Top 10 Travel tips

Disasters happen. It’s always good to have a backup in case you get robbed or lose a card. You don’t want to be stuck somewhere new without access to your funds. I once had a card duplicated and a freeze put on it. I couldn’t use it for the rest of my trip. I was very happy I had an extra and not like my friend, who didn’t and was forced to borrow money from me all the time! Here are some helpful articles on banking and travel hacking:

• How to Avoid Banking Fees While Traveling
• 22 Ways to Cut Your Expenses, Grow Your Bank Balance, and Have Money for Travel
• The Ultimate Guide to Picking the Best Travel Credit Card (2018 Edition)
• How to Travel Cheap: The Ultimate Guide to Traveling When You Have No Money

Shhh… don’t tell anyone, but you can actually debark the cruise ship when you want when your trip ends. The cruise lines will call passengers deck by deck, but the process can take hours. If you already have all your bags and want to leave, you can just head down whenever you like. The staff doesn’t check what deck your cabin is on, and they simply want passengers off the ship so that they can get ready for the next group. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that lines can be extremely long right at the beginning of debarkation. Sometimes it’s worth it just to relax for an hour and let the rush die down.

What are you trying to do on your trip? Spend your time cooking or doing and seeing things? Yeah, that’s what I thought… So why would someone voluntarily choose to make a borderline 5-star meal for lunch is beyond me but let me tell you, you’ll be much happier with an easier meal than a fancy-schmancy one or one that is labor-intensive. Here’s what we ate… Breakfast was 1-2 of the following items:

• Boiled eggs (we preboiled all of them at once and kept them in the fridge)
• Yogurt
• Bread /bagels (untoasted because ain’t nobody got time for that…nor a toaster)
• Oatmeal with fruit and granola Lunch was always a sandwich and or a snack such as:
• Fruit
• Chips
• Popcorn Sandwiches were usually cheese and spinach and sometimes we’d get “fancy” with adding a hardboiled egg, pickles, and or avocado. We had mustard and mayo for condiments. Dinner was one of the following:
• Lentils and rice (found these amazing, tasty, and easy to make packets to make lentils and rice, literally takes 2 minutes and it’s healthy)
• Pasta and sauce
• Frozen vegetables which we would add to both of the items above.
• Beer and or wine 🙂 On a similar note, eating out costs a lot and if you’re trying to be quick, it’s often pretty unhealthy. We ate everything above the entire trip with an exception of a meal or two which were random McDonald’s meals (gross, but also desperate for wifi and to get out of the car on this day). And also us trying out “Canadian things” like Tim Horton’s and poutine. We saved a bunch of cash AND time.

[box]RELATED: Your Adventurous Utah Road Trip.[/box]

This goes hand-in-hand with your overpacking. But whilst avoiding overpacking is important, it’s also important to consider the weight of what you are packing. Remember, you’re going to be carrying your backpack around with you. And if you’re on a real low budget, then you’ll probably be walking from train stations to your accommodation. It’s therefore important to test the weight against what you can actually carry. Pop your backpack on and go for a 10 minute walk, you’ll soon find out whether it’s too heavy or not.

Are you addicted to coffee like me? I tend to always travel with either a personal stash of coffee or a handful of my favorite tea bags. Often the coffee served at hostels is shit. Going to a cafe every morning to get your fix gets expensive quick. Even if you are just carting around a plastic bag full of instant coffee, you are doing well. If you are not a coffee drinker, pack some of your favorite tea. This strategy provides both convenience and a way to cut costs down every single day.

Unlike points from airlines like United and American and many other airlines, the value of Rapid Rewards are directly tied to the cost of the current price of the that airline ticket. So a flight that costs $400 will require about 2X the amount of Rapid Rewards as a flight that costs $200. I say “about” because there are some fluctuations. Typically, your Southwest points will be worth between 1.4 to 1.6 cents per point but sometimes the value can fluctuate even more.