Balancing Travel on a Budget: 3 Simple Strategies to Make Travel Feel More Affordable

Whenever people hear how much I manage to travel, they usually have one of two responses:

Where in the world do you find the time for all this?
How in the world do you afford all that?

(Or most commonly, a combination of the two!)

My short answer is that traveling is what I love, so I make the time and I prioritize how and when I spend and earn money. Do I really need to order that second beer when I’m out after work with friends? Or would I rather use that money while traveling to try something new that I can’t experience on a regular basis?

Fun fact: I work full time as an art teacher in Anchorage! This photo was taken right before Anchorage Museum’s Youth Art Month show in 2019, which a group of my colleagues and I got to put together.

When I don’t have to spend much, I tuck money away like crazy. When I do have a lot of monthly expenses, I try to cut back where I can to balance out other spending. At one point my mother’s coworkers actually made jokes that I must deal drugs on the side (funny, but not true, just for the record!).

Don’t get me wrong, I still feel the sting of travel expenses every once in a while. My trip to Kauai in November of 2019? Oy vey did I mess that one up! Plus last minute changes, unforeseen budget items, or costly mistakes (my least favorite!) are sometimes unavoidable. Here are a couple of strategies for anyone trying to stretch their budget for maximum travel!

Kauai was amazing, even if it was financially painful! We had booked a camper van, which I paid for, then my friend had booked our flights, putting us at pretty even for shared costs. But when the camper van fell through, she picked up the new AirBNB reservations and I booked us a rental car. Fine, right? Not when I got to Hawaii and realized just how much money I owed her! By the time we squared up things were a little stressful on my end, but we (I) learned our lesson and still had an amazing time!

1. Plan ahead

Last minute travel can be fun and yes, sometimes a total bargain. At one point during my semester studying abroad in Spain, my friends and I saw 50-euro flights to Lisbon advertised and you bet we were on a plane that same weekend!

Spur of the moment airline sales are thrilling, but working full-time as a teacher means they’re rarely an option for me anymore. In 2019 I honestly bought my December 22nd flight to go see family for the holidays six months earlier on July 14th!

Now that’s a bit of an extreme and was something that was easy to plan for. Sometimes plans that far ahead in advance just aren’t an option, but something as simple as flying from Anchorage to Fairbanks last minute (a whopping 42-minute flight, mind you) can cost triple what it would have if you planned just a few weeks ahead.

Love Fairbanks, even if that 42-minute flight does feel like it should just be free!

2. Pay ahead

A friend and I went to a show in Anchorage last year that was less than extraordinary. We make a point each spring to subscribe to a couple Alaska Performing Arts Center performances for the upcoming year. As we were walking out of that particular show nine months later she turned to me and said, “Well, at least at this point that felt free!”

This has become my favorite travel strategy. If you pay enough in advance for something, by the time you get to it any buyer’s anxiety has dissipated and you’re so removed from the transaction it’s like distant history. I feel like there’s less pressure and in general this makes more space for you to focus solely on enjoying the experience.

Yay for paying ahead! When my best friend and her husband decided they wanted to visit Alaska during the summer of 2019, we literally started booking things in January! Travel to remote Alaskan areas can be easy albeit expensive, but by the time they got here we had spread the trip planning budget out from January-June and we were able to focus on enjoying our adventure! For more about their trip, check out this post.

It also makes it easier on your bank account to spread out your expenses. Some AirBNB listings now have the option to split up your payments over time, and I love it! Paying for your flight one month, your lodging a few weeks later, and booking a couple experiences the month before you go not only makes things feel more manageable, but it also allows for those spur of the moment splurges while traveling to not hurt quite so much!

Paying a lot of money for something to then jump right into it always leaves me feeling crunched and pressured. There’s nothing worse than the feeling of, “We just paid a lot of money for this, so everyone’s having fun, right? RIGHT?!”

3. Prioritize & (Bargain) Shop Around

As I said before, priorities are a big part of making travel possible. When I told my students I’d be headed to the midwest for Thanksgiving this past year, their response was, “Whoa Ms. Henry, you’re going somewhere again this weekend?! You were just in Hawaii last week! You must be rich!”

Another way to save money? Visit your favorite humans! A friend of mine is currently finishing his PhD in Lawrence, Kansas. I’ve not spent much time in the midwest and so saw it as the perfect opportunity to do some exploring! He had an opportunity to show me around and play tourist in his temporary home, we got to save some money by driving his truck and using his apartment as home-base, and overall we had a great time!

…No, darling children. I drive a 2000 Honda Civic that I paid off in college and I pick up every possible opportunity to make extra money that I can. Plus I flew on a Saver Fare at the back of the plane and have a mileage account with every airline, along with an Alaska Airlines Visa that I use for virtually every purchase. I also stayed with a friend, so my lodging and transportation didn’t cost me anything. Is this starting to paint a picture haha?

Part of prioritizing sometimes means cutting corners and shopping around for the Saver Fares, which I truthfully have a love-hate relationship with. I also maybe have a slight addiction to flight-tracking apps, but that’s another story…