Major Budget Travel Planning

Traveling is by far my favorite hobby. When one trip ends, I am frequently already making mental notes, planning our next voyage. Unfortunately for all of us, monetary and time constraints prevent us from going wherever we want whenever we want in the height of luxury. The good news is, you don't have to have a C-level salary to travel in comfort and style to whatever destination you choose - it just takes a little extra leg work and knowledge!

I've been fortunate enough to travel pretty extensively for my age, and one of the benefits of this has been picking up a lot of great, budget travel tips (from the planning stages through the trip itself) that are tried and true. While I've posted on travel a few times in the past on this site, I've never really done an extensive overview of the travel planning process and how you can save big on your big trip.

This article is organized into five-parts, each focused on a specific stage of the trip planning experience:

- Research
- Budgeting/Saving
- Reservations
- Itinerary
- Spending

No trip - no matter how big or far away - needs to be extravagent or excessively costly in order to be a wonderful, memorable experience. In the past two years I've visited France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, all on a strict budget. I feel pretty qualified in this area and can certainly testify that a little planning will go a long way in terms of guaranteeing a happy and budget-friendly trip.

Part One: Research

The first step you ought to make for any major purchase should be lots and lots of research. Planning travel is no exception, and, in this case, the research part if often fun.

Where you want to go and how long you want to stay there both dictate how much money you will spend. The options are endless, it's true; many people feel overwhelmed by this and want to skip the whole research bit and buy some generic package deal just so that they won't have to deal with it. That's fine - but it certainly won't get you the most value out of your vacation.