Written by: Luis Duque
As college students, we definitively have a very limited budget, but that doesn’t stop us from doing a lot of traveling. We definitively have our limitations on which places we can visit as we are still in school and obviously some places are just too expensive for us. We have been able to travel to countries like Spain, France, Italy, Colombia, and Bolivia during the past year, which in my opinion is pretty amazing.
I think money shouldn’t be a limitation on the amount of traveling you do. Of course, it is impossible to travel everywhere and there are some simple rules that we have followed in order to make a wise decision considering the season, transportation cost such as airplane tickets, and location. First of all, by being flexible on the destination, the opportunities are countless. Other ways of being flexible, are the seasons you may want to travel. For example, going to Cartagena in Colombia during June or July it is not the greatest idea of all. I have broken down my top ways to travel on a budget below:
Keep a Budget
This may sound obvious, but keeping a budget should be at the top of your list. How can you save money if you don’t know how much money you have, right? Well, there are many ways to keep track of your money but we really recommend you do it on google sheets, that way you can access it basically from anywhere on your phone or laptop. Also, leave aside unnecessary expenses and motivate yourself to save money by setting many small goals rather that one big goal.
How do we book flights?
Traveling by plane, especially outside the United States, can some times be very expensive. Fortunately, there are great tools to track price drops and book cheap flights. One of our favorites is Google Flights because it lets you set the departure airport and gives you a ton of destination prices, not only in the US but around the globe as well. We also use hopper to track when flights are expected to drop and monitor multiple destinations at once. There is an Android and Apple version that we recommend you download. Lastly, it also helps to check the airline’s website as they more often than not have better deals than search engines or are willing to match the price if you call them directly.
Entrance fees
We all know how frustrating it is to travel across the globe, spend all the money on airplane tickets, and have no money for the sometimes expensive entrance fees to museums and other attractions. Fortunately, we have been able to get discounted or even free admission to famous places like the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona or the Louvre in Paris. Depending on the season and day of the week, these places have special pricing for young adults or students like us. For example, the Louvre has free admission on Fridays after 6 pm for anyone under 26 and reduced fee on Wednesdays and Fridays for everyone. I would say most of the entrance fees in big European cities like Barcelona and Paris have some kind of discount, just do a little research and make sure you ask at the entrance.
Student Organization Involvement
For us, this has been a great way to travel within the US and also internationally. One of the organizations the I am involved with is Engineers Without Borders (I am a Structural Engineering Graduate student in case you didn’t know). With EWB I have traveled two times to Bolivia (one of them with Callie who is also involved in EWB) and one time to Omaha, Nebraska to present at the Midwest Regional Conference. Callie has been able to travel way more than I have as she has been to Chicago, Seattle, Denver, and Ohio. Also, Callie has been to El Salvador on a mission trip and to Austin for a Catholic conference. In my case, I was a D1 tennis athlete my first couple years of college and we traveled to some many cool places like Orlando, Kansas City, Denver, Chicago, Oklahoma City, and Omaha. Now that I am in graduate school, I have been able to travel to different places such as the Black Hills for my research. So as you can see, getting involved with student organizations or anything at college can really take you to so many great places.
Many Short Tips = More Happiness
As you may imagine, we don’t have the opportunity to travel all year around because we are still in college and basically can’t afford it. That doesn’t mean we stay at home all the time, we still travel locally a lot, especially to the Black Hills since that is Callie’s home. Also, in the meantime, we save up money for those bigger trips to Europe or further away from where we live. As travelers, it is important to enjoy the journey, not the destination.
There you have it, some tips to travel if you are on a budget. Leave us a comment with your tips, we would love to hear them.
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