Travelling on a Budget

Travelling can be one of the most expensive hobbies, but it's also one of the most fulfilling. This means that a lot of students are probably missing out on some great adventures they could be going on instead of cramming for school all day. Which is ironic, considering that travelling is a great way to relieve stress after a day of cramming.

Hotels

Finding a place to rest takes the biggest chunk out of vacation money. My go-to site for finding a cheap hotel is hotels.ca. They have discounts on top of discounts that other booking sites already have. They also offer personalized "secret" discounts for every user, meaning that you can get discounts that are specific to only your account. Not to mention their price match guarantee, and the 1 free night you get for every 10 nights you stay at a hotel booked from their site. Of course, they have more choices than just hotels, you can get motels, B&Bs, hostels, cabins, etc..

If you don't want to spend money on any sort of accommodation, you can try couchsurfing. Couchsurfing is to hotels like Uber is to taxi, except it's totally free. After making an account on couchsurfing, you select the city you want to stay in and then browse through the list of locals who are offering their home to travelers.

Some of you may shy away from the thought of staying in a stranger's house for free, all the users offering their extra space for travelers are also travelers themselves. The locals all have ratings and comments on their profiles for you to determine how friendly and safe they are. The site itself has been used by 14 million people worldwide, and many travelers swear by the site as a great free resource for accommodation.

Flights

Unless you plan to backpack, drive or bus to your location, just getting to the destination can be half your travel budget, especially if you intend to go overseas.

Secretflying is probably the cheapest flight deals site I've found so far. The best way to use this site is to find current deals on flights and then plan your trip around the flight. If there is a place you want to go to specifically, you can use this site for that purpose. But, if you just want to experience a new place, planning a trip around a flight will get you cheaper deals.

When you get to the site's homepage, click on the country tab that applies to you to see all the current deals. Most of the departures will be from major cities in your country, so you might have to do a bit of pre-travel traveling to get to the airport listed in the deal if you live far away from a major city.

Here's an example of a Canada deal:

The $277 price tag only applies if you choose one of the dates listed.

Google Flights

We all know that Google is the king of search aggregation, so of course, it would be the king of finding the cheapest price for your trip, since it has its search crawlers located in every website that exists on the internet. Yet not many people even think of using their official flights page for finding a flight. Or are even aware that it exists.

Google flights is jam-packed with all the tools you need to find a budget flight. Including prices listed for every day when you open the calendar for choosing the departure date; a price graph with future price predictions for the course of a year; and a chart that helps you choose the absolute cheapest combination of departure and return dates within a week of the time you want to head out.

Not budget related, but if you scroll over the wifi icon of one of the flights listed. Google Flights will even tell you how strong the wifi will be on the airplane during that specific flight.

With these two sites, you don't have to worry about remembering high and low seasons, Secretflying and Google Flights can do all that work for you.

Sightseeing

Absolutely do not, by any means, purchase tours or hire tour guides (unless the place is only accessible through the tour). Some can range up to and over $100. If you absolutely cannot plan at all, but still want to make the most of the place you visit. There's an easy way to let technology do the work for you.

You guessed it, Google Trips. Oh Google, you're just one step closer to world domination. Google Trips is only available as an app (free), for android and iOs.

Day Plans

Under the Day Plans tab you'll find a few pre-made routes to check out, you choose from one of those and then edit the trip to your heart's content. The pre-made routes are all complete with locations, detailed descriptions, and exact opening and closing hours of all the listed places, as well as other information pulled in from Google Maps.

Once you open up a pre-made route, go ahead and edit it. Delete spots you don't want to visit, or add places that you do want to visit from the spatter of blue dots that Google deems worthy of visiting. If you pin sights that you really want to visit, and then press the refresh icon, Google will switch up the unpinned sites to new sites based on what you do want to see. In other words, Google will help you find places to check out based on your personal preferences.

Things to do

If you want to see a full list of places to visit, tap on "Things to do" which will give you a list of... things to do. Travelling doesn't get any easier than that. If there's a place that you love and you want to save it, open up the description of the site under the "Things to do" or the "Day Plan" tab and then select the star icon.

Transportation, Food, and Key Information

The "Getting around", "Food & Drink", and "Need to know" are what I like to call the info tabs. The first tab contains key information about the different transportation options, bus passes, bike share programs, taxi fees, and even the price of taking an Uber from the airport to downtown.

The food tab has an overview of local specialties, popular cuisines in the area, and even nightlife info. It also has restaurants organized by categories just like Google Maps. Finally, the third tab has a summary of the most popular shopping malls in the city.

Stealth Camping

Not the stealthiest stealth camp.

If you want to try some extreme traveling you can try stealth camping, otherwise known as urban camping, is a recent and exciting form of camping where you pitch a tent in urban areas. Stealth camping has been gaining a lot of popularity in recent years by travelers as a cheap and exciting alternative to staying in a hotel.

With an emphasis on the "stealth" part in stealth camping. It's best not to just set your tent or sleeping bag up on the sidewalk, the likelihood of getting noticed by police officers or onlookers is a lot higher not to mention that setting up right on the sidewalk is illegal in most cities. Stealth camping usually means camping in public parks with a lot of trees, or finding isolated areas and empty lots. Of course, you could also just stealth camp right in your car, a lot easier and much more discreet, and definitely very legal. You might be thinking that stealth camping is something you should only do if you're desperate, but a lot of travelers will stealth camp just for fun. Stealth camping is also great if you just want to experience your city in a whole new way.

Resources you can use to learn all the ins and outs of stealth camping:

Bicycle Touring Pro: 50 Stealth Camping Super Tips - A great list of advice for anyone wanting to enter the world of stealth camping.

How to Urban Camp - You can never go wrong with a WikiHow tutorial.

Raw Safari: The Rookie Guide to Urban Camping - Written by a digital nomad who travels the world.

Again, this might be a little too thrilling for some travelers, but it's definitely a viable method!

Whether its based on a shoestring budget or an expensive cruise, you can plan for any trip with the right resources.

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Budgeting App Review: EveryDollar

With the new school year beginning in a matter of weeks, many students will be returning to their dorm rooms to prepare for classes. The shift to living alone without the support of parents can be stressful, especially with all the new school and rent related expenses piled on.

Planning a budget before the start of school is important so you don't end up overspending and then surviving on nothing but cup noodles for the rest of the year (trust me, I've been there)!

EveryDollar

EveryDollar is a budgeting app developed by Ramsey Solutions (money guru Dave Ramsey's company). The app is available on android, iphone, as well as windows and mac via a browser.

EveryDollar cuts right to the chase so you know exactly how much you intend to spend before the beginning of the month. Here is a description of EveryDollar's approach to budgeting, courtesy of their Help Center:

You start by giving a name to every dollar you earn each month until there are no more dollars to name! Your income now equals your outgo. As you update your EveryDollar budget with day-to-day expenses, you’ll be able to see if your spending choices line up with your budget, and you can make adjustments as needed.

This makes EveryDollar quite simple and easy to pickup. There are only three sections to focus on for each month you budget; planned, spent, and remaining. Let's see how it works!

Making a Plan for your Money

In the 'Planned' tab, you add in your income/budget at the beginning of the month and then divide your budget up into different expenses using the categories. The app allows you to create new categories if you want to be more detailed. Make sure every dollar within your budget is allocated into a category or else the app won't let you move to the next step. Keep dividing up your funds until the app says "$0 left to budget".

In the sample budget, there's an additional $20 that hasn't been placed into a category. Having extra money is always a good thing! Make sure to throw it into a savings account if you don't need it for any other expense.

Congratulations! You've completed your budget, that's really all there is to it.

Tracking your Expenses

Once you’ve got a budget, you need to track your expenses to make sure you don’t stray from that plan. During the month, add all your expenses under the 'Spent' tab by clicking the plus sign at the bottom.

Monitor the remaining tab to stay on track

Every time you add in a new expense, EveryDollar will perform some math magic and calculate how much remains in every category and in your total budget which you can check under the 'Remaining' tab.

This feature is useful for adjusting your budget on the fly. Let’s say you have a little too much fun at Ollie's Pub and end up overspending in the entertainment category. Using the remaining tab, you can look for ways to save that money from another category.

At the end of each month you should review the remaining tab to see where you succeeded and where you could use some improvement, for example, NOT spending grocery money on three extra-large pizzas next time? Then, make adjustments to your plan til your budget works for you.

Conclusion

If you've stuck with the app for at least a month and followed through with your budget, go ahead and give yourself a pat on the back. The hardest part is over, now keep budgeting every day. You'll find that life is a lot easier when you don't have to worry about how much money you have left in your wallet.

I wouldn't recommend this app for students who want to see a full review of their spending habits or their income. It doesn't come with any graphs or pie charts like Money Lover and Mint. EveryDollar is a straight-forward budgeting app and is good for people who want a simple start to budgeting every day.

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Honey is a Powerful Browser Extension That Makes It Easy to Save Money Online

I personally love online shopping. From clothes, electronics, and sometimes even imported food products, I can find most of the products I want online much cheaper than I could ever get them from a store.

I like to use sites like Groupon, RetailMeNot, and sometimes even Red Flag Deals to search for coupons before I make any purchases. But searching the vast internet for that perfect little coupon can become a time consuming hassle. That's why Honey is probably the best thing to happen for all hardcore coupon-ers, or just about anyone that wants to get great discounts.

Honey

I'll keep it short and sweet, Honey is a web browser plugin that automatically tests discount codes right before you check out. It currently works on desktop versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. Honey works by searching for all possible discounts and coupon codes from the internet for a particular online store, and then trying each code one by one. When one of them works, it will notify you and you should see the discount added to your transaction. So, no effort is needed on your part other than just downloading the app onto Chrome. However, it won't always be able to find a discount or one that's working, so you've been warned!

I ordered pizza to demo Honey just for you readers.

After I clicked checkout, Honey worked its sweet magic and voila, it found a $4.94 discount. Do you know how many items I could buy from the Dollar store with $4.94? Probably a lot, thanks Honey.

On the front page of the Honey app (click the Honey icon in the top right of your browser), you'll see a list of online stores like Walmart, Target, etc. Click on any of the stores and you can activate a surprise cash bonus that can range anywhere from 0-10% before you start shopping on the store. Remember to read the little fine print to see how the cash bonus works on each store, because it can vary.

Honey also has a cashback rewards/referral system, every time you refer a friend you get HoneyGold which you can later redeem for Amazon gift cards

Go ahead and download Honey from the Chrome store ASAP.

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Budgeting App: Money Lover

With OSAP, student lines of credit, and credit cards added on top of your bank accounts at the beginning of the school year, managing money can become a very scary and stressful activity. If you're a student like me, you've probably cried at the money in your bank account slowly disappearing.

Don't worry, I've been there too once.

That's why I rely on budgeting apps to keep track of my expenses for me (and occasionally yell at me when I spend too much).

Money Lover

Money Lover is more of an all-round money managing app rather than a budgeting app. It can keep track of multiple bank accounts separately, track expenses, income, make multiple budgets, and more features.

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