Nomad Wallet

Travel More. You Can Afford It.

The Complete Guide to Booking Multiple Separate Flight Tickets to Save on Airfares (Part 2)

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Hope you guys enjoyed Christmas! Now, as you’re fighting off that holiday bloat, let’s continue where we left off last week.

I posted about the benefits and risks of booking separate flights last week.

Basically, you can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars by purchasing the different legs of your journey separately. These are not connecting flights and that’s where the risk factor comes in. If your first flight is delayed for some reason and you miss your second flight, the airlines are not responsible and won’t give you any compensation. You have to purchase a new ticket.

Is this risk worth the savings? That’s for you to decide.

If you want to go ahead and book separate flights to save money, take the necessary precautions to minimize your risk as much as possible.

To find out what precautions you need to take, click here.

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The Complete Guide to Booking Multiple Separate Flight Tickets to Save on Airfares (Part 1)

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The shortest distance between two places may be a straight line. But when it comes to saving money on airfares, taking detours may be the way to go.

Here’s how, in a nutshell: Divide your trip into two or more segments, then purchase a ticket for each segment of the trip. The savings can be significant — often 30% and sometimes even more than 50%.

To continue reading, click here

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Smart Shopper’s Guide to Renting a Car @SmartyCents

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Americans spend $24 billion on rental cars every year, and about $7 billion of that is spent on airport car rentals during vacation travel. It’s no wonder competition for rental cars can get stiff surrounding busy holidays. To minimize the amount of your hard-earned money that goes into the rental car industry’s coffers, it’s important to be strategic about your car reservations. Start looking for the right car as early as you can—especially if you travel in a large group.

Read more… 

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Affording Travel Interview With Mar: Business Travel to 80+ Countries

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Imagine flying business class and staying at high-end hotels all over the world. Pretty awesome, right? Now imagine getting paid to do it.

My interviewee today, Mar of Once in a Lifetime Journey, used to travel for work every week. She has visited 80 countries and has lived as an expat in London, Montreal, Dubai Johannesburg, Tegucigalpa and Singapore. This kind of lifestyle can get tiring, of course, but Mar’s wanderlust made it a great arrangement for her.

Besides getting to slip off to explore exotic destinations during her free time, she also had a lot of opportunities to rack up airline and hotel loyalty points to use for vacations. (She shares some of her best travel hacking tips at the end of the interview.)

To read the interview, click here.

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33 Free Hotel Items to Take Home

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Who doesn’t love little bottles of hotel toiletries?

I don’t usually collect stuff, but I turn into a kleptomaniac when it comes to these bottles. They’re the perfect size for travel and they’re practically free souvenirs.

There’s nothing wrong with taking these bottles home, despite how illicit it may feel. (It’s common for people to call it “stealing”, which I don’t think is accurate.)

Besides the fact that my bill covers the cost of these free hotel items, hotels actually want guests to take the toiletries home. These things remind guests of the hotel and advertise the brand to everyone else.

But what other things can you take from the hotel room? Where do you cross the line and commit theft?

To find out, click here.

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Affording Travel: Gunther Holtorf’s 26-Year RTW Road Trip

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The words “epic” and “amazing” are thrown around these days. (What this amazing cat does in this epic video will blow your mind!) But this story is truly extraordinary.

TL;DR summary: A German couple and their beloved car went on a super-extended road trip around the world. It was such a massive trip that various powerful people intervened to help them along. Gunther Holtorf will probably earn the Guinness record for the highest number of countries visited in a single vehicle. (Christine died before the end of the trip; Gunther and Otto went on to visit a total of 179-215 countries in 23-26 years, depending on your news source.)

The story has a lot of heart. It’s about adventure, human connections, love and all that good stuff.

But as I was reading the article, what I paid extra close attention to was the practical stuff. I was intrigued by how they managed to transport the car all over the world, including to North Korea.

I also tried to figure out how they paid for their travel expenses. This is what I automatically do now. I try to reverse-engineer how other travelers support themselves financially to see if there are any travel tricks I can learn.

To read my findings, click here.

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Affording Travel Interview With Trisha: Volunteering / Work Exchange Gigs

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If you want to travel but you’re broke and all you have is your body, what do you do? Work that body, that’s what.

Free travel accommodation with work exchangeI’m talking about work exchange, of course. (What did you have in mind?)

Work exchange is an arrangement whereby a traveler provides labor to get a free bed and some free food. It’s a great way to minimize your travel expenses and meet new people. (“Work exchange” and “volunteering” are pretty much interchangeable when we’re talking about this kind of arrangement, although “volunteering” always makes me think of charities.)

I interviewed Trisha Velarmino from P.S. I’m on My Way to find out more about work exchange / volunteering as a way to afford extended travel. Originally from the Philippines, Trisha is currently making her way across Latin America by volunteering.

To read the interview, click here.

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How to Avoid Foreign ATM Fees When You Travel Abroad

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Do you know how much your ATM withdrawals abroad are costing you?

They tend to be pretty small charges so you probably don’t notice them much, but ATM fees can seriously add up, especially if you’re a long-term traveler.

For each foreign withdrawal, your home bank may charge about $5 per transaction. If you limit your withdrawal to once a week, you would spend $20-$25 a month on ATM fees. That’s at least $260 a year.

On top of the fees from your own bank, the ATM machine abroad may also charge you about $5. Assuming fees of $10 per transaction, you could easily end up paying $520 a year with weekly withdrawals.

That’s not even taking into account the currency conversion fee, which usually ranges between 1% and 3% of the transaction.

And because many ATMs have withdrawal limits, you could very well need to get cash more frequently than just once a week. After all, in some countries people use cash almost exclusively.

Think about all the things you could buy with $520 (or probably more). Do you really want to donate all that money to the bank?

No? You have a few options to avoid bank fees when you withdraw cash from ATMs abroad.

To learn more, click here.

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