A lot of times, the hardest part about planning a trip is trying to figure out how you can afford it. Even if you aren’t planning a big luxurious trip, the costs really start to add up when you begin factoring in flights, accommodation, food, and activities. In this post, we are sharing creative ways to save money for travel in 2024.
The first half of this post features ways to save up cold hard cash for your upcoming trip. The second half of the post highlights ways you can save on flights, hotels, food, and tours (use the jump menu below to jump to this section). Everything listed are things that we implement ourselves to save up money throughout the year for our adventures.
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Ways To Save Up For Your Trip
Saving Programs Through Your Bank
A lot of banks offer saving programs that are free to use as long as you have an existing account setup through them. They are subtle saving plans that add up over time to be used however you’d like.
For example, Bank of America offers a program called “Keep The Change”, where they will round up the total of each purchase you make to the nearest dollar and transfer the sum to a savings account for you. You can see from the graphic below how this would accumulate over time to be a good chunk of change!
Check with your bank to make sure you aren’t missing out on any opportunities to maximize your savings!
Open A High-Yield Savings Account (HYSA)
A way to save even more money for travel each year is to open a High-Yield Savings Account. These accounts are low risk and have a higher reward interest rate than a typical savings account. While the average interests rates on US Savings Accounts is 0.47% APY, High-Yield Savings Accounts can earn over 5%! The more you put in, the more you earn.
How does this relate to travel? You can take your annual interest earnings and put them toward your trips! Unlike a Certificate of Deposit (CD) where you cannot access your money for a definitive amount of time, with an HYSA, you can access your money more frequently.
During our first year using a HYSA, we earned enough interest to pay for a round trip flight from the USA to the UK and our accommodations for a 2 weeks stay! To see a roundup of the best HYSAs in 2024, check out this post by Nerd Wallet.
Money Saving Challenge Binder
There is something so satisfying about marking an item as complete on a list, and this money saving challenge binder puts a fun spin on it. The binder has 100 pockets where you can save cash with a guide of how much money to put in each pocket. By the time you’ve filled the binder, you will have saved $5,050!
The page where you mark off your goal amounts is laminated, meaning that you can reuse it after you’ve finished filling it. There are also credit card style pockets which can be used to save gift cards – great for those who use gift cards to pay off Disney trips!
This savings binder is fantastic for people who like clearly defined goals, are visual learners, and enjoy ticking off a to do list. You can add money at whatever pace you’d like and make it a sort of game with yourself (or your family!) of how quickly you can fill the book. Kayla’s mom is currently using it to save for an upcoming trip and has already saved a few hundred dollars over the course of a month.
Save Your Change
Did anyone else have this giant bottle at their house when they were growing up that they would put all of their change into to save throughout the year? This “old school” method of saving is simple but effective. Although physical change may be a little harder to collect these days with so many people using their debit cards or Apple Pay to make purchases, it is still a super effective way to save money for a trip!
This is something that children can get in on too! You can let them have the honor of putting the change in the jar each day and make a fun destination sign for the front of your jug to remind everyone of the fun trip the family is saving up for.
When it comes time for your trip, you can take your coins to a coin machine to count your change, but know there will likely be a processing fee deducted for using the machine. A cheaper option may be to buy some coin roll wrappers and take them to the bank for processing. Your bank may even provide the coin roll wrappers for free! Kids will love being helpers in counting the coins out and dividing them out into the rolling piles.
Sell Your Old Stuff
Where we live, yard sales start popping up around town every time the weather starts getting warm. If you are hankering for a good spring cleaning or summer clean-out, consider having a yard sale to save money for travel!
Be sure to advertise it in the newspaper, on Nextdoor, and in local Facebook groups to spread the word about all the awesome things you’ll be selling. If you want to draw a bigger crowd, consider teaming up with your neighbors to have a neighborhood yard sale.
If you don’t have enough stuff to sell to qualify as a yard sale, Facebook marketplace is a great way to sell things on an ongoing basis without having to dedicate a whole afternoon to being home.
Ways To Save On Flights, Tours, and Accommodations
Fetch
Our newest favorite money saving hack is Fetch. Fetch is a receipt rewards app where you snap pictures of your receipts (any receipt), earn points, and then redeem your points for gift cards to popular brands. The best part? IT IS 100% FREE.
Grocery shopping earns the most points because they run deals with various brands where you can score extra points for buying certain items. While most receipts can earn you 25 points, we’ve earned as much as 5,000 points before on our regular grocery shopping trips!
What’s the catch? There is none. We’ve been using the app for several months now and faithfully scanning our receipts after each purchase. We have almost reached the threshold to redeem our first gift card! Keep in mind though that this is a slow and steady way to save money for travel, since the non-grocery receipts typically only get you 25 points and a getting a $50 gift card takes around 50,000 points.
We LOVE that there are so many different gift card options to choose from and especially like that there is a travel section where you can redeem your points for gift cards to businesses like Airbnb, Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines, Hotels.com, and cruise lines! You could easily get $100 or more off of your travel expenditures just by scanning receipts before you throw them away.
Sign up with our referral code (83TMJP) and you’ll earn extra points when you snap your first receipt: https://referral.fetch.com/vvv3/referralemail?code=83TMJP
Save Money On Flights With Going
If you subscribe to our weekly newsletter, you’ve likely seen us give Going a shoutout. Formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights, Going is THE place to find out about the best airfare deals. You can save anywhere from 40-90% on flights from the airport(s) you usually fly from.
Once you create your Going account (for FREE!), you select your “home” airport, and Going will start emailing you the deals! They even tell you the nitty gritty details like the dates the deals are showing for, the airlines they apply to, if the price includes carry-ons or checked bags, and travel tips about the locations to help you plan your visit.
Unlike most websites that offer travel deals, Going does not try to get you to buy flights through them. These are deals directly from the airlines – Going just shares the good news with you. And if you’re unsure where exactly you want to go for a trip, you can just pick whatever great deal Going sends your way.
If you travel often, they have a Premium Plan where they will send you hot deals more frequently. While you have to pay for this option, the amount you save on a fare deal from Going will easily cover the cost and then some.
We have been using Going for YEARS now and highly recommend it to save money on trips!
Be Strategic About Where You Book Your Accommodations
If you have an idea about the activities you want to do on your trip or places you want to eat, plug them into Google My Maps to see where exactly they are located. If there are any grouped together in the same area, it may be worth booking accommodation near them so you aren’t having to pay extra for transportation.
With Google My Maps, you can drop pins at the locations you’re interested in to easily keep track and come back to reference. This is a great tool to use when planning out trips, and we love that it conveniently adds the website, Google reviews, and contact info for the businesses you pin if they have linked their establishment to Google. If you are color coding freaks like us, you can even color code your pins (for example using one color for restaurants, one color for nature activities, and one color for indoor activities).
We’d much rather be within walking distance to the activities we’re interested in then having to spend a lot of time and money figuring out how to get there!
Get Familiar With Public Transportation Options
On that note, familiarizing yourself with the public transportation options in the area is another way you can save money for travel! Your first instinct may be to call a taxi or an Uber when you’re in an unfamiliar place and trying to get somewhere. However, brushing up on the local transportation options can save money!
For example when we were in Amsterdam, a one way ticket on public transportation from Schipol Airport to Museumplein only cost €6.50. A taxi ride may have been quicker, but would have cost us €40-50!
If you are traveling between countries, compare the costs of flying versus taking the train. A lot of times flying is the cheaper option, but if you book far enough in advance, you may score cheaper train tickets!
Save Money On Tours With Get Your Guide
Tours are a great way to find out more about the places you’re visiting, but it can be hard to decide which tour is right for you. Get Your Guide makes this process easy!
You simply use their search bar to look up the city you’re visiting, and it will generate the top tours in the area. AND you can read real life reviews from fellow travelers. It is so incredibly convenient that Get Your Guide has consolidated so many tour options in one place, and we really love how quickly you can vet tours based on their starred ratings and reviews.
Another great thing about Get Your Guide is that if you happen to find the exact same tour with the exact same conditions (date/number of people/etc.) for a lower price, they will pay you the difference between the prices.
Below is an example of some of the top rated Get Your Guide experiences for Paris, France:
Earn Miles Toward Flights With Delta Skymiles Perks
We are big fans of Delta Airlines. One of the reasons we love Delta so much is that they give you ample opportunities to earn points toward travel.
For instance, did you know that you can earn 1 mile for every $1 spent on Airbnb stays? All you have to do is be a Skymiles member, book through the Delta Airbnb link, and the extra miles will be added to your account once you complete your stay. There is no minimum stay length or spending amount!
You can also earn miles on every Starbucks purchase you make! Simply link your Starbucks membership number to your Skymiles account, and let the miles roll in – as if we needed another reason to go to Starbucks! The next time your partner gives you a hard time about spending too much money at Starbucks, you can tell them you’re actually saving money on flights. #GirlMath
Skymiles members can also enjoy extra miles through Skymiles Shopping. For any online purchases you plan to make, you can check to see if the company is listed in the Skymiles Shopping portal. Make your purchase through the Shopping link (which redirects you to the actual website), and you’ll get extra miles added to your account once the product is delivered. They are partnered with over 1000 stores, so the potential for earning extra miles is big!
Be sure to check with your airline of choice to see what perks their rewards program offers and all the ways you can save money for travel!
Eat Away From The Tourists Areas
We recommend doing your research before your trip to see where the touristy areas may be. A lot of times, the restaurants in these areas have inflated prices. If you are able to do your research before hand, check to see which restaurants have good reviews and pick a few out in the areas you’re going to be spending the most time.
If you would rather go with the flow once you arrive, consider going a few streets over from the main street to get less expensive food and potentially more authentic (less touristy) options. As a rule of thumb, avoid restaurants that have big pictures of the menu posted in the windows, as this is a tell tale sign that it is likely a tourist trap.
Make A Grocery Run When You Arrive At Your Destination
Eating out for every meal can be expensive. So after we book our accommodations, we check to see where the closest grocery store is located to where we will be staying. That way after we’ve settled in, we can easily go buy some snacks, fruit, and breakfast items. Instead of eating out for breakfast and lunch, we usually switch out one of the meals for our grocery items one day. Not only does this save money, but it will keep you from feeling bloated like a puffer fish during the day!
We hope you’ve enjoyed reading about our ways to save money for travel! Let us know in the comments if you’ve tried any yourself or if you have others we should try out!
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Great ways to save money, that you can then put in your travel plans. Eating away from touristy destinations can save a lot. A lot of times, one street further can already save a lot.
Great tips! I agree with the grocery run. That always helps cut down significantly on travel expenses. Plus, staying in hostels although I fear I’m starting to age out of that budget friendly option haha.
All great tips! Prior to going on holiday, I always struggle to save money by not going out for lunch. However, by bringing my own packed lunch, I can easily save at least £10 every day, including my morning coffee and lunch.
You are SPOT ON with these tips, especially with eating away from touristy destinations. Its unbelievable how inflated the prices can be sometimes! Great tips for our next adventure, thanks!
I really like your idea of eating away from tourist areas, both to reduce cost and to find a more authentic experience.