How We Afford to Travel

When I went back to the states to visit my hometown, a group of friends and I started talking about travel and a few of them mentioned how they too wish they could travel as often as Stephen and I do. My response was: you can! I tried my best to convince them that we used our money differently, but they just weren’t buying it. And it really got me thinking…what do we do so differently that allows us to travel and not be thousands of dollars in debt? Sometimes I even forget that we are a ONE INCOME family and as you’re reading this, keep this in the back of your mind!

The following reasons may provide no help to you, but hopefully some will resonate with you and prove that it is possible to “spend your money wisely” in order to travel and see the world!

Table of Contents

1. Living in Europe

Okay, I know this isn’t possible for everyone, but if you live in Europe you’ve already got a leg up – at least if you’re wanting to travel throughout European countries. You don’t have to pay for thousand + dollar flights from America to Europe just to go to Greece. Within Europe, the budget-friendly airlines are so cheap it’s ridiculous. You won’t get luxury service, and EVERYTHING costs extra with these European airlines. Want to check a bag or choose your seat? You’re going to pay more for it. But, for us, it’s worth it to travel for a 4-day or 3-day weekend and only carry a backpack with the essentials. Most of the flights we buy are less than $100 round trip for the both of us!

If you’re not a fan of flying and you want to get from Italy to Austria, why not drive? We have driven through so much of Europe and saved tons of money. No delayed flights, no getting to the airport hours early, and we can take the pups with us…I mean the advantages are endless. Don’t believe me? Read all about our road trips starting with this post from our two-week journey through the Balkan countries.

How we afford to travel, Budget friendly European airlines

Car rental can be an affordable option to seeing the country, how we afford to travel — Car rental in Serbia

2. Being in the Military

This also isn’t possible for everyone, so if this isn’t your section feel free to skip over it. However, there are plenty of jobs out there that allow the freedom to travel – like digital nomads, teaching English as a Foreign Language, and many other careers! Just do the research and find something you love.

Having a spouse who is Active Duty in the Military makes a world of difference. Not only are the military benefits that we get through rental cars, trip insurance, and vacation deals (although most are located in the U.S.) awesome, the living benefits are just as great and allow us to save so much money. Our rent, utilities, and moving expenses are paid for! Stephen is part of a unit that allows so many 4-days and 3-day weekends off to spend time with their family and they really value not just work life, but home life as well. Soldiers can’t perform at work at 100% if their home life isn’t up to par.

Not every job provides this much opportunity for days off, holidays, and travel, but two-day weekends are plenty of time to go exploring and stay somewhere overnight!

3. Being Kid-less

I hope this isn’t the third strike and that at least one of these has applied to you! We don’t have kids yet, so our financial responsibilities lie just between the two of us, and very rarely our dogs when they require things like boarding or vet bills. We have intentionally waited to have kids for a few years in order to be able to live the life that we do and travel often. However, we have many friends with kids (even babies) who travel a ton and they make it work, so I know it’s feasible!

Traveling with Dogs, How we afford to travel — Lago di Garda, Italia

4. Using Reward Travel Cards

I book all of our travel on a rewards credit card, that we pay off in full each month. We only use it to get the points and the cash back, and rack up airline miles (for those surprise visits back to the states!). If you have a habit of charging and not paying things off, I don’t recommend this route, but points can add up quickly if you are responsible and use it in the appropriate way.

I have two cards that I absolutely love. The one I’ve had the longest is my Bank of America Travel Rewards Platinum Plus. I received over $300 cash back last year from points. My new favorite card is the Chase Sapphire Reserve. I just booked our trip to Spain and the flights were covered thanks to a $300 travel reimbursement that occurs every year with the card! And I love this card even more because it doesn’t charge foreign exchange fees.

5. Having A Minimalist Home

Our home in Italy isn’t filled with big ticket items and lots of furniture. In fact, I moved to Italy with less than 1,000 pounds of goods, including my clothes! We bought most of our stuff at IKEA and we only bought the necessary items – couch, desk, chair, lamps, etc. We have one TV, one couch, an extra bed set (from the Army) and the rest of our furniture are rentals. I know that’s not feasible for everyone, but for us having to move every so often and being newlyweds, we haven’t invested lots of money in expensive furniture that will just end up being damaged in the next move.

Our home is very nicely decorated, but only with items from our travels. We are snow globe collectors, so we have an entire shelf of all the snow globes we have collected. We have a collage of plates that we brought back from Morocco, and one of the only two rugs we own is also from Morocco. Photographs are framed around our home from our travels, mountain climbing summits, and special occasions. We have also collected flags that hang around the walls to take up white space.

6. Eating Meals at Home

I would love to go out to eat one or two-course Italian meals every night, but that would just get so expensive. Buying a bottle of wine out in a restaurant is almost 3x the price of buying that same bottle in the grocery store and enjoying it at home. We both love to cook and what we spend on one meal out usually buys groceries for the entire week and more. If you don’t have time to cook, meal prep or utilize a crockpot – that’s my new go-to for when we’re super busy! You’d be surprised at how quickly those little snacks you buy at the gas station or when you’re out shopping add up!

I love sharing my favorite recipes and meal preps on my Instagram stories, so make sure you’re following us here!

7. Not Traveling Just to Shop

I’m not a big shopper to begin with, so I’m not tempted when we go to Milan to just go crazy and start buying things since I’m in the fashion capital. You can shop at stores back home. Save travel time for exploring, experiencing the food, and seeing things that you can’t see when you’re in your own home.

8. Utilizing Booking Sites

Become a genius member on Booking.com and get 10% off each of your stays or use Expedia.com and use the points that add up to save money on your next booking. There are so many sites that offer such great rewards, on TOP of the rewards card that you use. I always use booking.com unless I’m booking a package deal because they usually have free cancellation and I just enjoy the ease of their site. Use the links below for money off your next stay with my links!

Use this link for Booking.com to save $25 on your next stay!

If you sign up for Airbnb with my link here, you’ll get $40 off your first trip.

9. Renting Equipment

Sometimes it’s cheaper to rent items than it is to buy them, especially if you’re only using them for a small amount of time. When we go mountain biking, we always rent bikes and equipment because it’s cheaper in the long run than spending thousands of dollars on purchasing our own bike. When we went this past summer on our two-week Balkans road trip, we rented a car that would get better gas mileage and in the long run definitely cost us less. It meant that we didn’t have to worry about the maintenance of our 10-year old car, the low gas mileage, and what to do if something happened and we broke down 5 countries away.

10. Having Limits

Most important of all is that you have a “budget” in mind. We don’t stick to a strict budget, but if it’s anything too expensive, I always say “we can’t afford that.” It doesn’t mean we literally can’t, it just means that we shouldn’t buy that. There’s a lot of things that we want when we’re out traveling but try to avoid buying on a whim. When it comes to our snow globe collection, we usually never spend more than 7euros for the small ones. If it’s overpriced, we’ll even not get one. Some things are just not worth the money. When we’re eating out during our travels, dinner should never be over a certain amount even with a bottle of wine or prosecco. Know your limits and know what you are financially able to spend.

How we afford to travel — Enjoying a bottle of wine from a winery versus a restaurant. Much cheaper

11. Traveling as a Group

Traveling as a group can save you so much money. When we went to Tuscany in February, we took a few friends along with us and to split the Airbnb and cook at least one meal at home saved us hundreds of dollars. It also helps to split gas and autostrada tolls. Carpooling is a great option for saving money, and we do this particularly on group hikes – everyone who rides must give up gas money or pay for tolls along the way so it’s affordable for everyone!

how we afford to travel, group travel — Girls trip to Venice for Carnevale

12. Tracking Travel Expenses

As I’ve said, we don’t “budget”, but I do like to know where we spend our money during our travels. I use MoneyManager, an app that’s also available on desktop, and what I love about this app is the ability to upload an image of the receipt and categorize your spending. It also shows you a pie chart and different graphs of where your money is going. Every weekend trip we take, I’ve gotten in the habit of doing this. It’s quick and easy, and simple to interpret at the end of your trip to see what areas you could improve on.

Here’s an example from our recent trip to Romania! We have decreased our food and gas spending categories tremendously and it’s something we’ve worked really hard on over the last year!