reverse travel planning – Budget Bliss: Bucket List

Travel Tips: The Art of the Deal

Published on April 8, 2025March 1, 2025 by BudgetBlissLeave a comment

To continue on my tips for traveling, we’re going to talk about deals, their pros, cons, constraints and other considerations. Because we’ve all seen those travel blogs and social media posts promising cheap travel or insider tips and it can be tempting to jump on what seems to be an offer you can’t refuse, but there can be pitfalls that even the savviest person may find themselves prey to.. Here’s my tips on how to help you find good deals and how I keep costs down when I travel. After all this is a budget bucket list blog and I hope to show you how to live a life full of adventure without having to go into debt to do it.

In a previous post, I discussed a form of reverse travel planning of considering all your constraints ahead of time and then picking your destination. There are some people who will do a form of reverse travel by first picking the time they want to travel and then just look for deals to any destination and go based on that. I had a work colleague who took off for three weeks every summer and would travel for about one to two of those weeks being highly flexible with the dates and going to wherever was cheapest during that time. She enjoyed using Kayak to help her find those deals and then usually backpacked her way around a given country. There are many other websites and social media pages devoted to helping people find cheap flights and accommodations. Some people swear by hello going and others will literally troll websites for mistake deals and price track. If you aren’t too picky about where you’re going, these are great resources and can help you cross off your bucket list for less than you’d ever imagine.

Checking out a cruise line for last minute deals for cruises departing in only a few weeks or even days, could yield fantastic savings. I remember seeing a cruise to Iceland and the British Isles for two weeks for about $700 a person for a balcony suite. Booking it in advance would have been about $2,000 or more. So if you don’t much care where you go, then finding a destination at the last minute could open up a world of possibilities.

However, there are some considerations before grabbing your credit card and jumping on cheap fares. As previously discussed, one may find that you’ll be traveling to the destination when the weather is terrible for what you want to do. If you planned on going hiking in the mountains of Colorado, going in January might prove difficult given the snow cover, but if you want to go skiing then it’s probably the perfect time to go! The other consideration is the cost of the other parts of the vacation. The flight might be cheap but the accommodations are astronomical or it’s a flight to the middle of nowhere and it will cost you an arm and a leg to get to the actual place you want to go. Perhaps as with Rayanair the flight is cheap but it’s out of an airport that isn’t easily accessible necessitating extra travel time. It may be during a big festival that closes down the sites you want to visit or if you’re relying on public transit, there’s been a series of strikes over the past several months with no end in sight. It’s important to research the destination first before hitting that payment button.

While a cruise may seem like a surefire way to ensure that you will go to a destination during a prime time to visit, if you were hoping to join the excursions you’ll probably find them booked up meaning that you’ll be running an increased risk of being left behind. Be certain to plan plenty of extra time to return to the ship as you’ll be exploring the ports on your own.

Now before you resign yourself to only traveling during peak seasons, the off season can have its charm and with some careful timing, it may be the perfect time to go. Consider Cornwall in the UK. Its off season is the winter, many attractions are shut down, the weather isn’t the greatest, and the beaches are home to freezing waters. One may think me insane for having traveled towards the end of February. However, my visit coincided with the Half-term break for school children. This meant that attractions typically closed for the winter were open to welcome parents and children looking to pass the time. Ticket prices were still lower than during peak season, saving me money for sight-seeing. Additionally, the crowds were much lower than during the peak season because most of the people visiting were locals rather than throngs of foreign visitors.

The wonderful part of Cornwall is that the weather is actually fairly stable throughout the year so even though the summer is better weather, with the exception of one day, the weather was actually quite nice. Yes, it had frequent cloud cover, but the clouds are what help keep the climate so stable. I avoided crowds, had cheaper tickets and was still able to access everything I wanted to see by timing my visit with half-term. So before crossing off a destination because it’s not the “best time” to visit, take the time to investigate why. If you’re not someone who wants to lounge about on the beach but rather want to take in the local culture, see their museums and visit religious sites then perhaps a trip during the rainy season won’t be so bad, so long as you don’t time it with the peak of the rainy season.

Personally, a beach is a beach, so I see little reason to travel far just to lounge about when I have plenty of beaches nearby my home, but to each their own. I’m not here to judge, I’ll be a bit quizzical about it, but if you’re on the beach it means you aren’t crowding my museums or historic sites so by all means kick back and relax!

There are other tricks to keeping costs down. One of my favorite tricks comes from my time as a student studying abroad. Rather than paying to eat out for every meal, I would go to the local grocery store to pick up bread, meat and cheese. I could pack these in my backpack as I ran about a city which gave me extra time to sightsee and saved me a lot of money. For the cost of one meal out, I was able to eat two to three meals. It can certainly be fun to sample the local cuisine and to enjoy a hot meal, but if one is trying to keep a lower budget then this is a great way to do it. Of course before traveling ensure you’re done your research into what food items are generally safe to purchase for example fresh fruit may not always be safe unless you peel them or wash them yourself. One should always be mindful about the potential for food borne illnesses.

Another way I kept costs down while traveling was making liberal use of public transportation. It can be a bit tricky to use, but I will cover that in a later post. If you’re traveling to a major city the chances are pretty good that you’ll have access to half decent public transit to most major tourist destinations. I especially liked the transportation in Rome because the subway system was marked with pictures of the popular attractions making it a breeze to navigate.

When it comes to accommodations, there are ways to keep the costs down. As with everything, do your research. In the United States, many national and state parks have affordable cabins to camp in. Although they may not be more than a roof over your head with limited access to toilets, electricity and running water, so double check what sort of site you’re booking and be sure to do it in advance since they’ve become quite popular in recent years. Perhaps the country you’re visiting has a similar system.

In many European countries, youth hostels are the cheapest places to stay. The trick with them is to try and find ones in the safer part of the city and to pay a little bit more for your own private room rather than more open areas as there are some safety concerns with using them. There are some social media groups for people to house sit or even pet sit in various cities. Some groups will do house exchanges among members where they come to your house and you go to theirs. I shouldn’t have to outline the risks to these particular ventures such as people stealing from you, abusing your pets, accusing you of stealing or damage to the home, getting to the destination and finding out they were dishonest about their housing, stalking, etc. That isn’t to say staying at a regular hotel doesn’t have risks, but in general they are less risky than going to a stranger’s house from the internet. However, this is one way to get cheap accommodations.

You can also use tools to price track or even do it yourself. I found that for Norwegian Cruise Line for whatever reason booking 5 to 6 months out from the fall season yielded the best price (this may have changed). If you’re someone who is just starting to save up money and it’s going to take you several years then it might be a good idea to start tracking the prices of flights and accommodations for where you want to go. You can see when a company typically offers their best sales and adjust your plans accordingly.

One other trick is using your connections. My recent trip to the United Kingdom was only possible because I was invited to stay for free at a friend’s long term rental. That saved me about a third of the cost of the overall trip, turning it from unaffordable to affordable. My trip to Colorado and Montana was made possible by staying with some distant relatives (my mother’s uncle and cousins). My trip to Vermont was with a friend of my mom’s and while we were up North, we spent some time in the Boston area with another family friend. Be sure that if you’ve been invited to stay, you extend an invitation to your own area. I am sure after reading my blog, you have lots of ideas of fun things to do in your area to make their trip truly memorable.

Another way to use your connections is inviting them along. A hotel room split among several people can drastically reduce the cost (just ensure you know how many guests a room can accommodate and watch out for charges for extra guests). When traveling to Michigan solo, it made more sense to fly since the cost of gas and tolls was almost as expensive and it was significantly more time. However, when traveling with a companion suddenly my cost was halved and I had someone to switch off driving, which made driving the much more affordable option. My friend worked for a rental car company and so by traveling with her we were able to save on a rental car when I was going down to North Carolina. Another friend’s parents had a timeshare and we were able to use it for a hotel.

As you can see there are many ways to help keep the costs of travel down with some creativity and flexibility.

Travel Tips: Reverse Planning

Published on March 18, 2025March 1, 2025 by BudgetBlissLeave a comment

In honor of the coming spring, I’ve decided to do a few travel posts. You see dear reader, it seems that with the end of winter with the warmer weather on the horizon, I always get a bit of wanderlust at this time of year and find myself going to far flung corners of the world. Or at least farther afield than is typical as I certainly can’t afford to travel too far every spring. Perhaps, it’s something in the air, maybe it’s from being cooped up in the house during the cold winter months.

Before we clutch our pearls in shock at such a notion, remember dear reader, I am not against travel. I simply believe that we can live a bucket-list life right where we are and that we needn’t travel frequently to experience amazing things. However, there are times when we do travel, so we may as well do it well, to ensure that it is a wise investment of our limited resources. After all, traveling is expensive and time consuming. As budget conscious people, we certainly don’t want to experience travel regret or wish we had been more thoughtful prior to hopping on a plane and wasting hundreds of dollars on a less than stellar trip. To that end, I hope that these tips will help you make the most of your travels. At this point I believe I am at least a fairly experienced traveler to be speaking on such things.

I shall begin my travel tips with the most fundamental decision of all, where to go.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Now there are many considerations to picking a place to travel. Now you may have a very specific place in mind already. In which case skip this post and read the Travel Tips for the First Time Traveler: The Art of the Deal. In this post, I’m going to share a method of reverse planning or rather than picking a place first and then planning around that. You first plan the big three: time, budget and season and based on those constraints narrow down options of where to go. It can be helpful in managing your budget and ensuring you stay within the constraints of your means. Many people underestimate the cost of their trips and it’s easier to do when blinded by a pre-made decision. This method allows you to place your constraints ahead of time and then plan from there.

My very first consideration would be time, how much time do you realistically have? Time can be a huge constraint. For example, I recently traveled to England after being invited to join a friend in her long term rental down in Penzance. The accommodations were completely free and I naturally took advantage of this. However, it took 2 hours to get to the airport, allowing for the recommended 2.5 hours to get through security and boarding onto the plane before take off, another 6 hour flight, another hour to deboard, get through customs and navigate a new airport, and another 8 hours of buses and trains. I left my house at 2 pm and arrived at 5 pm the next day. The return flight was 7 hours, with almost 2 hours to get through customs, secure our bags, take a bus back to the economy parking and 2 hours to get home. We left the hotel in London at 8 am and arrived home at 7 pm. That wasn’t accounting for the 6 hour train ride back north to London that we took 3 days before our flight to allow us two days in London. Just travel alone was 3 days of our trip. That also didn’t account for recovery days from jet lag which depending on how easily you bounce back from disrupted sleep could take another whole day from your trip. So, I really don’t recommend taking a week to travel across an ocean because you realistically end up with maybe 3 to 4 good days. This is why I took two weeks off of work to allow myself plenty of time for travel to and from, recover, unpack and get ready to return to my normally scheduled programming.

Time really determines a lot of things. It can influence your budget, how far you can travel, what you can do and whether it’s worth adding in things like rental cars and taxis or if you can stick to public transit. After all, public transit adds time to a trip. If I had access to a car that 5 to 6 hour train ride could have been closer to 3 and with the multiple train delays stretching the initial ride down to 8 hours, a car would have been preferable. Time also determines how much you can do. I only had two days in London which meant that I had to be picky about what I did and what I saw. One could spend an entire day at the British Museum but then one will have only seen one museum, granted it packs a lot into one place, but then one isn’t seeing other things. If one rushes through things can one really enjoy it or will you be so exhausted from your vacation you need a vacation to recover from your vacation? It’s very easy to overestimate the amount of time you have which can lead to exhaustion from rushing around and stress from worrying about things like missed train connections, traffic or just getting lost in a strange place.

Photo by Photo By: Kaboompics.com on Pexels.com

The other major consideration is of course budget. How much money can you spend on a holiday? Do you have paid time off? If you don’t, then any time off work is calculated into the cost of your trip. The budget can really determine how and where you can travel. Perhaps you can take a 12 hour direct flight to that far flung place, but it costs twice as much as the 20 hour flight with multiple connections. When considering a budget, you should be asking yourself how much are you typically saving in a month, how much have you already saved and how much can you still save? Consider the costs of transportation, accommodations, food and souvenirs. Hint: it is always more than you think, especially if you’re going to places where your currency is weaker than theirs where it’s easy to underestimate how much you’re spending. Just because the flight is cheap doesn’t mean accommodations will be, just because the accommodations are free doesn’t mean the flights will be cheap. I recently read a blog post outlining the actual cost of a trip for a couple who managed to snag really cheap flight tickets. Even though their flight was very affordable, the cost of other transportation, sight-seeing, food, accommodations, etc. for two weeks was still $5,000. So before jumping on that “great deal”, consider the other costs.

To help you plan you may want to check out places like Expatistan, Price of Travel or Numbeo. These resources can help you with your budget to see if where you’re going is actually somewhere you can afford to go. What is cheap to one person may be expensive to another person. If you make 100,000 a year spending 5,000 is only 5% of your yearly salary but if you only make 45,000 then it’s 11% which is a significant difference. However, if you make 100,000 and you’re supporting a family of 5, spending 5,000 is less affordable than if it’s just you and your cats.

The final consideration is the time of year you’re able to travel. My sister’s job requires her to help test major systems updates which happen routinely at certain points of the year. This means there are just certain times when she knows she cannot reasonably take off without it causing a lot of issues for her work and her time off approval is tentative. When I was the Winter Shelter Coordinator for an Emergency Winter Homeless Shelter at one of my jobs, I knew I could not take off during the Winter months for extended periods of time. It was a major job expectation that I would be generally available during that season. There are certain times of the year that just aren’t good for certain destinations. It may look like an amazing deal to go during the off season, but good luck enjoying that tropical beach vacation in Maldives during the rainy season.

Now depending if you’re traveling solo or in a group, you may have to consider what others can afford in terms of time, money and when they can take off. As I previously stated, my sister has a job that semi-dictates when she can take off and I also had a job where I couldn’t take off during the winter months. If you’re traveling with a school employee, you can’t travel much from August through June. Additionally, if your travel companion has limited mobility that can impact when and how you travel. Someone who needs assistance at the airport will most likely need an additional hour or more for pre-boarding. It’s important to have open and honest discussions with your travel companions before you spend a dime.

One subcategory of all these considerations is the type of traveler you are. Do you like museums or the party scene? Do you want to spend your time lounging on the beach or do you want to go hiking? Are you content so long as you have a roof over your head and a pillow under it or do you want a little more luxury? When I was a student studying abroad I traveled as cheaply as I could, snagging deals on Ryanair, booking hostels and buying most of my food at local stores rather than eating out. Are you comfortable flying economy or do you require extra leg room? When traveling to England my mom paid for an upgraded seat both ways because she has had blood clots and decided it was worth having extra leg room and the ability to put her feet up in order to ensure she wasn’t going to spend her trip in the hospital. That impacted her budget.

Once you have your time, budget and season you’ll be traveling, it’s much easier to narrow down where you can go based on your research. Depending on where you’re traveling from you can reasonably estimate how far you can go based on your time. If you’re on the East Coast like me then Europe is a more reasonable flight than from the West Coast. There can be surprises that pop up for example, flying to Costa Rica was a 10 hour flight despite it being about the same distance as the United Kingdom. However, Costa Rica is a lot cheaper to visit. The constraints of your aforementioned decisions can dictate where you’re going to go. If you divide up your budget and discover that you only have about 50 dollars a day then you may need to go to cheaper areas of the world. Once you have your list of possible places to go, you can pick.