Slow Travel — The Best Budget Travel Secret We Can Share

Slow travel is the best budget travel secret we can share. At the time of writing this we have been on the road travelling continuously and living out of suitcases for seven years. Travellers often ask us what our travel secret is, how we fund our travels, and how we have managed to travel for so long. Travelling slowly is our secret.

As perpetual globetrotters we often get asked how we’ve managed to stay on the road for severn years. Did we sell a house, take out a personal loan, max out credit cards, or are we spending our life savings? While we do work as we travel — as professional travel and food writers and photographer — slow travel is the best budget travel secret we can share with you.

Sure, you can sell your house, spend your life savings, take out a loan, and travel on credit cards, but unless your home was a mansion, you invested very wisely, the loan was substantial, and you have extremely high credit limits, you probably won’t make that money stretch to seven years or even two years or twelve months or whatever the duration of your dream trip — unless you travel slowly.

Slow Travel — The Best Budget Travel Secret We Can Share

Working will extend the length of your travel and travellers have always and will always embark upon working holidays. And I’m not talking about the small percentage of travel professionals like ourselves, the writers and photographers who derive their main income from writing about travel, nor the ever-increasing number of travel bloggers who spend their days in hostels and hotel rooms tapping out blog posts and devising kooky projects to keep them on the road. Um, well, like ourselves.

Nor am I referring to the self-styled location independent digital nomads who work remotely, often in IT, running web sites and programming and writing apps and doing whatever else they’re doing to make a considerable amount of money. Nor expats. Having been expats for seven years, I can vouch that they’re an entirely other breed with an altogether different way of life.

I’m talking about the everyday travellers who set out to work their way around the world doing temporary jobs — working on farms, picking grapes during wine harvests, packing fruit, offering language lessons, working as nannies or au pairs, waiting tables, working bars, pulling beers, doing secretarial jobs, filling supermarket shelves, and performing countless other tasks that most of them are probably way too qualified to do simply because they want to travel, and travel for as long as they possibly can.

I’m also talking about the gap year kids who volunteer abroad, the backpackers who head off for a couple of years, the couples who plan to do a six-month trip at mid-range level, the grey nomads who criss-cross countries in their motor-homes, and the families who embark on a year of house-swapping — or, like my parents, set off in a caravan for a year that turns into five.

Slow travel is their secret.

As it is for tho retirees and gypsy families who stay on the road for years, settling into camping and caravan parks for months on end. And the home-swapping families who house-hop around the world for one month at a time. They have it all worked out.

Not the travellers intent on ticking off X number of countries, seeing Y number of monuments or accumulating a certain amount of frequent flyer miles or airline points by a certain age. Nor the If It’s Tuesday It Must Be Belgium-style of tour groups.

Because the more you do, the faster the pace of your travel, and the more frequently you move, the more costly your trip will be. It will also likely be more unsatisfying, rushing through cities, seeing the iconic sights and little else, focusing more on taking pictures than taking in the atmosphere of a place.

But then if you don’t take the photos you won’t remember anything other than the budget calculations you find yourself continually making and the crazy itinerary you glance at countless times a day in an effort to keep up with the frenetic pace of travel you have set yourself.

Slow travel is the best budget travel secret by far.

Slow Travel Budget Travel Secrets — Tips That Will Save You Money

Take your time getting there

Trains, ferries, buses, bikes, and even your feet, will (mostly) all be more affordable than planes (low cost airlines aside), so take your time getting to where you want to go, and travelling from place to place. Remember — as clichéd as it sounds — travel is as much about the journey as the destination.

Settle in for a while

Whether it’s one week, one month, or more, settling in to a place is the best way to save money. The longer you stay the more you’ll save. We prefer renting apartments or houses, and monthly rates are always cheaper than nightly or weekly rates. But also consider camping and caravanning (even cheaper), house-swaps (free) and house sitting (there’s usually a joining fee), and if you’re young and like the social aspect of a youth hostel or backpackers, why not stay a while, volunteer to work for board or negotiate a cheaper longer-stay rate.

Walk or use local transport

We always walk as much as we can because we find walking by far a better way to get to know a place than catching a subway or even bus, but if you can’t walk somewhere then public transport is the next best option for getting around. The people-watching and eavesdropping opportunities aside, in most places it’s cheaper than catching a cab, especially if you’re settling in for a while and can buy weekly or monthly transport passes.

Eat like locals and eat in more than you eat out

Our top slow travel secret isn’t a secret at all if you’re a regular reader: we eat like locals when we travel. When we’re on short trips we tend to eat out for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but when we’re settling into one place for a while, we will only eat out once a day and cook or prepare the other meals in our apartment rental kitchen ourselves. That doesn’t mean you always have to eat at home — although that can be fun too, especially when you make friends and invite them over — you can put together a picnic for lunch in a park, a barbecue to enjoy beside a beach, or take a bottle of wine and some cheese and cold cuts and sit by a lake. Even cold beers and sandwiches can be amazing if you’ve made them yourself from local produce and you eat them in a spectacular spot.

Shop where the locals shop

Whether it’s a fresh food market, a local supermarket or specialty shops in a suburb, you’re always going to pay less for your groceries and fruit and vegetables than you would in a mini-mart in a tourist zone or even a supermarket in the city centre. You’ll also gain an insight into the everyday life of that place and how the locals shop, eat and even socialise. Also, often you only figure out where the best places to buy are after being in a place for a while.

Drink where the locals drink

While it’s tempting to visit those glamorous rooftop bars and popular waterfront lounges, especially if in the lead-up to your trip your research involved clipping stories from glossy travel magazines that featured the latest hot spots, local watering holes — cafés, bars, pubs, even local clubs, like RSLs in Australia, journalist clubs in Asia, and sporting clubs around the world — will be much cheaper to drink at, and again, like the shopping spots, provide much more of an insight into local culture and social life. And once again, it can take a while to discover which pubs and bars the locals prefer to prop themselves up at, which is why you need to settle in for a while and travel slowly.

So while you can sell your house, tap into your life savings, acquire a few credit cards, and even fund your travel with a personal loan, the secret to making your finances last as long as possible is simple. Slow travel. Just travel slowly.