Saving Tips for your Trip to Europe Solo (Female)

Need to save money to go overseas? Here is some tips to help you be a tight ass.

Budgeting

• Making a budget plan of whats bills you have coming up and what income you have coming in for the time coming up to your trip will help you realise how much you need to save and can save.
• Once you have looked at what you have coming up and the figures work out how much you can spend on your trip and how much you want to spend when you are away.
• Make sure that you allow your self to have money in the bank for bills while you are away and when you get back.
• Make your self a target of how much money you will budget your self a day while you are on your holiday. This will help if you have a long trip and do not want to be making a long distance call to mummy and daddy to send you over more funds. (Embarrassing)

Below is a rough excel spread sheet I used in prep to go away. (not my real figures but you get the point)

		1-Jul	8-Jul	15-Jul	22-Jul	29-Jul	5-Aug	12-Aug
Pay		600	600	600	600	600	600	600
TAX								500
loan		90	90	90	90	90	90	90
Petrol		30	30	30	30	30	30	30
Hair							200
Phone				50				50
Spend		50	50	50	50	50	50	50
Gym		15	15	15	15	15	15	15
Rent		100	100	100	100	100	100	100
Bdays						50		50
Rego/insurance
Savings		315	315	265	315	265	115	215
BANK		$5,063.00	$5,378.00	$5,643.00	$5,958.00	$6,223.00	$6,338.00	$6,553.00

• If you start out by going through opening an blank excel spread sheet and writing your pay date at the top of your sheet all the way to a few weeks after you come back from your holiday.
• On the left hand side write down all your bills including if you have a doctors appointment or a hair dressing appointment or a birthday. This will help you to set realistic goals to what you can save.
• Than if you put the figure of what your bills will cost you and than what your pay will be every week coming in. If you do not just guess. 
• If you than take away your bills from your total income a week this will be the amount that you can save a week. 
• Put a column of your current bank account balance and then add week by week how much you will save from what you just worked out.
• You can then also put in when your travel payments are due and a week before transferring what money you will take over with you.

This may seam extreme but this will help you get a handle on how much you need to save and what your bank account will be looking like when you get home. 

What do you need to buy before your trip 

• Write a list of what you need to buy before you leave.It may be that you need gloves, poncho, bag lock, a new bikini or medication but there are cheap ways to buy these items. Make sure you include if you need to buy travel insurance, or pay for any activities before you leave. 
• How will you be contacting your family and friends while you are over there? There is this free application called Viber. If you are connected to the internet either 3G or wifi (ideally wifi so you do not have to pay for anything) you can send free text messages and calls as long as the person you are trying to contact has viber and is connected to the internet.

Little tips that will help you not spend money (some may be a bit lame but bare with me)

• You will want to research for your trip as much as you can before you get there. So first if you have a limited cap on your internet you may find it useful that some libraries will lend you their computers and internet for free. They may include a charge to print anything bare in mind.
• If you before books- like lonely planet go to your book store and look into the books you might be interested in to help you research. If you write down the names of these books and head to the library and borrow them out for free. Most libraries will allow you to borrow out the books for a month. 
• Set your self a spend limit each week in your budget eg. $50.00 this will allow you to be able to get things you need and also still do things with your mates without going crazy.
• Swap movies with friends. I'm a movie fanatic and love having them in my collection but doing this will avoid spending unnecessary money at the amazing JB-HI-FI.
• When you meet your friends do something cheap. Go for a walk by the water, window shop or catch up for a coffee. 
• When eating at restaurants go and have Japanese. Cheap and very filling. Main meals can range from $8.00 to $15.00. Or sushi rolls. $5.00 for two rolls. Alot of these places offer free water with meals. And not buying a drink and having water will make you feel healthier also... win win...
• Go to a travel agent and get travel brouchers. Make your self a pin board of the places you will be going. Filled with pictures of the places you would like to see (This helps when your thinking about spending extra money by ordering pizza you can look at the picture of Italy and say "I'll be eating the worlds best pizza in Italy"
• Have a movie night with friends at one of your houses. Get your friends all to bring something different over. Either for dinner or snacks. Pop your own pop corn. A bag of pop corn cost $1.50 at the super market. And this will last you a few different times you decide to snack.
• If you do have to shop, shop cheaply. Check on ebay or online for deals. Shop the sales eg. end of financial year or boxing day sales.
• Have a clean out of your wardrobe and sell interesting items on ebay. You could also clean out the clothes that no longer fit any more and swap clothes with your friends
• If you are paying for a gym membership and not using it (lets face it most of us are) put it on hold until you get back from holidays. This could save you a few hundred dollars before your trip. You will be doing alot of walking while you are over there, the gym can wait.
• Do your own hair. Buy a dye from the super market to do your hair until you come back from your holiday.
• Get some of your items for your Holiday from discount shops. Soaps, deodorant, socks, suitcases, locks for your bag, neck pillows, tooth paste, tissues, carry bags are very cheap from the discount shops. There are even discount chemist that you can buy your travel sickness tablets or pandol from.
• Borrow some of your friends CD's, or CD's from the library to put on your ipod before you go away.
• Do you know any friends who have travelled to Europe before? They might allready have suit cases, locks, carry bags, backpacks that you could borrow.
• Spend some time writing an itinerary. Especially if you are travelling alone so your family and friends know where you are or how to contact you.
  

Hope these little tips help. Please feel free to contact me if you have any other questions or I can help in any other way.