Hey guys, I'm back in America again
And I wanted to make a video today about how I'm able to afford to travel so much
So if you've been following my videos over the past few months
You know that I was traveling through Europe for basically the last two-and-a-half months and people tell me all the time
Like wow, dude, you must be loaded
You must have a ton of cash in order to travel that much because this is not just something that I just did this summer
But I pretty much do this every year. I'm always traveling and people are always coming up and asking me
Where are you going to next? Where you off to next?
Where is the next adventure? And I'm always going places, but it's not because I have a ton of cash saved up
it's because I'm really frugal and I have
Basically spent the last few years learning how to travel for really cheap
so in this video
I'm going to talk about four ways that you can travel a lot more and a lot longer
For less money. All I can really do here is
talk about my own experience traveling. And I am an
Unmarried male with no children and I can set my own hours at work
So I understand that my situation might not necessarily be the same as yours
Which is why I can travel for two and a half months at a time
But all the tips that I'm gonna give you here are not just specific to me
Anyone can use bits and pieces of them
You just have to modify this for yourself
And the first tip that I'm gonna offer you for learning to travel cheap may be the most obvious and that is to forgo luxury.
Quick sidenote: on this channel
I'm gonna start using big words and then explaining them for the benefit of people that are learning English
So forgo means to do without it something that you don't need.
so this goes without saying but if you're traveling and you're able to go without buying all the
Expensive luxury items you're gonna be able to travel more and longer. You can stay in expensive hotels,
You can get massages, you can go on luxury cruises and all that
is fine if that's what you want to do, but you're just not gonna be able to travel as long unless you're super loaded
so what you have to do if you're not Bill Gates is find the right balance that you want to strike between luxury and
travel time
I personally prefer to buy a lot less and have stuff that is not nearly as nice but be able to travel further and
farther and longer
and see more
places. That is more enriching to me than having all the super fancy nice stuff when I travel and there's a lot of ways that
You can forgo luxury. Instead of eating at fancy restaurants,
buy some rice and beans at the grocery store and cook them in the kitchen at your hostel. Instead of staying at expensive hotels
stay with someone
you know or go camping or stay at hostels or use Couchsurfing. If you're not traveling across an ocean,
then instead of flying take a bus or take a train.
Sometimes I do
hitchhiking and I literally just stick up my thumb on the side of the road and I get rides all the way across the country
to wherever I'm going. This is how I go to
Canada to practice French a lot of times. When you get to the destination and you want to travel around within the city,
don't buy taxis. Those are so expensive. I
walk to where I'm going within the city.
Either that or I take the subway or the bus cause you can usually get a bus ticket for like a dollar two as
opposed to a thirty dollar taxi ride, and the other secret is to not just forgo luxury while you're
traveling. You do it while you're at home too so that you can save up money to go traveling. If you're like me then you're
constantly saving up for some trip that you're gonna go on and it takes me a long time because I don't make very much money
But I can do it because I'm constantly looking for ways to avoid spending money.
I don't get out very often,
but when my friends want to go out and I feel like being sociable,
I'll go with them and buy the cheapest thing on the menu and I don't buy soda.
I drink water. And this is something I do all year long in order to afford
Going on vacations and trips around the world.
My next tip is to be flexible about when and where you're gonna travel. If you don't have a specific time or a specific
Destination in mind you just want to go somewhere,
But you don't care when or where and you have a lot of freedom to find really cheap travel
Experiences. If you've been following my videos
you know that I just walked the Camino de Santiago, which is a backpacking trip across Spain and it's
Probably the single cheapest month-long excursion that you can take. I slept in alberges and hostels every single night
So I didn't camp out at all and I spent an average of 6 euro a night
for my place to stay
You multiply that by 30 days that I spent traveling and you get a hundred and eighty euro that I spent over the whole month
Ok, that's what you're gonna spend on one night in a luxury tourist hotel and it lasted me 30 days
But it's because I chose to go to a place that was really cheap and I knew I could travel for a long time
I wouldn't be able to afford to do that a lot of other places. If you choose to travel to Colombia or Thailand or
places in Africa, you're just gonna be able to sustain yourself for a lot longer than if you go to Cancun or Paris or
Dublin or any of these places because those are so expensive and if you don't have a set time
That you have to travel go in the off season
This doesn't work for me because I'm a college student so I can only really travel for a long time during the summer
But if you can take vacation days
Any time a year go in the times where people aren't
Traveling a lot check prices for flights or for bus tickets over the course of several weeks because you'll see how much it varies
Even just over the course of a few days
But if you check over the course of several weeks you'll be able to find a much cheaper ticket than if you're just checking for
over the course of a few days
My next tip is to find a way to make money while you travel online jobs are becoming more and more popular
So if you already have one of those then you're golden. While I was walking the Camino de Santiago,
I met an Australian guy in one of my hostels who is a computer programmer or a coder or something
I don't remember exactly what he did
but all he had to do was bring his laptop with him wherever he went and he was able to work from anywhere in the
world, and so what he did was sold his house and then he just went traveling indefinitely and he was able to do so because
He can work from anywhere.
So he's just supporting himself while traveling and basically being on one long vacation
I am able to make a little bit of money off my youtube channel.
I don't make much. I only make about one dollar a day,
but when your total expenses for the whole day is like
Seven to ten euro, that actually is a big help
So get creative. If there's anything you can do from online from anywhere in the world
Then you have a much better opportunity
And a better chance of being able to travel for further and longer. A lot of times when I travel, I do
Busking which is another word for street performing.
I take a little ukulele or a
harmonica with me wherever I go and I just play on the streets and I don't make a ton of money doing that but a
Lot of times I make enough just to buy the bare necessities
That I need to eat and travel for that day
And when you don't need very much to survive, that provides all you need. Sometimes when I'm traveling for a long time
I'll also look for odd jobs that I can do to make a little cash on the side
so I'll help with painting or doing yard work or anything like that if you know someone in the area or if you have a
couchsurfing host
you can just ask them if they know anyone who might need a hand around the house or around the yard and
Go make a few extra dollars
If not, you can do a Google search for Help Wanted in the area now again
You're not gonna make the kind of money
You need to stay in luxury hotels, but if you're staying in hostels or couchsurfing and you just need money for food
this is gonna help you go a lot further and travel a lot more and the last tip that I want to mention here is
something that I've already mentioned several times in this video and that's
Couchsurfing and I want to make this its own point in order to give it some extra emphasis
If you haven't heard of couchsurfing before this is an online service that connects travelers who are looking for a place to stay
With people who are willing to host those travelers, it has similarities with Airbnb
Except it's free
but it's actually a whole lot more than that -
Couchsurfing is a lot more than just a free place to stay for a night with Airbnb
You're paying a person's to stay in their home for that night. And that's it
that's the end of the interaction you give them the money and then you're done but with
Couchsurfing you're not paying the person who lets you stay there
they're letting you stay out of the goodness of their own heart and
Usually because they also wants to meet new people and interact with you as a person
This means that you oftentimes have your own personal tour guide who is an expert on the city
they live in. They'll be able to show you around the different places and probably give you tips on saving more money.
Which grocery stores are the cheapest in their country?
They'll also
often let you use their kitchen for cooking meals in and a lot of times you'll cook a meals and eat together a lot of
Times they'll have their own car and they'll be willing to take you out and go drive around
And see different places that you wouldn't have been able to see if you were staying in a hotel so couchsurfing
is this amazing service that allows an interaction between
someone who's traveling to a new country or a new city for the first time and someone who is an
Expert and wants to share their city with you and it's not always the case
Sometimes the host is someone that is new to the city or sometimes they're working so they can't hang out
And then you just say "Hey, thanks for a free place to sleep."
But if they're willing to interact with you and go take you out and show you places take
advantage of that. Another thing
I want to mention is that couchsurfing often gets a bad reputation because people think it's not safe, but if you think about it
It's actually no less safe than an air bnb. The only difference is you're not paying that person to stay with them
I've used couchsurfing quite a bit and I've never had a bad experience
And if I did have a bad experience sometime, I would leave that person a bad review
So when you're searching for a host and you find someone that has three hundred positive reviews,
(And there's actually a lot of people with hundreds of positive reviews)
then you know that this person is not an ax murderer who's gonna kill you in your sleep and you can feel very
Confident staying with this person in that city. So that's all I have for you guys today
Of course
There are a ton of ways to save money
while traveling that I wasn't able to mention in this video if you have your own personal ways of
Travelling for cheap. You can leave comments down below. I love hearing new ideas
Because a lot of times I get my own ideas from the things that you guys mentioned down in the comments
So, please feel free to do that if you like the video and you haven't subscribed yet
you can do so by clicking the subscribe button below and you can follow me at
@FingtamLangs on Twitter
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I would be very grateful for that, and you can do so by clicking on the Patreon logo to my side and now
That I'm back in the states. I'm looking forward to getting back into the routine of making videos more regularly for you guys
So we'll see you in the next video.