How to Travel on a Budget

The older I've gotten, the more my Wanderlust has grown. And as such, I've taken more and more trips, both domestic and abroad. Respectively, people have asked me how I go about doing it, knowing that I never necessarily worked in a high-paying job during and after my undergraduate years of college. Once you learn the secrets to budgeting, it isn't all that difficult. And today, I'm here to show you some tips and tricks on how to do it.

1) Make a list of places that you would like to go.

This part of the process is fairly intuitive. Before you step outside your front door, it's important to know where you think you'd like to go. Start by compiling a list of places that you would like to visit, and fines out what some of there average prices are for items. Websites like blank will help you determine the average cost of items as it Stacks up to your hometown so you can prepare accordingly.

2) Establish connections online and some of these locations.

If you are like me when I was younger, then you likely have played a lot of online video games. Guess what? This is one of the best ways to meet new people from different places. Every time you add somebody on Xbox, put them on your friends list after a friendly conversation on RuneScape, or play successful game of OverWatch, you will make a new connection in another part of the world. Sometimes, that is all it takes as well. If you go to school, you can meet potential travel destinations by getting involved with school clubs, especially ones that involve multiculturalism and students of different ethnic or faith backgrounds. From there, you can ask to be introduced to their friends, send them an email correspondence, and get the ball rolling wherever they live as well. And if this isn't enough for you to meet people, there are hundreds of websites online the people used to meet people, especially penpals. Through one penpal website, I met a girl from Russia, a guy from Denmark, a girl from Morocco, and two girls from China.

3) Travel around the deals.

Now that you have a reason to go and potentially a person to visit, it's time to book your flight. Or, to hop in your car. Either way around, there are lots of travel web sites out there that offer deals on a frequent basis. If you follow other travel agents and travel bloggers, they will likely link you to website or two that they use that has good deals as well. Going somewhere you slightly want to go to that is on sale vs going somewhere you really want to go that isn't quite in the off-season can be the difference of hundreds of dollars.

4) Find cheap lodging, which can lead to other Connections in other places.

Although several travel websites and flight pages will offer you combined housing/car rental/flight packages, it is often more efficient to do the app for mentioned your own way. Regardless, you will be paying for luggage separate most of the time, and you will be paying an insurance deposit for your rental car regardless. Hotels can also quickly rack up the bill. Globalfreeloaders.com and couchsurfing.com are two websites in which you list your couch or spare room to host guests and visitors, and in return, they extend the favor to you. Hostelworld.com is a comprehensive list of 35,000 hostels around the globe, and also provides information on what their bloggers have found around the world. Airbnb are two of my personal favorites, as they let you rent out a private room in somebody's home. There is also the option of staying at a farm (typically running price is between $80-$100/night) or at a monastery (you can find alot of places for $40 a night or so).

5) engage in work travel jobs.

I have met up with a couple of people that have traveled the world's, done really cool things, and developed amazing friendships, all due to traveler jobs. There are several web sites out there that I used to subscribe to in regards to this. Workaway is the website where you are able to trade services with somebody in exchange for room and board, and some places will give you a stipend as well. Some allow you to be a nanny or an Au Pair in exchange for room and board. Going through TEFL, you to become certified to teach English as a foreign language, what you can become a lifelong career for some people. Certain companies well also provide you with these opportunities. For instance, I interviewed with English first and Ameson Year in China, and both companies would have paid for a flight to China, got me certified to teach, and also give you half a year worth of rudimentary Mandarin Chinese, as well as a stipend for travel alongside your salary.

6)Undershoot on what you need to buy to survive.

If you're traveling on a budget, you likely are okay nixing some of home's comforts. That being said, a fast food sandwich and store brand apple juice will do just as fine as a fancy lunch that doesn't fill you up near as much. Try to bring as many things as you possibly can from him outside of perishable and not exportable items, such as food and certain liquids and medicines, and only by what you absolutely need. The exception to this rule is if you are planning on doing a food tour of some sort, or going on at or where food is included. There are plenty of web sites out there that advertise discounted travel fair and tour guides. That being said, if you know that you can survive on a very minimalist diet while you are traveling, it will serve you well in the long run financially.

7) Always - and I mean ALWAYS - Take advantage of free and discounted items.

Using coupon books bought at airports as well as Groupon has saved me a plethora of precious cash, as I found coupons for lodging, food, parking, entertainment at night, taxis, and pretty much anything else you can think of. There are several other websites like Groupon that you can subscribe to that all have discounted where's and fares. Also take full advantage of the hospitality of others. When I was in Cleveland, I got free breakfast because I meditated with the Harris. And Iceland, I talked to the owner of the restaurant I went to, and because he likes my interested in his business and personality, I got two free beers at his second restaurant out of the deal. Never turn down free for anything, and also remember the one you least expect it, the free things will come to you.

7)As Shia LaBeouf once said, quite literally, "Just Do It. Don't let your dreams be dreams."

I know several individuals who are traveling the world full time, and they aren't rich. They're finding websites like this one or this one for temporary work, offering their skills, and just going out and doing it.

Here's a case study for you: If I chose to drive up to Poughkeepsie New York instead of fly up, the flight would have been $200 more expensive then the tank and a half of gas that it cost me to get there and around. I met a connection at College, who happens to be my girlfriend at the time, and they put me up for a few nights for free. In exchange for a couple hours of music, I got two nights worth of dinner and some wine. I utilized their knowledge of New York and New York City to navigate for all of the deals, which included a beautiful lunch at a Foods truck stop for cheap one morning. Breakfast every morning was cheap, as I went out and bought a small container of granola, as well as having some eggs that they had at the house for me. We utilized the dads Commerce miles on the subway to get a cheap parking pass at the cheapest subway station by her house, and bought a one-way pass into New York City at student rate. In New York City, we went to as many free exhibits and stores that we could to see things and Window Shop. We returned home with another one way ticket, since this option was more cost-efficient than buying an all day pass.

End result - keep in mind some of these tips and tricks, and you will succeed at planning your adventures. I'm going to reflect upon one of my trips, specifically when I took my first solo trip up to New York.

Haunted Highway

About 2 hours West of where I grew up, and about 40 minutes west of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, there is an old stretch of highway that has been desolate and abandoned 4 the last 40 years or so. This stretch of highway is simply called the abandoned PA Turnpike, because that is exactly what it is. Always curious for more urban exploration, I decided to go and check this place out for myself.

For the backstory of this 13 Mile long stretch of highway, it was first commissioned around since 1941 by the Pennsylvania highway agency. It served as a main route for transportation until the 60s, where it was deemed impractical because it became so heavily trafficked due to the bottlenecking of the tunnels at Sideling Hill, Tuscarora, Rays Hill, and blue hill made traffic and absolute nightmare. Around 1964, a plan was laid down to expand the turnpike, which was partially followed through, until the highway was eventually shut down with the construction of the new Turnpike in the 80s. Although the tunnels and Highway roads have not been maintained for over 30 years, the tunnels are still intact, and parts of the highway and Turnpike themselves, although littered with graffiti, are still approachable.

And so, two of my friends and I set out on an adventure to check out as much of this Turnpike as we possibly could. We first came up on a stretch of road in Buchanan State Forest called Oregon road,

where we parked in a lay-by and climbed to the top of a tunnel to see the first stretch of abandoned highway. Other than a beautiful place to take a few pictures of the surrounding Forest, there wasn't much to see in the ways of graffiti. However, this is where my GPS deemed the tunnels to be, and this is where my first stop was. We consulted a few other blogs before moving forward with our next destinations.

One blog suggested we take 30 West through Chambersburg until we get to Blue Mountain Road followed consecutively by Pump Station Road. And so we did just that, getting to another section of Turnpike that was just as Bland as the last. However, we still did not see any tunnels. As a last-ditch effort, we drove to a location called "Pike to Bike", a non-profit company run by the community that is going to be turning the abandoned turnpike until public domain Rail Trail. It started sleeting, and my shoes were soaked, but we found a pair of joggers about a mile into our walk down the road then insured us that we were about threequarters of the way towards one of the bigger tunnels on the turnpike. So, now that we knew that we were on the right track, we forced on words.

This time I was about 18 minutes from Rays Hill Tunnel, so I believe it was the Tuscarora tunnel in Breezewood Pennsylvania. Walking 5 minutes into it, we saw a lot of graffiti, and we were still just as it, we saw a lot of graffiti, and we were still just as close to the light at the end of the tunnel as we were at the beginning. Although we can see the light, we determine if there was an incredibly long tunnel. There was a rusted maintenance room in Boiler Room nearby, as well as an observation tower, but all the doors were rusted shut, so even upon entry by crawling through a broken out window, we couldn't see much.

After dropping a few pieces of metal and running through the dark like bumbling idiots, we decided to depart from the turnpike. Whether or not it is haunted remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure; I will be going back to see the tunnels another day.

Looks inviting, right?