose to go to Geneva because I like sitting around in a packed train during rush hour, nope: I wanted to travel, I had a short budget, I found a flight for 20 bucks that departed from there. So, that motivated me to go and have a look how Geneva Airport looks like.  I paid my hotel room for three nights by using my earned points on Hotels.com, that made it possible that the whole stay costed me 100 bucks. Okay, so now you know that I am on a train, travelling to Manchester, and that I might could be a bit broke right now. Everybody loves honesty, right? I’m still alive, and I’m actually doing pretty well. And while I was confronted to some criticism lately about this exact topic, I felt very inspired to write this post instead of saying “It’s actually none of your business”.

There you go, my 5 reasons of why you should go anyway. Have fun 🙂

1. I’d spend almost the same amount of money by staying at home

… Unless you’ll sit around at your kitchen table the whole day sipping tab water. If I would spend the next four days at home, that’s what would happen: I’d spend almost the same amount of Money as if I wasn’t there. It’s weekend, everybody is up to something, asking you if you wanna go out for a cocktail, for example. Or out for dinner/coffee/whatever. Well, that’s money I’d spend just by staying in my home town. Exactly the same with groceries: even if I would think to stay home in order to save money, it would be very natural for me to invite a bunch of people for dinner. That’s another bunch of dinero spent on food and a bottle of wine or two. And if you live in a city like Zurich, I’m very happy to communicate you that I’ll have two drinks while you’ll be sipping at one for the same price. Ha!

2. You won’t need a villa for yourself

If you’re not a frequent traveller like me, and not earning any points for free nights (you maybe should start, now!), try to find a place that’s cheap. The master for this kind of stuff is the apartment platform Airbnb. If you don’t feel comfy by sleeping in a bunk bed in a room with 30 people, get yourself your own room in a shared apartment. I made an amazing experience in Brisbane lately: we booked a room in a huge apartment for almost nothing, and had shared facilities like the huge kitchen and terrace where I had a bunch of good conversations in the evenings.

3. Cook!

We’re saving money here, so restaurants are ok, but you might should choose them wisely (ask your host or compare the menues online), and you shouldn’t do it every day if you’re planning to last longer than two days (go to the next step if you’re planning to travel Asia 😀 ). If you’re staying in a hostel or a shared apartment you’ll have a kitchen that you can use. Go out and buy some groceries! It’s actually a pretty fun thing to do in another country because you’ll see what is selled in the supermarkets and what the eating habits could be like 🙂

4. Culture is usually affordable

Or even for free, depending on what you wanna do. I like to walk a lot when I’m in another place: I love to stroll around and discover how different the districts of a city can be. Inform yourself about the happenings for the period you’re out there: maybe you’ll find a free exhibition or there is a supercute bar having an acoustic night, so you’ll get a free concert while you’d be sipping your fancy drink. Some cities by the water have free boats, use them! You’ll get a totally different point of view and your photos will be amazing. Students are having advantage too here: you’ll have a discount almost in every museum or on public transportation. Good for you, lucky bastards 😛

5. Think a bit out of the box

Try. It’s very simple. Instead of taking taxis all the time, try to figure out if you can catch a bus that costs almost nothing, or take some extra time and just walk. You are on vacation, so what’s the reason for you rushing? Figure out in which places you’ll get happy hour: mostly you’ll have the drinks AND the food. Try to put the luxurious diva that’s living in your brain aside and keep it simple. I met the greatest people by just sitting around having a one dollar taco (Taco Tuesday, you know) and a corona! The bar wasn’t exactly the hippest, but hey, sometimes you shouldn’t care.

Alright, I’m feeling very relieved right now and I hope my irony didn’t kill you or your vibe, that wasn’t the intention. But I think at the very end of this post you’ll may be smiling, because, you know I’m funny 😉

What are your tips for affordable travelling? Let me know by leaving a comment.

Happy Travels ❤