How old were you when you went on your first fully-funded trip? You know—the first trip for which you had to save up, plan an itinerary, and try your darndest to get flight tickets and accommodation bookings you could actually afford?
For me, it was during my university exchange programme in Australia. Like most people on exchange, I saw recess week as vacay time and was quick to toss the books aside in lieu of a 1-week road trip to Tasmania with 4 other students. It was my first real taste of travel outside the realm of family holidays and easily the best road trip of my—at the time—21 years of existence.
I thought my timeline was pretty common. But I was surprised to learn that nearly half (44%) of young adults in Singapore embarked on their first overseas trip without their parents before they turned 18, according to Skyscanner’s First Trip with Skyscanner report. Think about it: that means these young ‘uns were travelling overseas on their own before they could legally watch Love Actually (rated M18)!
The same report found that 66% of Gen Zs funded their first trip with personal savings, and 54% used income from their job(s). Evidently, our young adults work hard for their travels. But saving up is only half the story of how they could afford trips at such a young age—they also needed to be financially savvy when planning their trips.
If you’re gearing up for your first self-funded adventure or just looking to save some money on your next trip, I have 6 money-saving travel tips to share from 2 ladies who’ve walked the talk: Cyndi Hui, Travel Trends and Destination Expert at Skyscanner, and Joey Lim, Co-Founder of Sav Finance. Two of their tips saved me over $1,000 while planning for a year-end trip!
6 Best Travel Tips to Save You Money on Your Next Trip
- Travel tip #1: Pick the right destination.
- Travel tip #2: Pick the right time to visit.
- Travel tip #3: Don’t save too much money on flights.
- Travel tip #4: Consider your transportation costs first.
- Travel tip #5: Prioritise your types of travel spending.
- Travel tip #6: Money concerns go deep. Prepare yourself.
Travel tip #1: Pick the right destination.
Based on Joey’s experiences, choosing a destination dupe over a more popular and expensive counterpart could save you up to 50% of your total travel cost. Not to mention beat the crowds! It’s a win-win.
My favourite destination dupe suggestion from Joey was Hội An, Vietnam as a dupe for Venice, Italy—a place I visited in 2019 (pre-COVID!) and loved. The canals were as picturesque and quaint as they looked on my Instagram feed, and gosh—Italian gelato is to die for.
In Hội An, you get scenic waterways in a charming town for a fraction of the price and travel time. I tested out how much you can save in my article on destination dupes. It turns out you can save over $800 on the flight ticket and more than $2,800 on your hotel accommodation!
If you don’t have your heart set on a destination, that’s even better—let your wallet take the lead. Cyndi suggests you use the “Everywhere” search tool on sites like Skyscanner to help you discover hidden gems.
“You can choose ‘Everywhere’ as a destination in your search, and see myriad countries ranked by price—click into a certain country and you can also see cities within these countries and their corresponding lowest prices,” Joey explains.
Similarly, on Google Flights, you can select “Anywhere” as your destination. This will display the cheapest flights to popular destinations for the travel dates you selected.
Letting prices take you wherever they take you is perhaps the easiest way to save money on flights and hotels. If most of the options for one destination are out of your budget, just pick a cheaper one. You can go as low as you want to.
I decided to test this out on a holiday I’m planning from 16 to 23 Dec 2024—I want to travel at the end of the year, but be back in time for Christmas. I don’t really have a travel destination in mind, but I wouldn’t mind visiting Venice again. So let’s look at those flight prices.
A flight to Venice will cost you at least $1,227—and that’s if you fly for a whopping 34 hours! No thanks. I would rather pay an extra $100+ for the $1,351 flight to shave off my travel time by 15 hours.
Now let’s try searching “Everywhere”. For the same dates, here are the lowest flight prices:
Tempting, but I want to get out of Southeast Asia. Luckily for me, there are plenty of other options that are still much cheaper than flying to Venice.
I would never have thought to search for a trip to the Maldives, but it turns out that a flight there costs $523—less than half the cost of a flight to Venice. I even see flights to other places in Italy from $669 (Milan). That’s a $682 discount compared to our Venice flight. Same country, wildly different prices!
I’ve always wondered if the Maldives are as overrated or as beautiful as they say. So all things considered, let’s lock in the Maldives for my year-end trip. I saved $828 just by changing my destination.
Travel tip #2: Pick the right time to visit.
We talked about the where, now we have to talk about the when. Even destination dupes and lower-cost travel spots can have their peak and off-peak periods. To lock in the cheapest deals, we’ve got to be a little fluid.
Cyndi’s tip is to compare flight prices across an entire month at a time instead of locking in certain dates and only searching for flights that fit them. I gave that a go and looked at flights in Nov and Dec 2024. Here’s what that looked like:
I had a hunch that flights would cost more in December, but I didn’t expect that stark a difference. Fortunately, I don’t have too firm a plan in mind for my trip. I just know I want it to be around the end of the year so that it feels like a reward. Looking at these prices, I’m happy to change my trip from December to November to save some cash. And since I’m not limiting myself to, for example, only fly out on a Friday and return on a Sunday, I managed to get the price of my return flight down to $284:
By changing my travel dates to November instead of December, I brought the cost of my flight down from $523 to $284. That’s $239 I saved simply by moving my trip forward a month! And this way, I’ll probably enjoy fewer crowds too since December is the holiday season.
ALSO READ: Travel Safety: Tips for Women, LGBTQ+, and Persons with Disabilities
Travel tip #3: Don’t save too much money on flights.
Think booking last-minute cheap flights or one-way tickets is a good deal? Not always.
“If you do book a last-minute flight, you may sometimes realise that the more affordable accommodations are all booked up and you are left with more expensive options, which effectively negates the savings,” Joey explains. “Not to forget, there are also early bird discounts.”
I’m booking my trip for the end of the year, so there were no last-minute deals anyway. But in case you’re planning a trip really soon, don’t be too quick to book your flight before you check accommodation prices.
The other factor to consider is flying budget. Flights are a trade-off between comfort and savings—can you imagine being on an 8-hour flight on a budget airline? *shudders* For Joey, the threshold is 5 hours—anything longer and she’ll take a full-service flight instead.
Plus, a 2023 MoneySmart survey on flight delays and cancellations found that up to 47% of travellers’ flights were disrupted on popular budget airlines. Only 23-35% of delayed travellers were compensated by the airlines. You may pay a higher price for flying cheap!
Travel tip #4: Consider your transportation costs first.
Interestingly, one of the first few things you might want to consider is transportation costs.
“I think transportation is often the most difficult to save on because it is essential to get around on the trip and directly affects the quality of your trip and the overall experience,” Joey tells me. She chooses public transport as much as possible, but even that is a fixed cost. So set aside that pool of money as one of the most non-negotiable expenses of the trip.
That makes convenience and location big factors when choosing accommodation because it affects the ease with which you can get around. Joey’s strategy is to prioritise a convenient location first, then select the cheapest option in the vicinity.
I tried this out on my trip and found a hotel called Summer Beach Maldives where I can get a standard single room for under $100 a night. They offer a complimentary airport shuttle and public transportation is just 310m away.
Travel tip #5: Prioritise your types of travel spending.
Cyndi shared with me that she spoke to a young traveller who painstakingly saved up money for almost 2 months, working multiple part-time and ad-hoc jobs, in order to have enough for her first self-funded trip. Yikes. That sure was some hard-earned money. All the more you should spend money that you worked hard carefully and mindfully.
Once you have a budget for a trip, you’ll be faced with the decision of how to allocate your budget across categories like flights, accommodation, food, transport, fees to visit attractions, and more. It’s a lot to think about—especially if this is your maiden self-funded voyage out of Singapore. So what’s the strategy?
“My personal planning process is to always choose 1 to 2 main experiences I want to get out of a trip,” Joey shares. “I would allow myself to splurge on that and save on all the rest. For example, I would splurge on museums and activities in Europe, private car hire in Jeju, and shopping in Seoul.”
In the Maldives, popular experiences include snorkelling, diving, and boat tours. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to see a manta ray or whale shark up close. From my browsing online, booking these experiences can cost you anywhere from $80 to a few hundred.
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Sometimes, the accommodation itself is the experience. You don’t get those water villas travel influencers post just anywhere. You also don’t get them for any old price. Minimally, I think you’ll be paying $300 to $400 a night for that kind of experience—and that’s a low estimate. Any less and it’ll just be a beachside hotel instead of an overwater villa. The IG-worthy water villas I found all cost $600+ a night, while some can even set you back $1,500+ a night.
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Since I’m travelling alone, it doesn’t make sense to book up a whole villa for myself, king-sized bed, private pool, and all. I’m there on a solo trip, not a honeymoon. Plus, I love animals and would much rather spend money on activities during which I get the chance to encounter animals. Although I save hundreds by not opting for a water villa, this is more about making sure money is well spent relative to me than about saving money in absolute terms.
Travel tip #6: Money concerns go deep. Prepare yourself.
A final word of advice: there are a lot of money-related concerns when it comes to planning an overseas trip. That’s probably one reason why budget ranked as the second biggest factor (56%) for young adults when it comes to planning their first trip, according to Skyscanner’s First Trip with Skyscanner report.
Joey tells me that when she went for her first self-funded trip at 18, her main concerns included:
- Estimating your budget: “Because there were so many components to a trip (flights, accommodation, food, transportation, and activities), it was difficult to estimate total budgets,” Joey shares. If you’re travelling between cities, your transportation costs may be higher than expected.
- Booking first, saving later: Though it’s tempting, avoid booking trips before saving up the full amount needed. This will just lead to you eventually needing to cut back on budgets.
- Finding safe, affordable, comfortable accommodation: This often also leads to a trade-off between different categories of expenses. “For example, would you stay at a dirt-cheap hostel thatʼs out of the way and spending more on transport? Or stay at a more expensive hotel in the city and walk?”
- Cash or card?: You have to decide how much cash to carry with you and how much you’re going to rely on credit or debit cards—but then you deal with foreign transaction fees. I suggest you opt for a multi-currency card instead to avoid this!
- Unexpected costs: Medical emergencies, lost belongings, or unplanned itinerary changes could happen anytime. One way to shield yourself from these unwanted surprises is to buy travel insurance. This will cover anything from medical bills and flight delays to stolen items and even trip cancellations.
Planning for a trip is never a walk in the park. But if you ask me, the unexpected costs and mishaps are all part of the ride. Chin up, take them in stride! Happy travels!
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About the author
Vanessa Nah is a personal finance content writer who pens articles on the ins and outs of personal loans, the T&Cs of credit cards, and the ups and downs of alternative investments. She’s a researcher at heart and leaves no stone unturned when it comes to breaking down complex finance concepts and making them easy to understand for the everyday Singaporean. When Vanessa’s not debunking finance myths, you’ll find her attending dance classes, fingerpicking a guitar, or (most impawtently) fulfilling her life mission to make her one-eyed cat the most spoiled and loved kitty in the world.
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