Life can be expensive. Travel can be costly. And while there are plenty of places in the world for budget travelers to stretch a buck (Hello, southeast Asia!), we’ve chosen Europe as our stomping grounds.
So traveling Europe has to cost a lot, right? Well, no thankfully!
Over the years, we’ve been blessed to learn a ton through making mistakes, stumbling into better strategies, and by reading lots and lots of good tips on travel blogs all over the internet.
Recently we’ve received a collection of great questions about how we afford all this European travel. So here is our attempt to comprehensively list all the strategies we’ve ever used to cushion the impact of traveling Europe on our bank account.
What You WON’T Find Here
First, one of the most important factors in sustaining our travels is being able to earn money while we’re on the road even just little bits here and there. We won’t share about any money-generating methods in this post; but stay tuned for another comprehensive guide like this to come out in the future on how we make money while traveling!
In addition, there aren’t any expense overviews in this post. We’re beginning to pull together data so we can share expense reports from specific locations and over certain spans of time, but those will take some time to compile.
Finally, while this post is about money-saving strategies, you won’t find much detail on any single one of them. We’re starting by dumping any and every idea we’ve ever used into this one blog, and then we’ll go in depth on the strategies you seem to be most interested in. So let us know in the comments what you wanna hear more about!
Here’s What You ARE Getting!
Enough with the disclaimers!
- This post is about expanding your mindset of what might be possible.
- It’s about whetting your appetite for potentially useful strategies you might want to learn more about.
- It’s about helping you discover where you can limit your spending in areas that don’t add value to your travels so that you can maximize your spending in ways that do.
Any one of these tips could save you tens, hundreds, or even thousands of dollars at a time. But the real value is in putting them together in varying combinations to create your own money-saving travel strategies that launch you into the adventures you most value.
So with all this in mind, here are 70+ tactics we’ve used to save money while traveling Europe.
General
1. Slowing down our pace. We often choose to stay longer in one place and cover less ground than a typical tourist would. The implications of this can’t be overstated. This makes lodging cheaper, transportation cheaper, food cheaper, etc.
2. Having a living vs. traveling mindset. We don’t feel the need to do everything listed in a guidebook. Actually, we probably do very few things listed in travel guides. That’s not to say we don’t visit some of the highlights; but for the most part, we try to act like we would if we actually lived in each place we visit whether staying for a single day or a few months.
3. Sustaining our travels vs. experiencing everything now. Truthfully, we never do everything we would LIKE to do in any one place. But our value is sustaining our travels over a long period vs. seeing everything a destination has to offer. In the words of Rick Steves, we plan to return, not putting unnecessary pressure on ourselves to hit everything in one pass.
4. Carry-on philosophy. Traveling with no checked baggage cuts down on baggage fees (especially on the tiny, budget airlines so prevalent throughout Europe), forces us into minimalism in our packing choices, makes us lighter and more nimble as we move through cities and their public transportation, and seriously limits any potential spending we might do on otherwise unnecessary souvenirs! (How do we fit months of gear into one small bag? Packing cubes!)
Lodging
5. Housesitting. Most people haven’t heard about this, but housesitting is the #1 reason why we were able to spend 19 months in Europe during 2016-2017. By looking after homes and/or pets while homeowners were away on holiday, we enjoyed 250 cost-free nights in places like Paris and Rome in 2016! (Our preferred platform is Trusted House Sitters.)
6. Airbnb. For the most part, the word has gotten out and Airbnb is pretty well known. But if you’re still accustomed to staying exclusively at hotels during your travels, give it a try! Prices are competitive, accommodations are full of variety (and often local charm), and you’ll almost always have a local host available to suggest the best sight-seeing tips.
7. Staying in one place for a week or longer. Speaking of Airbnb, we’ve often secured discounts of 20% or more on the daily rate by booking a place for an entire week. Or, going a step farther, we paid only 500 euro for an apartment for an entire month in the center of Budapest, Hungary! (Goes great with #’s 1-3 above).
8. Using hotel points for quick stays in expensive cities. Many credit cards allow you to earn points (through sign-up bonuses and spending) that can be exchanged for free nights at hotels such as Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, Radisson, etc. We often elect to use these points for short stays of one or two nights in cities where an Airbnb wouldn’t provide much, if any, cost savings.
9. Using free night certificates for expensive hotels and luxury experiences. There are still some hotel brands offering free nights that can be used at any of their hotels (available either as a sign-up bonus on a credit card or through demonstrating other means of brand loyalty). This is how we spent a night at the Park Hyatt in Milan, Italy for nothing but the cost of city taxes (approximately $2 per person, per day) enjoying a beautiful luxury room, complimentary afternoon tea, and spa/sauna experience that would have cost nearly $700 if we’d paid in cash!
10. Leveraging hotel status for room upgrades, free breakfast, etc. Having status with multiple hotels (often by simply signing up for their branded credit card) is sometimes a ticket to a free room upgrade (like the suite we recently enjoyed overlooking Burg Square in Bruges), free breakfast (like in Luxembourg where it would have cost $20 per person), or other benefits (like the free welcome drinks we receive every time we stay in an IHG hotel).
11. Using credit card points to pay for Airbnb stays and hotel incidentals. With our Barclays and/or Capital One Venture credit card, we can book a rental, earn points, and then use those points to pay for all or a portion of our stay. We paid for our airbnb for the entire week in Amsterdam this way! An added benefit to the Capital One card is being able to pay incidentals with points. Like our fee for parking at the Hilton in Luxembourg, magically erased with those credit card points!
12. Staying in a local area vs the middle of town. You’ll often pay a premium for accommodations on the central square. But a spot a mere 10-minute walk from there could be 30% cheaper. As a bonus, this will often put you in a neighborhood where more locals live, making other cost-saving strategies listed here more available to you, and enhancing your experience in countless ways!
13. Staying with friends we’ve met and connections we’ve made. We have been blessed with a number of kind and generous people who have invited us to stay with them for a few days, and many had never even met us! Sometimes these are friends of friends who we connected with by email, other times they are simply new friends we have met along the way!
14. Traveling with others. This doesn’t help if we stay in hotels. But if we’re traveling with friends or family, a two-bedroom Airbnb often costs less per person/family than two separate places of accommodation.
15. Couchsurfing. While it’s definitely not our go-to choice, we’ve tried couchsurfing on two separate occasions and had relatively good experiences! Neither yielded a life-long friendship, but both produced interesting conversation and mutual learning about each others’ lives and cultures.
Transportation
16. Using airline miles for flights to/from Europe. As with hotels above, some credit card companies partner with major airlines like American and United, offering you the ability to earn points and sign-up bonuses that can be exchanged for free flights. The past four times we’ve flown over the Atlantic, we booked our flights with airline miles, paying only the $5.60 fee per person each way!
17. Using Citi ThankYou points for flights within Europe. Many flights within Europe cost less than $100, some even dipping down below $25. Citi has an online portal that allows you to book flights and pay with their points; and depending on which credit card you have, you can get an approximately 25% discount. As an example, we found flights in April 2016 from Geneva to Barcelona for $35, got them discounted to $27, and booked with points for a cost of $0 to us.
18. Flying budget carriers like Norwegian, Ryanair, etc. Many of these budget carriers offer rock-bottom prices for base fares, and charge for everything (and I do mean EVERYTHING) else: meals, checked baggage, seat selection, etc. But this tactic pairs great with our carry-on philosophy (#4 above). Doing so, we were able to fly from Rome to Sicily for $9.99!
19. Traveling off-season. Outside of June-August, flights to Europe are often offered at a substantial discount. There are reasons for that: Europe is incredible in the summertime, and many school holidays overlap with this season. So if you’re willing to travel outside of peak season, you can score some pretty cheap flights, like when we paid $180 per person to fly from New York to London in January 2016!
20. Flexibility with date and time of travel. Sometimes you wanna get to Europe and you just wanna leave on a Saturday (I get it–who wouldn’t wanna maximize the length of their vacation?!). But if you can be flexible, a day earlier or later might be substantially cheaper. The same goes for time of day, length of layovers, etc. We always look at flight costs over an entire week or month to get an idea of whether or not we’re getting a good deal.
21. Using credit card points to pay for car rentals, trains, uber rides, etc. As with #11 above, these same cards can often be used to reimburse money paid for public transportation and car rentals. I love the feeling of taking a train from one city to another, knowing I’ll be able to reimburse it with points; or renting a car to drive through the South of France for 10 days knowing we’ll be able to do the same!
22. Housesitting. In addition to what’s written in #5 above, housesitting sometimes comes with the use of a car, limiting our transportation costs to gas alone while also providing the much-valued freedom to explore. Having a car during our two-month housesit in Bavaria made numerous adventures possible, in addition to plenty of places to walk with our new four-legged friend!
23. Electing primary car rental insurance through a credit card company. Some companies offer insurance coverage when you pay for your rental with their card, which allows you to decline the (often costly) insurance options provided by the rental companies. We’ve used this on a handful of occasions and I’m happy to report that our experiences with both the rental and credit card companies were painless last summer when our window was busted and broken into.
24. Peugeot buy-back lease program. We’re trying this for the first time right now! We wanted the freedom of a car during our two months this summer, but renting for that long is REALLY costly. In addition, there are often hidden costs and restrictions. The buy-back lease program (in short) is more cost-effective for longer rentals, allows you to have multiple drivers and take the car into most countries at no additional cost, and comes with zero-deductible insurance coverage. Oh, and you get a brand new car!
25. Avoiding tolls using google maps. Some countries (such as France) are full of expensive toll roads. And usually, those are the roads providing the most direct route from one place to the next. Thankfully, we’re often not in a rush and we can afford the added drive time to save money on tolls. Google Maps makes this easy by providing a route option called “Avoid Tolls.” As an added benefit, the countryside is usually much prettier than the highways!
26. Using ViaMichelin to project the cost of tolls. Sometimes, though, a more direct route is desired, or we’d like to compare the added cost of using a toll road with the amount of time it saves. I’ve found ViaMichelin to be very helpful in these situations, as you can input your route, and see the total costs you’ll pay for tolls along the way.
27. Buying metro tickets in sets. Some metro systems (Paris, for example) offer tickets in books of ten for a discount over the cost of ten individual tickets. If you know you’ll take at least as many rides as the number of tickets in the book, it will always save you money!
28. Using reloadable transport cards. Most cities have a transport card designed for locals that allows credit to be continually added for use on public transport. Many, though, require a non-refundable deposit and won’t reimburse any unused funds, and therefore don’t make much sense for short visits. However, some of these cards (like the Oyster Card in London) are still a great deal. In this case, you can pay a deposit to get a card, add money for transport during your stay, and return the card at the end to receive both your deposit and any unused funds back. Why would you do this? Public transport paid for with these cards is cheaper than individual ticket prices.
29. Strategically using day/week passes to batch your use of public transport. We don’t do many full days of sightseeing (since we’re doing at least some work on most days). But once in a while, it makes sense to go all out and see as much as we can in one day! In these cases, especially when your sightseeing will take you a bit out of the city center, a day pass can provide both savings and convenience.
30. Passes providing reduced fares for couples, families, or traveling with children. If you’re not traveling alone, you’ll often find discounts for traveling in pairs or small groups. As a married couple without children, we haven’t been able to capitalize on this often; but we did benefit in the U.K., where the pass paid for itself in only three train rides between London and the suburbs!
31. Age-based discounts. While 18-and-under seems to be a common threshold for discounts in the U.S., reduced fares are offered sometimes up to the age of 26 or 27 throughout Europe! If you’re below this age, be sure and check–we enjoyed this benefit for about 8 months in 2016 before Jana got too old!!
32. Choosing a bus vs. a train between major cities. Trains are incredibly convenient. But buses are often a great alternative at a substantial discount. Recently we traveled between Amsterdam and Brussels (a 2 hour, 45-minute journey), paying only $13 per person, when train tickets would have cost $50 each!
33. Walk! If you’re physically able, walking is the cheapest way to get around city centers, allows you to see more along the way (vs. riding a metro), and frees up more tummy space for enjoying yummy pasta or gelato!
Food
34. Booking lodging with a full kitchen. An indirect effect of #’s 5 & 6 above is that having a full kitchen allows us to cook at home and eat well whenever we’d like. You might still choose to go out for many of your meals; but having this option provides a ton of flexibility and potential cost savings!
35. Grocery shopping. What? Grocery shopping on vacation in a foreign country? YES! You do it at home, don’t you? And it’s way cheaper than eating out for every meal, right? So try it on your European vacation! At the very least, stop in for supplies for a picnic lunch. You’ll create an enjoyable experience on a budget. Plus, grocery shopping in Europe is fascinating in it’s own right (different brands, comparing prices, trying to read labels, etc.)!
36. Meal planning. Speaking of groceries, if you’re attempting to save money by cooking at home, it helps to have a plan. The last thing you want to do is buy more than you need and have to leave a lot behind when you depart! We usually plan a few days at a time. Planning, but not over-planning, also allows us to enjoy…
37. Buying from local markets. Sometimes this is your grocery shopping. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been walking back from a grocery store only to pass a local market with beautiful produce for less than we just paid! So peruse the markets as a part of your meal planning!
38. Eating from markets or street vendors. But even better (than #37) is to simply eat your way right through a market, enjoying a tasty meal full of variety on a budget, where the locals are! Try what we like to do and create your own DIY food tour. Look up a list of the typical local food, and see how many you can find. (Check out our DIY Amsterdam Food Tour here.)
39. Avoiding main tourist squares. We don’t mean to avoid them completely. By all means, check ’em out and snap those photos! Just don’t eat in one (unless you have a good reason, other than convenience). You’ll often find that food and other items sold in these areas are priced for tourists, while the restaurants a block or two away are priced for locals–and full of them, too!
40. Intentionally choosing our dine-in experiences. This is hard, because eating out is so convenient, interesting, tasty, and fun in Europe! But it’s also one of the easiest budget breakers. Moreover, we’ve had countless mediocre (and relatively expensive!) meals at restaurants simply because we didn’t plan better, got hungry, and had to eat somewhere. We try (TRY!) to limit ourselves to no more than one dinner or two lunches in restaurants per week. Speaking of lunch…
41. Eating out for lunch instead of dinner. I’m not kidding when I say you might enjoy essentially the same meal during the lunch hour for nearly half the price of the dinner cost. Plus, it can be a great break for weary legs during a day full of sightseeing! Try scoping out a great lunch spot in the middle of your day, and then return home in the evening for a home-cooked meal.
42. Formules, fixed menus, etc. Now these might become your new best friends! Especially during the lunch hour, many restaurants offer a fixed, 3-course menu based on what is local and available that day. Some of our very favorite meals (and best deals!) have come from simply selecting the menu of the day. You won’t get to pick and choose a la carte, but sometimes you’ll still have an option or two for each course. Last summer we chose the fixed menu for a lunch in Provence, and devoured an eggplant dish that was so good we keep trying to replicate it at home!!
43. Sharing an entree or other dish. This is pretty uncommon, so you might find a waiter who doesn’t understand your request! But we often share a meal when we go out to eat. Sometimes we choose one starter, share an entree, and split a dessert. Other times, we share a starter and an entree, and each choose a dessert (you get the idea!). No one says you have to leave a restaurant with a full belly. You can always enjoy a course or two, then finish up with street food or at home. Plus, we can never finish our entire meal, which leads me to #44…
44. Taking home leftovers. If you’ve just asked to split an entree, and THEN ask to take away your leftover food at the end of your meal, well now you’re REALLY gonna get some funny looks. But who cares?! Especially if you’ve booked a place with a refrigerator and/or full kitchen, take that grub home and enjoy it later! You paid for it!
45. Buying wine and beer in grocery stores vs. restaurants or bars. I’ll be the first to tell you that a Rhone wine paired with lamb in Southern France or a Belgian beer paired with a mushroom gravy is an experience not to pass up! So often when we eat out, we have a drink as well. But you can enjoy plenty of local drinks by simply searching for them in a grocery store where they’re much cheaper than at a bar or restaurant.
46. Making coffee at home. I break this rule all the time! Because one of the experiences I most enjoy while traveling is scoping out different coffee shops and sampling the espresso. But this doesn’t have to be every day. Skip the shop some days and brew at home. In some countries, you’ll even get to try a new brewing method you’ve never experienced!
47. Making our own food experiences at home. If your accommodations don’t have at least a partial kitchen, this will be pretty tough. But I’ll never forget our DIY 5-course meal in Paris–all purchased from the local market and enjoyed at the home where we were housesitting. And then there’s the first time we tried to reproduce Rome’s famous cacio e pepe pasta dish–and used way too much black pepper!
48. Bringing snacks/picnics on travel days and days out. Travel days are the worst–for eating, that is. I hate being stuck in an airport, starving, with nothing but mediocre and expensive airport food to satisfy my hunger. But the same goes for a day of sightseeing. I’m sure we’ve all experienced the onset of “hanger” from wandering around on already tired legs, trying to find a place to eat. Avoid all of it by carrying some food with you! Apples, nuts, and chocolate are almost always stashed in our day pack.
49. Buying local, generic brands and comparing cost per unit. This is getting pretty meticulous, but we’ve just learned there’s hardly a good reason to pay $5 for an item when you can get the same item, and the same amount, for $3. Often this cost savings comes simply choosing different packaging. (I mean, it’s basically the same food otherwise!)
50. Shopping at more economical vs. high-end stores. Once we bought groceries at a Monoprix in Paris. Then the next week we bought them at Lidl. After that, we vowed to never again shop at Monoprix! Nothing against Monoprix, but shops like Lidl and Aldi are much better at helping keep us on budget!
51. Carrying filtered water bottles vs buying bottled water. Bottled water is often very cheap in Europe. But still, I’m not paying 19 cents for a liter of something I can get for free from a faucet! Cheap, I know. But it is nice to have a bottle. Especially one of those filtered ones that allows us to fill up from practically anywhere. And some cities have fountains with drinkable water all over the place (those crafty ancient Romans!).
Money
52. Paying with credit cards whenever possible. This earns us points that we use to offset travel costs (more on this later), and gets us about as close to the actual currency exchange rate we can possibly get.
53. Using credit cards with no foreign transaction fees. Many cards will charge a fee of 2-3% on every transaction outside the U.S. But there are lots of cards (with many other travel benefits) that don’t charge a single fee. We always use and pay with these when we travel.
54. Using ATMs for our cash needs. Cash is much more necessary in Europe than it is in the U.S. You could buy foreign currency before leaving on your trip–or visit an exchange counter in the airport when you arrive–but you’ll almost always get a better exchange rate by simply getting money from an ATM.
55. Using a debit card that reimburses or charges no foreign ATM fees. Many banks charge a fee when you use their debit card at another bank. But, thankfully, our bank does not! So we have the flexibility of getting money from any ATM we stumble upon quickly and free of fees!
56. Paying in local currency, without currency conversion. When paying with a credit card at many shops and restaurants, you’ll be offered to pay in the local currency, or to have the cost converted to your home country’s currency. We always elect to pay without conversion; otherwise, we’d be paying a fee for a completely unnecessary convenience (Your bank or credit card company will automatically convert for you–and at a much better rate! See #52 above).
57. Using the local version of popular websites, when available. Did you know that when booking flights with Norwegian Airlines, you’ll often pay less on the Norwegian version of the site than the English version? And when booking trains in Europe, you’ll save money by looking at prices in euro instead of dollars? Give it a try! If offered, choose the currency or language of the country you’re visiting.
Sight-Seeing/Entertainment
58. Choosing entertainment that is free. Walking adventurously through a new place comes at no cost. Neither does hiking a new trail or sitting in a piazza people-watching. There are countless ways to enjoy your European experience without spending any money at all. Just last week, we were wandering through Luxembourg City on a quiet Sunday morning when we heard jazz music nearby. We wandered down to the old town, found where the music was being played, and enjoyed nearly half an hour of live music played by a local quintet. I was blown away that we didn’t have to pay a nickel!
59. Rarely visiting museums. If you love art, by all means visit the Louvre. If history is your thing, learn about the history of the places you visit. But even so, maybe you don’t need to hit up every museum to get a taste? Having said that, there ARE two types of museums we’ll pay for: a good WWII museum, and a food museum with a tasting at the end! And the Olympic museum in Lausanne, Switzerland is one of our favorites, too!
60. Recognizing when we don’t need to see another (fill in the blank). We’ve seen a ton of European cathedrals. A few were memorable, but many are not. In addition, many are free to visit, but some are not. So when we walk into a cathedral only to discover there’s an entrance fee, we kindly walk back out (unless it’s Sainte-Chappelle in Paris–pay to see the inside of that one!).
61. Paying local prices for experiences in local places. I’m sure there are plenty of tour companies willing to accept your hard-earned dollars in exchange for a carefully crafted experience complete with traditional Swiss folk dance, dress, food, etc. OR, you could just visit Appenzell in eastern Switzerland, where the people still live and dress like that in their everyday lives (just watch out for the stinky cheese)! Why visit a curated tourist trap when you could actually see the read deal?
62. Making new friends and seeing a place through their eyes. What better experience than meeting a local! And how could you get to know a place better than by asking questions to someone who actually lives there? We’ve had countless memorable moments simply because we struck up conversation in a restaurant or asked a question on the street. In fact, we’ll never forget our friend in Slovenia who took us on a miniature tour of his town before kindly driving us across the border to Italy!
Souvenirs
63. Packing carry-on only. I know, we covered this in #4. But seriously–you won’t buy as much when you know you don’t have the room in your luggage to bring it home!
64. Having a theme or vision for purchases and sticking to it. Perhaps you go to Italy specifically looking to buy a Tuscan tablecloth; or to Bavaria, looking for a traditional beer stein. We’ve recently started collecting small Christmas ornaments from various places we visit so that we can have an international Christmas tree. It’s fun searching for the perfect ornament, plus they’re small and easy to pack in our carry-on luggage. And we know we’ll enjoy bringing out the tree each Christmas and being surprised by ornaments we forgot that we had!
Phone/Data
65. Downloading google maps offline. When we first started traveling in Europe, we had no data plan on our phones. So venturing out in our car looked like us trying to write down all the directions and follow them without getting lost! What a gift when we discovered that google maps can be downloaded and used even without wifi or data! Now, even when we have a data plan, we still do this in order to limit our overall usage.
66. Knowroaming. We purchased an international SIM card that can be loaded with prepaid credit and used as much or as little as we want in any country we visit. Rarely do we even need to make a phone call or use data (wifi is so widely available nowadays), but it IS nice to know you can make that emergency call if necessary. Recently, they’ve also added various data plans. We’re currently using a plan that provides 1 GB of data per month for only $9.99, regardless of where we are in Europe.
67. Purchasing a local SIM card. When staying in one place for an extended period of time, this option makes a ton of sense. In Rome, we were able to get a local SIM and charge it up each month with 2 GB of data and 500/500 minutes/texts for only 10 euro! Plus, there were no contracts or additional fees.
68. Using Google for wifi calling and texting back home. Before leaving for 19 months in Europe in 2016, we ported our phone numbers to google hangouts. This allowed us to call and text U.S. numbers while on wifi using both our phones and computers (it’s so nice to text on a computer keyboard!), and prevented friends and family from having to learn new methods of contacting us.
Bonus Tips
69. Using free luggage lockers. Depending on when and where you arrive in a city–and where you’ve booked your accommodations–it might not make sense to find your lodging and drop your bags, only to come right back out again. Enter luggage lockers, found at many trains stations. Sometimes it might make sense to pay the fee in order to be free of your bags for a few hours of sightseeing. But then once in a while, all the world just seems to be right, and that very same locker can be yours for the day for nothing but a refundable deposit! Check before you visit a city to see if you can score a free locker!
70. Not paying to go pee 🙂 Free, public toilets just aren’t common in Europe. And I don’t know why, but it just feels like a human right to be able to pee for free! So cross your legs a little harder, wander around a little farther, and find a place that will let you use their bathroom. On a related note, it’s really nice having a car with four doors. Someone told me that maybe–just maybe–Jana has been known to squat between the front and back car doors along a random road and leave her mark on foreign soil!
A Final Tip…
71. Know when to splurge. If you’ve read or skimmed to this point, there’s a chance you’re fairly turned-off by what feels like our overly cheap way of traveling. In fact, you might be wondering if it’s possible to really even enjoy traveling while sticking to a strict budget. Well, that’s the beauty of knowing what you love (like gelato, coffee, and bakery treats) and what you’re willing to skip out on (such as luxury accommodations or nightly meals in a restaurant)! Mix and match the above tips so you can customize your own travel budget!
How do you save money while traveling Europe? Do you follow a similar budget to us, or have any money-savings suggestions we should try? Let us know in the comments below! (And if you have more questions about our strategy, don’t be shy–ask us below! Then browse our Q&A page!)
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