Last night my brother-in-law (well kind of :) was browsing through my Facebook pics and he saw that I recently went to Europe! He text me asking how I was able to afford such a costly adventure given the Real Estate Market being super tough right now and therefore putting a damper in my income. In all honesty though I was able to travel to 3 countries in 12 days for under $2k. That amount included EVERYTHING; train pass, flight from Italy to Paris, flight from Paris to Switzerland, food, souvenirs, exhibit tickets.... literally the whole trip! Granted my friend Casey Tomasiak and I are both super frugal, thus resulting in our ability to make this budget work. In all honesty though I felt like all in all I saw everything and more that I had my heart set out to see. To keep costs down on food we ate at the markets in Europe a lot rather than dining out and paying the ridiculous $10 for WATER surcharge. We also booked our flight in the mid-week rather than on a weekend day. By doing this we saved $200 off of our flight. It is extremely important to watch flight costs DAILY because they really do fluctuate that often. Also, if possible try to be flexible on the dates. Traveling on off dates help save a ton too! We unfortunately had to travel over a holiday and therefore this raised our airfare a little bit. Case was able to use his frequent flyer miles that he has accumulated from work traveling as well as American Express purchases to pay for his flight to Europe!!! The kid truly is the guru for traveling.
Here are several tips I have gathered for everyone looking to travel; whether it be exotic or even close to home, travelling does not have to cost you an arm and a leg.
Ideas to travel and still SAVE!
Tips for Travel
Saving Money on the Expensive Part of Travel.... Airfare!
Travel Tip Tuesday
Another great way to take advantage of flying for free is to do like Casey did and use your frequent flyer miles to put towards flights. I have been saving mine and I already 50,000 points. My mom likes to use hers, 250,000 miles, and puts them towards a BIG family trip!!
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