Think Travel Is Too Expensive? Here’s Why That’s Just a Myth

Think travel demands deep pockets? We push back with a road-tested guide to seeing more while spending less. We challenge the idea that travel is only for big budgets, using a lifetime of road trips, points strategies, and common-sense choices to show how to see more for less. From camp stoves to tram rides, we trade luxury for stories and keep the wonder intact.

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Why Travel Isn’t Expensive

Bob Bales 0:00

Hi, and welcome to The Traveling Fool, the show where we talk about travel destinations, the history and culture around those destinations, along with travel tips and news. I'm your host, Bob Bails, and today we're going to delve into some of the myths about how expensive it is to travel, and I'll give you a few tips. So stay tuned, and we'll be right back.

Bob Bales 0:56

Now, when we talk about travel, one of the biggest things you hear people say is, yeah, that's all nice and well and good, but it's pretty expensive and I can't afford to be doing that kind of stuff. Okay. Well, we're going to get into how you don't have to spend a whole lot of money in order just

A Fireman’s Budget, Big Adventures

Bob Bales 1:15

to travel. Now, to do this, I'm going to start off with a little story. I'm going to tell you about my own personal experiences. Now I grew up in South Texas. My dad was a fireman. He never made much money. I'm old, so this was a while back. Now my dad, even though he was like an assistant fire chief, I never realized how little they paid them. They didn't really get a living wage and a decent pay raise until after I had joined the army. So growing up, he had 30 days vacation every year. That was one of the nice perks. And we went somewhere every single summer for 30 days or about 28 days. And you say, well, how can you afford to do that when you don't have much money? Well, it was simple. He had a homemade camper that he had built off of a trailer frame with some friends of his. And later we actually saved up some money and bought a camper. But we would go on road trips and we would stay at state parks, national parks, and he would plan this trip out for months.

Bob Bales 2:25

We would travel for eight or nine hours and go to a state park and stay there for two or three days and see everything around that area. Then we'd pack up and go to another state park and go camping and stay there for two or three days. Until we got to our destination. And we went, now I'm in South Texas, we went to New York on the east coast. We went to California on the west coast. I saw all kinds of things growing up from the Mesa Verde, which is the Pueblo dwellings in Colorado, to Pikes Peak in Colorado, the Grand Canyon, the Petrified Forest, uh San Francisco, you name it. I got to see it. I went to Civil War battlefields and all throughout the South and historic locations. And it was great. And he made sure that we went on a good vacation every single year and we had something to do, my brother and I. And I never really realized I just thought we were living great. I mean, I was a kid. We're staying at a State Parks or National Parks. I get to go fishing, I get to go walking around out in the woods, and then in the afternoon we're gonna go see some historic site or go to the Grand Canyon or something. I mean, what better could you ask for when you're a kid?

Bob Bales 3:42

We never stayed at a hotel. I never remember staying at a hotel on these vacations, and very seldom did we ever eat at restaurants. We might stop at a hamburger place or a breakfast place, like an IHOP or something like that, once or twice during the trip. The rest of the time we had a camp stove, mom bought groceries and we ate good at the campground. I mean she made everything. We had steaks and hot dogs and you name it. A lot of times when we were driving, my mother would be up on the front seat making sandwiches and pass them to the back seat, and we would eat as we drove for lunch. So it never was really expensive. But

Campgrounds, Cooking, and Cheap Eats

Bob Bales 4:30

I would come back to school every year, and I would, you know how kids do, everybody talks, what'd you do? And a lot of these kids just stayed home and watched TV, watched cartoons and played outside or whatever. They asked me what I did, and I said, Well, I was I went to the Grand Canyon or I went to New York City or whatever. And all of this without my dad ever making a whole lot of money. So it can be done. And even today it can be done.

Bob Bales 5:00

How do I know that? I'm living proof of it. I've been doing it for years. So here's a few tips. First, find out what you really want to do on vacation. And a lot of this has been ruined by social media and social media influencers. You look at all these pretty pictures, you go, oh my god, that's so beautiful. How could I ever afford to go there? Well, chances are that social media person probably didn't pay to go there either. They got paid to go there and take photos, it depends on how many followers you get, the more money you get paid. And as we have all come to know, social media does not necessarily tell you a true picture of what is there. I'm guilty of it too. When I go somewhere and I'm taking photos for a tourism board or for my blog or whatever, I want to get the absolute best shot. And to do that, sometimes you have to wake up really early in the morning when there's no crowds, or you have to stand there and wait for 15 minutes for people to get out of the way so you can get the really nice shot without 400 people standing in your photo. But that may not be the actual truth. I try to get a really nice shot, but also not one that is not distorted in the fact that that's not actually what the place looks like. Because there's nothing more frustrating than seeing something really pretty on social media and go, oh, I gotta go see this place. You get there, and it is nothing like what is portrayed. So that's the first thing. Don't get your hopes up from something on social media and and plan to go there. Figure out what you want to go on your trip for. And you're gonna find

Social Media vs. Travel Reality

Bob Bales 6:40

out that probably the most expensive part of that trip is gonna be, especially if you're traveling out of the country, is gonna be the air travel or the hotel. So there's a couple ways you can do this to reduce the air travel costs. And I'm gonna give you one or two just little quick tips.

Bob Bales 6:58

There are sites on the internet that they make a living out of showing you the lowest fares. One of them is um Matt's Flights. He's got a great site. You can sign up for free and get their free alerts, or you can pay him a yearly fee and he'll give you the extra special bonus alerts. And all that means is you're gonna get flights tailored specifically to you. And um he'll shoot you out deals all the time. If I tell him, okay, I want my home base to be Houston, Texas, I'm gonna fly out to Intercontinental Airport. Well, I'll get alerts for okay, Delta just dropped their fare from Houston to Miami. You can get a flight on there for $118. And here he tells you how to book it and everything else and what dates it's open. And there's some other websites out there also on the internet that you can sign up for that will alert you to low price fares. So that's one way. The other way is to sign up for the airline self, especially and they'll alert you.

Bob Bales 8:05

Sign up for their alerts. But if you really want to use something like miles or loyalty miles for the airlines, um, there's a real quick way to do it if you plan six months in advance. And one is to get you a credit card. Now you gotta hear me out here. I've got a couple of credit cards for airlines, and you can get a Chase credit card which gives you miles and points. You can get other branded credit credit cards from the airlines themselves, from Alaska Air to Delta to United, you name it. And there's websites that tell you all about the best credit cards to get. But here's the thing if you get the credit card that's gonna give you a massive sign up bonus. And they change all the time. A lot of them are like 50,000 mile sign up bonus if you spend this much in this many months or this over over this period of time. Well, instead of those 50,000 a couple times a year, that'll bump it up and go, Well, we're gonna give you 80,000 to sign up. Well, that's when you want to sign up for it. So look at the best signups that

Cutting Airfare Costs Smartly

Bob Bales 9:10

you can possibly get. And normally it's we will give you 50 or 60 or 70 or 80,000 miles in addition to what you earn, if you spend three thousand dollars over the next three months or four thousand dollars over the next three months, and you're like, ooh, I don't know if I want to put that much on a credit card. Well, here's the trick. And I do this every single month, and my miles just keep going up. You get miles by spending your credit card or using it for dining for anything, and some miles or more. They'll say, Okay, well, if you dine out, you get two times the miles.

Bob Bales 9:48

I use my credit card for the things that I buy anyway. Every single month, whether it's groceries, gasoline, whatever it is, my cigars, which yeah, I do buy a lot of cigars, but that's where my credit card goes to, and then every month I get my statement, and every month I pay off my credit card bill. So instead of using my debit card or getting cash out the bank and using cash to go buy groceries or whatever the case is, the money sits at the bank. I'm gonna spend it anyway, but I'm gonna use my credit card to spend it. And I don't go crazy, I don't go, you know, buy all kinds of stuff on credit just because I have the credit card. I use it for what I'm going to spend anyway. And at the end of every month, I pay it off so there's no interest. And that's how you can rack up a lot of points, and you would be surprised you're gonna spend fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars a month just on gas, groceries, odds and ends. If you think about it, that's probably what you're spending, if not more. And if you do that for two or three months, then boom, now you've got fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty thousand miles in addition to what you put on your credit card.

Bob Bales 11:04

Now those eighty thousand or sixty thousand miles is enough to get you a round trip airfare to a lot of places. So that's one way to easily do it over a period of two or three months. Now the other thing is if you're traveling in the States and you're not going overseas, well, do a road trip. It may take you a little longer to get there, but I really like road trips because you can stop along the way, you can see things, you can explore, and you'll discover all kinds of stuff you would have never known was there had you just jumped on a plane and flew over there. Take the time to hit the highways and the little backroads and stuff, and you'll have a blast. You will discover more things than you could ever think of. Just keep your eyes open and stop at interesting places. Build in a day or two to get there and a day or two to get back, and there you have it.

Bob Bales 11:51

Now you're gonna say, Well, gas is expensive, idiot. How do you expect me to use all that gas money? Well, yeah, but it's not as expensive as flying, and there are apps like Gas Buddy and a couple of others that will show you the cheapest gasoline around. You just open up the app, tap on the little map, and it'll say, Well, here's all the places around here that are selling gasoline at all the gas stations, and here's what it is. You go, Oh, well, it's if I go two miles down this road instead of stopping at the one on the highway, I can get it 30 cents cheaper. I think I'll just drive the two miles, get gas, then come back to the highway and keep going. And a lot of people say, Well, what's 10 cents

Credit Cards, Miles, and Strategy

Bob Bales 12:30

or 12 cents a gallon cheaper if it's five miles away? Well, when you're filling up the tank and you're on a road trip, it makes a big difference.

Bob Bales 12:39

Now I've had the opportunity to travel to a lot of countries and a lot of places in the States, and sometimes I was traveling by myself, and sometimes I was traveling with my entire family, and sometimes it was just me and the wife. And me and my wife have totally different ideas about vacations and travel. She wants to go to someplace really nice and relax. And I understand that. I I don't want to do that, but I have on many occasions, and I've stayed at really, really nice hotels and resorts and at a an all inclusive that have like three restaurants or four restaurants at the place. And I've stayed at just all kinds of really nice places. However, when I travel by myself, I don't care where I stay, as long as it meets two criteria. It's in a safe location in the town. You know, I don't want to have to walk outside the front door and trip over crackheads, be in an area that has muggings and shootings twenty-four hours a day, and that's anywhere in the world, so I'm just I look for a safe location in town. And does the place I'm staying at have hot water and electricity? That's it. I don't care. And I've stayed at some really, really small places, and really places that most people would say, I'm not staying there, that's a dump. Well, as long as it's clean, I don't care.

Bob Bales 14:05

I'll give you an example. I worked overseas for many years, and I could not always come back to the United States on my time off because of the way the tax codes are written. You have to be out of the states so many days a year in order to take advantage of the tax codes. So one time I went to Prague for 30 days. I couldn't come back to the States, and so the wife flew over and met me in Prague. And we stayed at this really nice hotel right off of the square in Prague, next to the Charles Bridge and across the river from the castle, and it was beautiful, and the whole area you're right in the tourist area, and it was really, really nice. And she stayed there for a few days, about a week or so, and then she flew back to the States. Well, I still had three weeks to go in Prague. Well, the first thing I did after she got on a plane and went home is I checked out of that hotel, and I found a place that was about, I'm gonna say a ten minute trolley or you know it it's not a subway it's more of a cable car or trolley, ride to the middle of town. I went to the outskirts of the town and I found a place, and it was dirt cheap, and it was a large room, even had a little balcony I could walk

Road Trips and Saving on Gas

Bob Bales 15:20

out on. It was clean and the water was hot, and it was a hundred yards or less from the station that you caught the little trolley or cable car down to the center of town. And that's where I stayed for the next two and a half, three weeks.

Bob Bales 15:37

Every morning I would just get up, walk across the street to the trolley and go downtown and explore, or go to the train station and go to the next town over or whatever. I wouldn't spend any time at the hotel. I don't care what the hotel looks like. I've done the same thing in London. I stayed there for a week one time at a hotel where it was so tiny. I mean tiny, tiny, tiny. It had a double bed that was up against the wall, and when you sat on the edge of the bed, I swear there was like two feet between the edge of the bed and the wall, and there was just enough room in there for the bed. That was it. And if you wanted to go in and use the bathroom and everything, you had you could open the door and the sink was there, but you couldn't get to the toilet. So you had to open the door, stand on top of the toilet in a way to open the door fully in order just to use it and get to the shower. It was an acrobatic feat. But I didn't care. I stayed there for six days. Every morning at six o'clock I woke up, got dressed, and headed out the door. I would come back around nine o'clock, ten o'clock at night, go to sleep. I don't care what the hotel looks like. It had electricity, the water was hot. That's all I cared about. And it was clean and in a safe area. And you can save a lot of money just on accommodations.

Bob Bales 17:04

When I was a kid, like I said, we stayed at campgrounds. You took a trailer and stayed at a campground or stayed in a cabin, and you could stay there for fairly cheap and just get in the car and drive around and see all the sights during the day. So there's all kinds of ways to reduce the cost of the travel. For me, it's the experience while I'm there. It's not the hotel. But there are a few occasions where, especially if the wife is traveling with me, it's gotta be the hotel. And that's when I you go to the really nice hotels, and there's a few ways to get some discounts and ensure you get the best prices there as well. So I guess what it amounts to is if you really want to travel, don't let anybody influence you into thinking that you've got to have a lot of money to do it. You really don't.

Bob Bales 17:48

Yes, if you want to take a cruise around the world, it's gonna cost you a lot of money. If you want to travel to Nepal and climb Mount Everest, yeah, it's gonna cost you some money. But you can go to

Choosing Lodging That Actually Matters

Bob Bales 18:00

places and experience these places without having to spend a ton of money. Whether it's in the States, whether it's traveling around your state to places that you haven't visited, or even have vested and enjoy, whether it's taking a road trip for a week and traveling up the eastern seaboard or traveling across Texas, which that's a road trip in itself. It's a big state. There's a lot of things you can do to enjoy and experience your travel destinations without spending a ton of money. And I hope you do, because I tell you about it, I've always loved traveling. I love history, so I love traveling to locations where history took place. And I love seeing new things and experiencing new things and learning about the culture and the destination itself and the people, what happened there throughout history. And it all started because my dad, the fireman, decided he was gonna travel and see the country and let his kids experience things. And that's where I got my love of travel, and I've done it my entire life.

Bob Bales 19:00

I don't care whether it's exploring some little country town in Texas, and yes, I have been to Nepal a couple of times. It's beautiful country. Or Asia or going to Africa or going to South America or going to the Caribbean, anywhere. Don't let just the destination hotel play a part of where you're going. You can always find a place to stay if you want to go and travel and see what's there. And don't let the airfares scare you. There's ways to get cheaper airfares. Or just take a road trip. But anyway, that's my advice for this episode. And next time we're going to talk about a specific destination, I think.

Bob Bales 19:41

I've got a couple of podcasts coming up where we talk about destinations, talk about something really weird that happened at one destination. I think you'll like that one. And just a few more on travel tips and things like that. I really appreciate you listening.

Bob Bales 19:57

If you can, hit that like or subscribe. That would mean a lot to me. And uh if you get a chance, check out the blog travelingfool.com. You can check all the past episodes there. And you can read some of the articles on some of the destinations I've been to over the years. I try to give you some useful information. But that's it for this episode, and until next time, safe travels.