Traveling is #$%@ expensive, right??

Well, yes.

And no.

Traveling can be as expensive as you want it to be. It can also be really really cheap. For example, I managed to spend a whole month in Hawaii, 2 weeks on Oahu and 2 weeks on Maui, and spent just over $500. That’s right. Airfare, food, lodging, activities, and miscellaneous expenses, all around $500.

How I managed to spend only $500 for a month in Hawaii

My “ball on a budget” mentality was planted about 4 months before I left for Hawaii. My best friend lived 2 states away and called me one day asking to fulfill our spontaneous nature and travel together. Her mom was traveling to Hawaii to visit a friend so we decided to tag along and make our own trip of it.

“How long should we go?”

“As long as we can afford.”

And so it began.

It was July and her mom was going in December, so we had about 5 months to get out butts in gear. I was a broke college student at the time so I had about zero extra dollars to throw down on a trip. So I had to get creative.

Travel Credit Cards

There are a ton of credit cards that offer travel perks. I did my research with the help of articles like these and found the Venture One Card. It has an annual fee after the first year, but gave me 2 miles for every dollar spent, and had a huge sign up incentive. If you spend $3000 in the first 3 months, you receive 40,000 miles, or $400 worth of travel money. You can use the $400 as cash back, write off purchases made, or use as a credit towards a plane ticket or hotel expense. Pretty awesome feature.

I signed up for my first ever credit card and asked my parents if I could pay some of their bills to reach the $3000 mark (they paid me back of course). I hit the limit within the month and had $400 waiting to be spent. This covered my round trip airfare to Hawaii. I also had those few months before leaving to add up more miles with every dollar I spent. I ended up paying for a week’s worth of hostel stays with the extra miles.

Total saved by signing up for a credit card: Airfare + week of lodging (over $400)

This honestly was the biggest expense relief and took a huge stress off of my broke college student self. Now that airfare was covered, I could start budgeting and saving for the actual adventures on island.

Lodging

I have to admit, my friend Kelsey and I lucked out for the first 8 or 9 days of lodging. Kelsey’s mom Nancy was visiting a friend who had a time share on Waikiki. We didn’t stay in the time share, but in our own hotel down the road bought with Nancy’s many Marriott reward points (she travels all the time for work).

This was a huge savings bonus for a few reasons. 1. We weren’t paying the $100+ a night it cost to stay in the hotel. 2. We were right on Waikiki and didn’t have to pay for transportation. 3. Free breakfast every morning.

That experience alone would have cost us $800+ (or $400 split). Knowing that we were covered for the first week of travel allowed us to budget more things in for the rest of the trip.

So at this point in budgeting (before stepping foot on Hawaii) I had airfare covered, 9 out of 30 nights of lodging covered, and one meal a day for 9 days free. Off to a good start!

Nickel and Diming

At this point December was creeping up and I had little in savings. I figured with my current standing I could work a little extra and have about $600 saved up by our departure date. That’s when I started doing the math. 30 days of traveling. $600 to spend. Pretty easy math to figure that’s living off $20 a day.

I knew I had the first week or so covered for lodging and some meals (thanks Nancy), but I still stuck with my $20 per day. I knew some days I would spend more and some days would be less.

Before leaving for Hawaii we booked a flight from Oahu to Maui, a shuttle from Maui to our hostel, and 2 weeks stay at our Maui hostel. Some hostels offer cheaper prices when booked online in advance ($ave where you can). I think the hostel stay was around $200-300 for the 2 weeks, but we chose it because they offered free pancake breakfast and a different free trip around the island each day.

Let Chance Have a Chance

Once we had that booked, we left the rest to chance and spontaneity and jet off. Planning everything out has never been my style. I get the comfort in knowing what’s next, but it doesn’t leave much room for life to happen. You can’t plan on who you’ll meet or what challenges you’ll face. For us, this gap in planning really worked in our favor.

Our first 8 or 9 days were all figured out for lodging. We had another 5 or 6 days to figure out before heading to Maui. All we knew if that we wanted to make it to the North Shore for the Pipeline surfing competition. We went out one night on Waikiki to a bar that offered a free drink or two after paying the cover, and met the coolest group of aussie guys.

They were there to run a marathon later that week, and just so happened to have a house booked on the North Shore, minutes from the competition. We convinced them to let us come in exchange for helping with groceries.

I think we spent $50 on groceries and stayed for free in a beach house for 3 or 4 nights. I don’t think we could have planned for anything better! With their rental car, getting around the island was a breeze and making food instead of eating out saved us big time.

We spent out last days on Oahu traveling around with these guys and even crammed into a hotel room the night before we all flew out. Meeting them saved up on food, lodging, and transportation costs. All while making friends and connections with people from all over the world!

Next stop was Maui, which was more planned out than Oahu. Our hostel was kind of in the middle of nowhere, but we had the daily free trips to get out and explore. We got up, ate a free breakfast, and set off for the entire day.

These days were pretty cheap as we would stop at taco trucks for a $8 lunch, or get groceries to eat for the next day or two. These day trips were so fun, hiking around Hawaii, having lazy (nudist) beach days, cliff jumping, snorkeling, you name it.

Planning this part of our trip in advance saved us money and stress, allowing us to really soak up Hawaii for our last 2 weeks.

By the time I was back on a plane for Montana, I had spent almost $100 less than my original budget of $600. I felt elated for sticking to a budget for pretty much the first time ever! For me, planning ahead is important. The credit card miles and doing my research on free breakfast and trips saved us a lot of money. There is also the spontaneous side of me that loves to run wild and for parts of this trip, it payed off to be flexible.

There is no right or wrong way to travel. I guess you’re only doing it wrong if you’re not doing it at all. If your dream is to travel the globe but don’t have the finances to do it, don’t fret. There’s always a way. Get creative, stick to your budget, and let chance have a chance!

Until next time my travelers, madlove.