Tools to help you save Money & Time before going on vacation

Travelling is adventure. When going on vacation, there are so many new things that happen every day. Your comfort zone is constantly being challenged and you are forced to make quick decisions throughout your stay in foreign countries. That is why we travel. But it can also be the reason why some people might not enjoy travelling that much. For those who love it, we are there to help them be equipped with the best vacation resources and tips to make sure that their stay is fun, safe and cheap.

Before going on vacation

Choosing the country that you are going to

It is suggested that you approach going to a new Vacation with an open mind. It should not be specifically important where you are going, it’s more important what you want to experience when travelling. Not having a specific destination in mind can help you save money, as you can choose the cheapest destination during the time you want to travel. The following 2 websites will help you get a general idea of the going rates for tickets to all the countries of the world.

Skyscanner is a great website to get a general idea of the flight prices anywhere around the world. What’s great about this tool is that for the destination tab you can choose ‘Everywhere’ and for Month you can choose ‘Flexible’. This will give you an average of the cheapest flights and compare the fees of various airlines.
WhichBudget does a similar job to skyscanner but provides a wider range of options, giving you the cheap airlines that fly between destinations. It is perhaps less interactive than Skyscanner.
Rometorio is similar to Skyscanner but this website includes information about Flights, Ferries, Trains & Buses – practically all kinds of transport that are needed for travelling.

Airlines that cost less

You can buy directly from the websites mentioned above, but we have never done it so far. Instead, we go directly to the websites of the airlines listed, and buy the tickets from their sites. This even helps us to have control over the stays that we do in change-over airports. Sometimes we choose to spend a day or two in a stop-over to get a feeling of the place. We generally buy our flight tickets from the following airlines

International – Turkish Airlines is the emergent International Airline company. They provide cheap flights all around the world, and the on-board entertainment (Movies, Music etc.) is great. For longer flights (cross-continent) you also have space where to re-charge your electronics. We have been to Istanbul airport multiple times after the Government coup in mid-2016 and it was as safe as ever.
Europe – Ryanair is what kick started our never-ending journey of travelling. With flights starting from €30, two way, travelling around Europe was made super cheap. Ryanair are mostly on time, and when the plane lands, they will proudly inform you about their punctuality related statistics.
Australia – Jet star allows you to travel within Australia and to neighbouring countries in Asia. A 1- hour flight from Sydney to Melbourne would set you back around $70.
America – Latam is an American owned company that facilitates travel in both North & South America.

Other considerations when choosing a place:

Budget your trip – is a great website in which gives you a guide of how much money you would need in the country you are visiting. The best part of the website is that first and foremost it calculate the budget required on real tried and tested travellers. Apart from that you can choose the type of travelling you want to do. Whether you want to travel on Luxury style, whether you have a mid-range budget or whether you are travelling on a budget and it will give you a breakdown of how much money is needed approximately for that type of travel. You can also choose particular cities in that countries as the budget would normally vary from cities to rural areas.
Checking out weather information is vital before travelling to a particular destination. We like to use Selective Asia for information about weather for particular seasons in Asia. For most destinations to see when is the best time to Visit check out that link. Remember you can safe a lot of money when you travel to destinations in their low season!

What you must do some months before leaving

Vaccinations – checkout what vaccinations are needed to the country that you are going to.
Visa for country – check whether a visa is required to enter into a country. If it needs to be prepared before arriving (as opposed to being done at the border), speak to the relevant embassy to help you sort it out. It will most likely incur a payment.
Travel insurance – you can either do it from your local insurance dealer, or you can use the online services of WorldNomads . I heard that they are hard in looking for evidence, but if your prove your are right, you’ll get your money back.
Visa for money – usually using your visa from abroad would come at a cost for the withdrawal. The best way is to ask your bank for a Visa Electron which you can use from abroad at no costs.
Andromoney – this is a great application which can help you keep to a budget you have set. You can record your daily expenses into different categories including food, transport, activities etc after you have set a target of how much you actually want to spend on each, every day. You can also get a report in a form of a pie chart or graph to show you what you have spent for that particular holiday or week depending on what dates you select.

Other Resources

Relocation campers - If you are going overland or renting a car or camper van try to use this website, and there are many others, which help you save loads of money. Basically you can rent a car or camper van at ridiculously low prices because they would rather rent them out at a cheap prices than paying a driver to do so. The downside is that usually you have a time limit, but if you are travelling with an open mind so much money can be saved!
Packing checklist - get yourself sorted and make sure you have packed everything by using our organised packing checklist
Google Drive & Dropbox -These are great tools to have to back up your photos and videos
What’s App and Skype - Make sure you install these two great apps to help you keep in touch with your family for free