Spend Less, Travel More: The Guide to Financing Your Travel Plans

By Steve Bloom

The word travel brings up a lot of images. You see yourself lying on a beach somewhere or lounging in a café in Paris. When you let your mind wander, you can see yourself having dream vacations all over the world.

But when you come back to the reality of the situation, you realize that all of that takes money – and lots of it. Plane tickets alone can be $1000 or more. How are you supposed to come up with the money?

This is the book I would have wanted when I first asked that question. It goes step-by-step in exactly what I’ve done to make travel a lot more frequent and affordable.

If you’re interested in traveling, but believe it as too expensive, then this book will help you realize travel can be cheap.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Bloom
• Release date: May 18, 2014

Book preview

Spend Less, Travel More

The Guide to Financing Your Travel Plans

Steve Bloom

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Steve Bloom. All Rights Reserved. Cover design by James, GoOnWrite.com

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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For Rosie.

Thanks for traveling the world with me.

Table of Contents

Part 1 – Introduction

01 – My Story

02 – How to Use This Book

Part 2 – Before You Travel

03 – Cutting Your Costs

04 – Cutting Costs: Practical Tips

05 – Eliminating Your Debt

06 – Investing Your Savings

Part 3 – When You Travel

07 – Frequent Flyer Mile Programs – Everything You Need to Know

08 – Where to Get Frequent Flyer Miles

09 – Saving Money on Plane Tickets

10 – Traveling on a Budget

11 – Saving Money on Food and Lodgings

Part 4 – Conclusion and Parting Thoughts

12 – Putting Everything Together

13 – Example of Expensive Travel Plans Made Cheap

14 – Concluding Thoughts

15 – References

Part 1:

Introduction to the Book

Chapter one

My Story

The World is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. – St. Augustine

Right now I’m sitting on a balcony in an apartment in downtown Casablanca in Morocco. I’m two weeks into my two month stay here. Yesterday I had the day off so I walked along the waterfront, saw the sites, met people and enjoyed the city.

I’ve traveled all over the world. I’ve gone to a lot of different places and experienced many different cultures. I got to meet the longneck tribe of Thailand, swim with sharks in Belize and surf the waves of Costa Rica.

You might think that I have a lot of money or rich parents to pay for it all. Well, I can assure you that I paid for everything myself and I’m certainly not rich.

What I’ve done is create a way to make travel more affordable and, therefore, much easier to integrate into your life. This has helped create a lifestyle in which travel becomes cheaper and more frequent.

It’s not something that is unique to my life. This is something anyone can do.

Overcoming the Obstacle of Money

In an informal survey, I asked people to list out reasons they don’t travel as often as they want to. Money was at the top of everyone’s list. It beat out other notable obstacles such as lack of time or fear of being attacked or robbed.

Most people I know only travel abroad once every few years, if at all. Many of those people would love to travel more, but simply can’t afford to do it. It can be frustrating.

It’s no secret that you need to have money to travel. Plane tickets alone can cost over $1000 just to get you to the other side of the Atlantic.

And once you arrive, you have to pay for food, a place to stay, transportation and a long list of other expenses.

When you add it all up, it’s a price some people are unwilling or unable to pay. Even if you do have the money, it’s hard to justify the amount you’ll spend doing it.

Clearly money is a big hindrance to people’s ability to see the world. But it doesn’t have to be.

This book is intended to eliminate money as an obstacle to traveling. By implementing the steps in this book, you can make it so money is never an issue for traveling again.

How I Saved Up $10,000 to Travel

Before we get into the practical ways to start saving money, I want to tell you a little about myself. I want to tell you how I learned the methods explained in this book.

It all started with my first job. The year was 1995 and I got a job bagging groceries at a local grocery store earning a paltry $4.50 an hour.

It doesn’t seem like much now, but back then it was a lot of money for me. I was in high school at the time and had no debt, no monthly expenses or bills to pay. Basically everything I earned was disposable income.

At first I didn’t know what to do with the money. The checks were coming in, but I wasn’t spending them on anything in particular. As the weeks passed, I kept depositing more and more into my bank account.

I thought I might save up money for a down payment on a house or use it to buy a fancy car. I considered travel too, but I wasn’t sold on the idea immediately.

I decided to build up my savings for a while and then decide later what to do with it all.

As time passed, I noticed I was handling my money a lot differently from other people. With each new paycheck, my bank account grew. Yet my co-workers kept complaining about how broke they were.

It seemed that no matter how much money they earned, they never had enough. I found it puzzling since many of them were in high school like me and came from higher income families; they shouldn’t have any expenses – at least not the kind of expenses that made them perpetually broke.

I wondered what exactly they spent their money on. What could kids in high school possibly spend their entire earnings on week after week?

It turned out that I took a radically different approach to money management than they did. While I made sure to save the majority of my paycheck, my friends and co-workers were busy spending them on things like video games, expensive TVs, cars, movies, clothing and alcohol.

They were equally perplexed at my money saving ways too. I explained that they could save up money like me simply by cutting out a few unnecessary expenses. In fact none of their purchases were necessary; they were all things they could easily live without.

But they couldn’t make that shift. A few people even said that any money you save in the bank is wasted because you could use it to spend on something.

No wonder they all complained about a lack of money.

I worked in that job for over five years. This length of time gave me an added bonus. I may have started at $4.50 an hour, but by the time I left I was earning $10.50 an hour. For a high school student (and later, college), especially in those days, it was a huge wage.

With each paycheck, my bank account grew.

My friends bought fancy expensive cars. I bought a modest used car and paid it off in full with one check at the dealership. My goal was to stay as debt-free for as long as possible.

One day while depositing some money at

Reviews for Spend Less, Travel More

[prioreng · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Trite and simplistic advice that can be summed up in a sentence. Cut your living expenses, use frequent flyer points, travel to cheap places, and stay in hostels. There, I've saved you a couple of hours reading this.