TURNIPSEED TRAVEL
  • Home
  • Blog
  • About Us
  • Resources
  • Partner With Us
  • New Visitors

Frugal Travel Hacks: Finding Extra Cash for Travel Treats

20/7/2012

 

How do you save money for travel? My favourite frugal travel hacks make sure I always have some cash in hand to treat myself on the road.

Frugal travel hacks: Punaluu bake shop southernmost bakery in the USA
One of my favourite frugal travel hacks of all - bakery visits! Happily, they are very affordable.
If you love good frugal travel hacks, you've come to the right place. I LOVE a deal - and I also love crafty tips and tricks to help me save for a trip so I can splurge, worry free, during my adventures. It’s often nice to have a bit of surprise cash – even as little as $20 – allocated for a bit of spontaneity during your trip. If your budget is already stretched to its max you may just need to get creative on how to come up with the extra funds. These frugal travel hacks will help.

The frugal travel hacks that just about any would-be traveller can use to get extra cash.

Vacation wine by the fireside money saving tips
Looking for a way to afford THIS every night of your trip? Read on!
  1. Hold a yard (or online) sale. Declutter your house and come back to a clean abode. Use the money for a nice treat your first night away – like a good bottle of wine with dinner or a one night room upgrade. Ocean view anyone? Make it work harder: advertise as a “multifamily sale” with friends and you’ll attract much more traffic and will have others to split the cost of a newspaper ad.  Alternatively, sell or swap online. We occasionally list unused games and stuff  online but I've honestly had better luck with online swaps. Things like coffee beans, laundry detergent, and dog food are superb swap acquisitions in my house and they're as good as cash in the bank.
  2. Round up the spare change and recycling. Before our last trip to Hawaii, we cashed in our beer bottles and our penny jar and deposited it into our trip fund. We came up with about $25 – not bad for zero effort. That money was rolled into our Kona coffee fund and paid for a pound at Kona Blue Sky Coffee Farm, where we enjoyed a complimentary tour, samples, and bananas. Now we always scrounge all the coins kicking around the car, the dresser, and our laundry room and add them to our travel coffee fund (either local beans or fancy cafe drinks on our first day). Why not use your spare change for some prickly pear syrup outside Zion National Park, two IMAX tickets outside the Grand Canyon, or the CSI Experience in Las Vegas?
  3. Cash in your points – to use at home. I cash in my gas card points – however small - before a trip. I usually have enough to get $30-$50 in “free” gas. I then take the money I would have normally used on that gas and add it to my trip budget. If it’s a short trip and you’re lucky, this might be enough to upgrade your rental car from “micro” to “tiny” (sorry, no jeep or SUV likely). It could also be used to offset gas costs for a spontaneous road trip. A few summers ago we left our campground on the Nova Scotia/New Brunswick border in favor of a summer’s drive over to PEI for dinner in Charlottetown. Glad we had the mad money to pay the bridge fare crossing back! And while it's not exactly cash for the trip, I always save up my points at my local spa to use for a pedicure pre-trip. It's a little splurge that feels free and makes my trip just a little bit fancier.
  4. Stay organized. Our travel budget is usually challenged by the fact that we are too busy to cook before we leave or we don’t want to buy groceries and instead pick up pizza. Staying organized will let you free up that money AND help you clean out your cupboards. Pancakes for dinner, pureed carrot soup for lunch, scrambled eggs with leftover cheese and salsa for breakfast. Scrub out your fridge, freezer, pantry, and spice rack. Not only will you save your pizza money but your grocery bill will be down as well. We have had some strange meal combinations but nothing was wasted and everything was free. Try it yourself and save enough to enjoy room service breakfast on your last morning of vacation – it’s practically on the house now!
  5. If a special birthday or anniversary or holiday is even remotely nearby, save that money and apply it to the gift of an experience on your trip. My husband’s Christmas gift was a snorkeling trip to Molokini when we went to Hawaii in February. In turn, he got me my own snorkel gear to use on the trip. Two years ago, my in-laws gave us Ticketmaster gift cards for Christmas. We held on to them for a while, then cashed them in to see a show in Vegas. All treats that would normally be far outside our budget – now feeling “free” as they were worked into our normal budget.
While all of these recent "freebies" were indeed memorable (and delightfully frugal!) my favourite frugal travel hack wasn't even a hack - it was just really good luck and a bit of determination. My most successful use of spare money while traveling came during my first summer of backpacking in Europe. I was working at a student center in England, helping to clean the dorms.

The staff room had jars of spare change from every European country, left behind a cent or two at a time by departing students (this was a few years before the Euro -yep, I'm old). No one wanted it. In fact, no one was reasonably able to use it. It's not like the British bank would accept several hundred foreign pennies! As such, I was able to claim it. I carefully divided it into plastic bags and tried to think of the different ways I could use it. I paid for a hostel one night in Paris using the biggest coins I had (they were still unimpressed by my messy handful of coins spilling everywhere on their counter). I fondly remember buying an applesauce filled crepe along a beach in Normandy with another handful of coins - and the unimpressed look the owner gave me. The last of my francs – down to the exact cent, were spent on a railway station pastry before crossing into Italy.

In Ireland, on my last night of the trip, I had enough money to get a small glass of white wine at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin and a vending machine item back at the hostel. In between, there were countless city bus tickets, bakery buns, and vending machine drinks purchased, one 5 cent piece at a time. I think the total amount of all that change probably worked out to about $40 or $50, but spread out across 4 countries in 3 weeks, it was like a never ending gift.

Some people may scoff at coming up with little ways to save $20-$50-$100 for a vacation; especially long vacations that end up costing thousands of dollars. But I’d rather spend my travel money on tickets that take me far away and keep me there for a long time. Often activities and entertainment costs makes up 5-10% (or less) of our travel budget and I’m determined to make the most of every trip and every dollar.

I'd love to hear from you! What crafty tips do you have to save up for a big trip?


If you enjoyed this article, you'll also like: 

Getting Value from Paid Attractions
When Good Value Means Splurging
Lessons Learned: Small Steps to Save Big Bucks

Comments are closed.
    Recent Posts
    Posts by Location
    Turnipseed Travel Category Canada
    Turnipseed Travel Category USA
    Turnipseed Travel Category Europe
    Turnipseed Travel Category Africa
    Turnipseed Travel Category Australia
    Turnipseed Travel Category Asia

    Post Categories

    All
    $200 Challenge
    200m Challenge
    Accommodation
    Africa
    Amsterdam
    Anti Adventurist
    Asia
    Australia
    Belgium
    Business Travel
    Camping
    Canada
    Central Counties
    Cozy Travel
    Destinations
    Europe
    Experiences & Activities
    Female Travel
    Food And Drink
    Gear And Packing
    Golf
    Greece
    Guest Posts & Interviews
    Health
    Inspiration
    Making Travel Memories
    Montreal
    Most Popular Posts
    National Parks
    Norfolk County
    Ontario
    Ottawa
    Paris
    Partners
    Pet Travel
    Photo Essay
    Preparation
    Press Trip Portfolio
    Reviews Accommodation
    Reviews Gear Packing
    Round The World
    Saving
    Toronto
    Transportation
    Travel Cooking
    Travel Memories Series
    UK & Ireland
    United States

    Posts by Date

    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012

Disclaimers, Privacy, and Cookie Policy

Top 100 Travel Influencer
As named by the Obama White House in 2014.​
White House Study Abroad Logo 2014
Turnipseed Travel Logo 2019
DMCA.com Protection Status
© COPYRIGHT 2024.  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • Blog
  • About Us
  • Resources
  • Partner With Us
  • New Visitors