Your Money_ The Missing Manual - J. D. Roth [95]
Hospitality exchanges
If you like meeting new people, a hospitality exchange is a great way to save money. These exchanges connect folks who have extra room in their homes with travelers who need places to stay. Costs are minimal, and you get an excellent introduction to another culture—even if it's just in the next state!
CouchSurfing (www.couchsurfing.org) is a free hospitality-exchange network with over a million members worldwide. When you join, you fill out a profile. You can then volunteer to host—by offering a spare couch or bed to travelers—or request to "surf" in somebody else's home. Couch-surfing lets you save money and make new friends in the cities you visit. (Here's a real-life overview of the couch-surfing experience: http://tinyurl.com/GRS-couchsurfing.)
You'll find similar communities at The Hospitality Club (http://hospitalityclub.org), Airbnb (http://airbnb.com), and Servas (http://usservas.org/), which has been around for over 60 years. (Note that you have to pay to join Servas.)
Tip
Hi Everywhere! (http://hieverywhere.com) is a free site that helps you find (or be) a volunteer tour guide. You tell the site when and where you plan to travel, and if a local guide is available, she can sign up to show you around the city.
Volunteer tourism
Some folks want to go beyond sightseeing and get a real feel for the culture, and volunteer tourism is a great way to do just that. Groups like Volunteer Adventures (http://volunteeradventures.com), Volunteers for Peace (http://vfp.org), and Se7en (http://the7interchange.com/) connect people with organizations that need help around the world.
While it's rewarding, volunteering can still be expensive. If you need to keep costs down, consider a work exchange. The site Workaway.info helps travelers see more of the countries they visit while giving something back to the local community. You put in a few hours of hard work each day in exchange for meals and somewhere to sleep. In the process, you experience the local culture, save money, and maybe even learn a new language. The box below has a real-life example.
Your Money And Your Life: A Volunteer Vacation
John is a retired shop teacher from Portland, Oregon. At 73, he spends his summers fishing in Alaska and his winters in New Zealand (where it's summer that time of year).
John lives on his own fishing boat while in Alaska, and keeps his costs low in New Zealand by "WWOOFing it." World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms—or WWOOF, for short—connects volunteers like John with hosts who need help on their farms.
John stays on each farm for about 3 weeks doing carpentry, gardening, and yard work. This sort of volunteering helps him escape the tourist mindset: "The real benefit of WWOOFing is being in the culture. When I'm there, I get to do all the things the locals do. It really puts you in touch with the rhythm of things."
WWOOF lets you travel the world without spending a fortune. Though John spends 3 months in New Zealand every year moving from farm to farm, his only real cost is the round-trip plane ticket. "You do your work in exchange for room and board," he explains. "I probably don't spend any more than $200 total while I'm actually there."
To learn more about WWOOF visit http://wwoof.org, where you can read about the group's philosophy and learn how to volunteer your talents for a few days or weeks—or even years.
Travel Tools
You used to have to rely on a travel agent to help you find the best deals, but nowadays you can often track down good prices on airfare, tours, and lodging from the comfort of your own computer. There are number of robust websites to help travelers save money on their adventures.
You're probably familiar with the online travel agencies like Orbitz.com, Expedia.com, Travelocity.com, and Priceline.com. But there's another group of lesser-known sites called aggregators—they go out, find the best deals from a variety