9 Money Saving TRAVEL HACKS You Didn't Know You Needed

[Music] hi guys welcome back to another  video we're Lloyd and Mandy we have been full-time Travelers for the past 2 years  and in today's video we want to share with you some money saving hacks that you probably  aren't doing yet okay so if you're anything like us and you like to travel on a budget  travel is actually getting more and more expensive every year but don't worry we do  have a few things that we've been doing the last couple of years that should help you  save some money along the

way sometimes are getting crazy and everything seems is there  some place for safety I can go run away run away run away into your Escape run away run  away run away you never too far run run away run away run away to your Escape run away run  away run away run away run away run away ah okay guys before we go any further with the video  we want to give a massive shout out to my Heritage for sponsoring my Heritage is the number one  family history service with very little effort on your part my H

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you'll get a 50% discount on a  subscription using my link below all right let's get into this video so the first travel hack is to  book your flights early okay so this is a bit of a difficult one especially for us because we do a  lot of last minute travel but if you're not doing last minute travel and you know where you want to  go ahead of time we suggest booking your flights as early as possible there is a sweet spot and  apparently it's 3 months before you fly anywhere is when the tickets

are going to be the cheapest  and that goes for international and domestic as well we always use Skys scanner to find the  cheapest flights because they actually give you the option of flying into cities in multiple  different airports for instance if you're flying into Bangkok it's sometimes cheaper to fly into  Dawn moang airport instead of the main airport so use Skys scanner the other reason we use Skys  scanner is because some of the airline websites believe it or not they actually track yo

ur data so  when they see that you're looking for flights and you're going back to their website over a period  of weeks they actually raise the prices because they know that you're looking for flights which  is pretty incredible but so we suggest using Skys scanner first to find the flights you want to book  and then go over to the airline's website to book it number two is knowing when you want to fly so  there are actually certain days of the week that are cheaper to fly than others and those

days  are Tuesdays Wednesdays and Saturdays believe it or not so if you have an idea of when you want  to leave then make sure it's on one of those days because it will save you a bit of money the most  expensive days are generally Fridays and sun day so if you can avoid flying out on a Friday or a  Sunday you're going to save a little bit of money there too number three is using a VPN when you  book anything online so when you're looking for flights the websites actually take into account  wha

t country you're in and they will change the prices depending on where you are which it kind  of sounds a little bit unfair but I guess it does kind of make sense because there are countries  that are a bit more better off than others and they sell airline tickets to their residents at a  little bit of a cheaper ER cost than people from other countries so we actually use surf shark VPN  all the time anyway because it's completely safe but we recommend definitely use a VPN while you're  looking f

or flights and then change the country to maybe a cheaper country like a Southeast Asian  country or somewhere in Europe that might be a little bit cheaper than where you're from you're  going to save a little bit of money there okay number four this is actually a tough one for us  because we have our whole lives in our bags yeah we haven't been able to do this yet but it would  save us money if you can bring carry-on instead of check luggage you're going to save a ton of  money and that's becau

se most Airlines these days they charge a ridiculous amount for baggage  so we'll often find cheap flights for like $100 international flights but then when you get  finished booking it and you add the baggage it's like an extra $50 to $100 just for one bag each  uh so if you can avoid that cost by doing only carry-on luggage you're going to save a ton of  money one thing that I will mention why we haven't done that not only do we have our entire lives in  our bags but the thing that I find chal

lenging is the toiletries and especially when you're TR you  can't take full size toiletries in your carry on so you'd have very small amounts so you would  be spending more to buy more toiletries if you are somebody who uses things quite frequently so  that might make it more expensive that's why we haven't um completely downsized it's not just  clothing but I find that the hardest thing is to go without like my shampoos and things so yeah  keep that in mind but if you are someone that can go w

ithout a carryon would definitely work we  also have a lot of content creation stuff like at cameras and like drones and tripods so that  makes it a little bit tough but if you're just going on a holiday you should be able to pack  for a carry-on only one trick we use is those packing cubes yeah and that lets you actually  pack a lot smaller than what you usually would uh another trick is to like wear as many clothes  as you can on the flight yeah and your heaviest boots or shoes on the flight w

ear your shoes we  your jumpers wear your track pants and jackets and everything on the floor yeah okay number  five is a pretty simple one but uh sometimes it can't be avoided and that's to never exchange  money at the airport the fees at the airport and the exchange rates are just absolutely ridiculous  they're only out there to make money and if you can avoid it at all cost do so the good ways  to avoid uh exchanging money at the airport is you can call up your bank before you leave your  hom

e country can actually order foreign currency to wherever you're going and that way when you  land you already have the currency that you need another way is to use travel money cards so you  can withdraw money from ATMs you're still going to get a little bit of a transaction fee and a  foreign exchange fee but it's going to be way less than using than using any of the foreign exchange  places and this isn't just the airport either even when you're in a new country and you have cash  from your h

ome country you're going to get charged a lot to exchange it there so if you have debit  cards that let you use them overseas as well just let your bank know that you're going overseas  and you can use ATMs while you're away instead of exchanging money we really only exchange money  from our home currency as like a last resort we really try to avoid it at all costs at the moment  we're using the wise card and we've found that that has been the most highly recommended by  everybody and the one wi

th the most seamless transactions so far in comparison to other things  that we've used we've had some bad experience es with some Australian travel money cards we used  Commonwealth Bank and the Quant travel money card and both of them were having problems with them  just like switching it off because of security reasons when we were in a new country and we made  a purchase for some reason that raised a red flag even though we've been there for like 2 weeks yeah  and we also had trouble loading

them at one stage we loaded I think like $7,000 onto our Quantus  travel money card and the money just disappeared for like a week and the customer service was  actually really bad yeah yeah we couldn't get a hold of anyone um we're trying to get our money  and it just disappeared for a week so we don't really use them anymore but wise has been good so  we will leave a link to that in the description if you're looking for a helpful and reliable travel  money situation so travel hack number six

is to use last minute hotel booking platforms yes so we  pretty much always book hotels through sites like what if and hot wire because they offer the best  prices as like a last minute deal Hotwire also does this thing where you can book a mystery hotel  which sounds I know it sounds crazy but we did it while we're in Mexico and it actually worked out  really good and there's some hacks you can do to actually figure out what hotel it is like they'll  give you a preview of the hotel in a photo a

nd you can just use Google Images to put that image into  the search bar and it'll bring up the hotel that they're going to book you at they also give you  like a list of three possible hotels um that it might be so you can have a look at each hotel and  if all of them are like acceptable to you then go ahead and book it and it's going to be like a 40%  discount than what you'd usually pay so I would definitely recommend using hot wire and what if  we definitely found that better for places like

while we were in Vancouver BC and we needed to  stay somewhere close to the airport it gave us more options that were more affordable in that  area because you can select an actual area that you want to stay in and that hotel to be in so if  it is just a situation where you need a one night stay over it's good just to know okay I'm in the  location I need to be not too fussed about what is at the hotel all I need to do is be able to  get to the airport it's so good for that I don't know if I'd

be booking a week stay at a random  mystery hotel now yeah probably better for one or two nights okay number seven uh we're actually  pretty good at this which is be flexible so a lot of the times you have a set date where you want to  go somewhere and um for for whatever reason that date might just be more expensive for flights but  also more importantly accommodation like it could be a festival or an event on like that weekend  in the city that you're going to and you might have a look at pric

es and think wow it's like  really expensive to go here but it's it might just be that time of the year so be flexible if  you can with when you're going to book your trip yeah number eight is to book weekly or monthly  rentals this has been a huge money saver for us yeah uh so when we started traveling we were  doing a lot of like last minute travel and not really knowing where we were going to go and  really like three night stopovers everywhere but we've started slowing down and doing at  lea

st a week in each place and using Airbnb a lot because Airbnb offers weekly discounts and  monthly discounts and you end up saving like at least 20% on the booking fees and that also  carries over to like if you're going to hire a car or a scooter or something like that going to  give you a cheaper rate for a week or a month as well so if it's possible and if you are willing to  travel a little bit slower we definitely recommend using Airbnb and going with weekly rentals we  definitely have foun

d that we've been able to experience and soak in the actual traveling and  everything that we're doing by moving slower it's really tempting to want to see as much and do as  much as you possibly can in whatever time frame that you have but if you do have the option it's  way more enjoyable if you slow down and you also get the other option of like if you're going to  be somewhere for a week and you're at an Airbnb you can go and get groceries for the week and  that's going to save you more mone

y as well absolutely cooking for yourself is another bonus  one we've mentioned this many times not only is it going to make you feel better and feel more  grounded and healthy for your travels it will save you money as well usually where we are now we  are currently in Thailand it's kind of almost at par to go out for dinner that as it is to eat at  home but when you're stay staying somewhere in a more expensive country definitely while we were in  Canada we cooked pretty much every single nigh

t so depending on where you are it will 100% save you  money I would say dinner is pretty much on par but I reckon it's cheaper to eat breakfast at home  breakfast seems to be expensive everywhere yeah I agree yeah just having something simple in your  Airbnb even just toast and eggs something really cheap like that that saves you so much money  yeah cuz it ends up being about $20 always $15 for a whole meal whatever it ends up being and by  the end of the day you've spent like $100 on food when

you could have just gone out for one nice  meal also on that if you want to intermittent fast skip breakfast that saves you a bit of  money as well yeah we we started do that and we got healthier out of it too so yeah goes hand in  hand okay this is the last tip and the one we're probably the worst at but we are getting better  and that's creating a daily budget so what we do is when we're going to be somewhere for a month  we'll figure out what our budget is for that whole month and then just

divide that into like 30 days  and that way you have an idea of what you want to spend every single day the tough part about this  is keeping track of that so you can just write down everything you spend in your phone which  is honestly pretty difficult to keep track of like every time you spend a scent you have to  write it down another hack I found is that we just don't use our credit or debit cards anymore  to buy anything so we go to the ATM we get money out and that way if I'm not keeping t

rack of  everything we're spending at least I know when I've gone to the ATM for instance if I go and  get $500 out and then 2 days later I'm getting another 500 out I know I've gone over my budget  because we're back at the ATM we're spending money again so those are our nine money saving  travel hacks that we have if you have any more fire them down in the comments we're definitely  not perfect but we have managed to see a lot of the world for a very affordable budget traveling  actually isn't

as expensive as you think it is it's sort of of just an exchange of Lifestyles I  guess once you've committed that this is the life that you want it kind of just takes a bit of like  change of habits to make it more comfortable and to fit your budget travel can be very expensive  but yeah it doesn't have to be we're the example of that we don't really do many expensive things  and we're always trying to save money so that we can get more experiences out of our travel yeah it  was just that we d

idn't want to wait we wanted to experience the world now so being able to start  with whatever money we had that second when we decided to take on full-time traveling and just  make it work I think anyone with any budget is able to travel if you're disciplined enough hope  this video provided some help to you guys uh help us out by hitting the like button and subscribing  to our channel so we can continue to bring you helpful videos like this one and as always we will  see you in the next one by

e run away run away run away to your Escape run away run away run away you  never too far to run run away run away run away