5 Tips to Make Travel Affordable — Travel More, Pay Less
Would you love to travel more but just don’t know how to pay for it? 5 Tips to Make Travel Affordable — Travel More, Pay Less, will outline things you can do right now to make travel happen. It will take a little bit of work, but the effort you put in will be worth it. As a consultant, it was easy to rack up frequent flyer and hotel points. Since I got off the road, I needed to come up with more creative ways to continue to travel. These 5 tips to make travel affordable made all the difference for us, especially since it increased our ability to travel more cost effectively. It’s all in the planning.
Tip #1 — Plan Ahead
In order to plan successfully, first decide where you want to go. We plan 3 major trips and 15 mini trips per year. For our major trips, we start planning those a minimum of 6 months in advance, especially since we tend to go places like Hawaii or Mexico. At the same time, look at where you want to stay and activities you want to participate in during your stay. This will give you the opportunity to find the best way to get your flight, your hotel, and your activities at much more affordable rates. A little planning goes a long way to save money and make travel more affordable.
Tip #2 — Hotels & Airfare Rewards Make Travel Affordable
How would you like to get free or almost free hotels and airfare? Silly question right? Let me give you a little hint, use your monthly bills. You already pay monthly bills, why not use those to earn airfare and hotel stays. The key is to find the right credit card and use it to pay your monthly bills. There are a lot of different types of rewards cards out there. The trick is to find the ones that will meet your travel needs.
Airline Rewards Card
I looked at a lot of different rewards cards only to find that they didn’t produce enough points to fit my travel needs. My next step was to focus directly on the airlines I booked most often. Airline rewards cards tend to offer anywhere from 40,000 – 85,000 miles. All you need to do is spend a certain dollar amount on the card in a specific time. Most times, it is $1,000 – 3,000 in a 3 month period. That’s why I say use your monthly bills! For us, it was easy to meet this criteria. A word of caution, make sure to pay it off at the end of every month. Carrying a balance is going to defeat the purpose. The goal is to rack up miles, not more bills! Also, be sure to read the fine print because not all airline cards are equal. Here is a great link to learn more about the different kinds of reward cards www.airfarewatchdog.com
Perks & Drawbacks
First thing I did was evaluate the perks and drawbacks of each card. Look for things that are important to you when traveling. The most important perks for me are:
- free checked bags;
- club room options;
- offset annual fees; and
- priority boarding.
Annual fees can really be a drawback if the airline doesn’t offer a perk to offset it. As an example, United charges an annual fee of $95 but they offer two complimentary club room passes per year. It is well worth the cost because sometimes we have long layovers and club room passes are a great perk. The club room has complimentary papers, food and beverages plus very comfortable seating. If you don’t have the passes, club rooms can cost upwards of $50 per person if they even let you buy a day pass. If the drawbacks outweigh the perks, keep looking you will find what works for you.
Hotels
Hotel choices are endless so we narrowed the field to ones that are favorites. Once again, they will offer hotel points for dollars spent in a specific time. Here I watch closely because sometimes the amount of points will vary depending on the promotion. The nice thing about hotel credit cards, they rarely have an annual fee. Make sure to review all the perks and drawbacks before signing up. Hotels tend to give better perks to travelers with higher status. If you don’t spend your life in hotels, reaching those status levels will be tough. So I look for hotel cards that give me instant status. As an example, we just stayed at a Holiday Inn in Portland and received welcome points, access to the club room, early check-in and drink coupons. All that just for being a IHG Platinum Elite — oh, by the way, we were staying on points. Most cards will offer a free night on your card anniversary which is a nice perk.
Tip #3 — Transportation Options Make Travel Affordable
Once you land at your destination, you need to be able to get around. Sometimes you can get good deals on rental cars but there are a lot of restrictions. Before you go check out public transportation. Bigger cities tend to have very good options to move people around. We love the light rail in both Seattle and Portland for getting around. Plus, you don’t get caught in all the crazy traffic. I prefer to see the sights rather than sit on a freeway. The cost for a two day pass, is significantly cheaper than renting a car. We do have frequent renter cards for the all car options but find that they don’t add up very quickly. These are not credit cards, just frequent renter cards. If you don’t like public transportation, renting a car may be beneficial for you. Be sure to look for coupons, discounts and those kind of things to try to reduce the cost. I found that Groupon will sometimes have deals. Another thing to check out is whether or not the hotel shuttle will take you where you need to go.
Tip #4 — Shop Around
When you plan ahead like we do, it gives you a chance to shop around for the best deals. If you want to use airline miles to gain free airfare, you need to book pretty far in advance as they have limited “free” seats. There are a lot of ways you can be informed about great deals. One of the best ways is to subscribe to apps that will alert you to discounted travel. Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense to use miles when I can purchase tickets cheaper. Save the points for the trips like Hawaii because the ticket cost is so high. I subscribe to Airfarewatchdog and Hopper because they watch airfare costs and alert me when they have a good deal. Once you have the hotel and airline cards, you will get plenty of notifications about sales, discounts and additional ways to earn free nights. If you find yourself short a few points or miles, it is cheaper to purchase additional points. They also run specials on those as well. Check out Groupon because they will have deals as well.
Tip #5 — Outside the Box
We have a timeshare and sometimes it works well, however I don’t recommend getting caught up in one. The maintenance fees are often more than if you planned and paid for the vacation outright. What they are good for, is leverage to trade for a location that you may want to go. We let ours roll over into RCI and then book a vacation wherever we are going that year. They tend to have more options and the points go farther. Another good way to save money is to stay out of the commercial sites. Check out Airbnb and HomeAway for rentals that will give you more for your money. One thing you can try to do is find a location and then check into house sitting. I know it sounds crazy but there are a lot of people who own homes in exotic areas and need someone to watch their home while they are gone. Think outside the box when looking for travel deals, you never know what you will find.
Final Thoughts – 5 Tips to Make Travel Affordable
I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to find ways to be able to travel. The 5 tips to make travel affordable are some of the things that I do regularly. Last year we went to Hawaii for a week, stayed at a hotel close to the beach, went all over the island, did several activities all for less than $500 per person. If we would have had to pay outright for everything it would have easily been at least $1500 per person. Our upcoming trips to Birch Bay, WA; Palm Springs, CA; and Puerto Vallarta are all on hotel points and airline miles. It can be done with planning, preparation and creativity! Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube Channel to keep up-to-date on our adventures.