How to Travel Abroad on a Budget

Backpacking through Thailand. Sipping espresso outside a Parisian café. Snorkeling through schools of fish above brightly colored coral. All of these experiences and more leave us drooling over our Instagram feeds and wishing we were rich travel bloggers instead of super poor college students. But fear not - you can still see the world on a meager budget, it just takes a little research! Here are a few tips to get you started on your next big vacation.

Stay in Hostels

One of the most important parts of traveling is having somewhere to stay. A place to sleep before hitting the streets and seeing what adventures the world has to offer. One way to do that on the cheap (if not free) is to stay at hostels. If you don't know, hostels are establishments that provide group lodging to travelers and/or students at a discount. Sometimes hostels will allow you to do some chores in exchange for a night's stay, which can save you a lot of money right off the bat.

Fly Cheap

If you aren't already using websites like Travelocity or Skyscanner (or even just a quick incognito google search) to locate your cheapest flight options you are almost literally throwing money away. Especially if you're somewhere like Europe, where different countries are a hop, skip, and jump away, uber-economical flights can be found for under 50 dollars (no joke). Check your options, and make sure you're not spending money that you don't need to be.

Utilize Credit Card Rewards

This is one of the coolest ways to travel on a budget. Simply get a credit card with awesome travel rewards, max out said rewards, cash them in, toss the card. With some careful research you can locate credit cards with amazing reward programs, especially for new customers. Obviously, make sure you do some digging and understand the ins and outs of credit card use and credit before signing up for a card. People have racked up tens of thousands of miles in rewards points, which could make your next flight to Santorini as cheap as a burger.

Of course this is barely scratching the surface of budget travel tips. There is an endless stream of articles, videos, and honestly probably at least one documentary detailing how people have traveled the world without spending the family fortune. If I could leave you with one piece of advice, it would be this; spend like a traveler - not a tourist. Do that and you'll never go wrong!