Top 5 MONEY SAVING TRAVEL hacks you’ve never heard before!

Hey guys, how's it going? So today we're talking about my top five ways I save money while traveling. So if you love traveling like me then you'll soon realize that most of your disposable income goes towards your travels. So any tips that I've ever received regarding saving money while traveling are always welcome. I wish someone told me about these tips in 2012 when I started traveling right after university, although these tips wouldn't have existed back then. They're very applicable for today. Each tip won't save you hundreds of dollars, however traveling is a long game and over the years these will add up and end up saving you thousands of dollars. So it's no surprise that the most money consuming part of travel is flying. So that's why we're going to start there. Tip number one. Use a VPN while booking flights. Now I know this might sound different or weird, however travel sites consider your location and your cookies when determining a price. An easy way to eliminate cookies, and this is an older tip, is to use google incognito and that searches without saving any of your search history or cookies or anything like that. However we need a VPN to change our country location. Choose a location with a lower GDP or income and the travel site will take that into consideration. Here's an example flight search from the same date, the same time, from JFK to Naples. I've changed the location of my IP address and you can see there there's a $72 difference. If you're not seeing results that way you can also try searching from the airline's country. For example if you're flying with Brussels airline then change your country to Belgium and you might see some results there. Alright Mark that's enough I'm sold. What VPN should I use? Well I personally go with NordVPN as it is the top rated VPN in the app store and it's been super reliable for me and fast so I go with NordVPN. Tip number two and that is to fly flexible. The best way to save money while you fly is to be flexible with location and flexible with dates. On Skyscanner type in your location for example Bangkok then type in everywhere for where you want to go and it will show you the cheapest spots in the Secondly if your location is not flexible then let's hope your dates are. Search with Google Flights and it will show you the entire calendar for the month and the prices for each day. Hot tip as a general rule for booking flights booking Monday to Thursday is statistically five percent cheaper than booking on the weekends so keep that in mind. Tip number three, compensate air. So basically compensate air and when I first heard about this and I'm like oh this seems a little bit fake I don't think this could possibly work. Like if you just look at their website there's barely any information and I was like nah. However Jordan my full-time travel pal has a different story and I'll just let him tell you about it. Boom that's right the better half of Mark is here. So basically compensate air is a company that gives you up to 250 euros in compensation for your issues with flights in Europe. Apparently it's a law in the European Union that you can get compensation for delayed flights, cancelled flights or flights that were just rescheduled or anything to do with an inconvenience. I was flying from Copenhagen to the Faroe Islands I took this flight I saw the Faroe Islands and just as we're about to land the pilot decided to turn around and go back to Copenhagen due to the weather and the strong winds. So the airline ended up getting me to the Faroe Islands which is great but I did waste a whole day of my life in transit. So I heard about this company and I literally just signed up I put in about four minutes of effort just my flight details my reason and submitted and then after about two emails and three months later I had 300 Australian or 187 euro in my bank account. It was that easy and compensate air actually have lawyers and they just did everything for me I did nothing. So if you've had a delayed flight in Europe and you think you know what we may as well give this a go it takes four minutes of your time I highly recommend you do so back to you Mark. So there you have it you get yourself some free cash oh and I just found out you're eligible for compensation for any mishaps from the last six years. Tip number four skip lag okay so this company is actually genius they're basically exposing all of the loopholes in the airline's industry to save you money. The basic premise behind it is you exit your flight at the layover instead of the final destination to save you money. Let me give you an example let's say you're flying from Atlanta to Orlando and the normal price for the flight is $250. Skip lag will look at other flights with layovers for example a flight to Dallas that lays over in Orlando and it could end up being cheaper. The flight isn't any longer you're just exiting at the layover and being a little bit sneaky. However it's perfectly legal even on their website it says that United tried to sue them but they won that's that's amazing. However there is one catch and that is you have to travel with only carry-on luggage because let's say you're flying to Orlando but that's the layover your luggage would end up at your final destination Dallas and that wouldn't work out. So this tip benefits the minimalist travelers however that's just another reason to become minimal. All right we made it to our last one and that's tip number five and it is affiliate bonus. So I've realized that the last four tips have been all about flights so I should probably talk about accommodation because after all lodging is the second biggest cost after flying. So I think we all know that there's endless amounts of gimmicky websites including skip lag that's touting the best hotel prices partnerships deals etc. However in my experience nothing has ever shown to be truly cheap consistent or reliable especially when staying in hostels is always the cheapest option except for couch surfing or sleeping at a friend's place. Hostels are great I mean not necessarily if you value personal space or privacy but they are the cheapest. That being said sometimes you just want your own space especially if you're an introvert like myself and I have found two ways to save money doing that through Airbnb and no this is not an ad. Firstly Airbnb gives the best affiliate prices I've ever seen. For every friend that you refer they have to be a new member. You get 29 USD and they get 47. It's a straight up win-win. You don't have to have an audience or YouTube channel or Instagram or anything like that you just have to have an account click invite friends and go to your Facebook page post it or invite all your family and friends. You won't believe the number of the older generation who still don't know about Airbnb. You'll receive the money when people sign up but it will be pending until your friend actually makes a booking. Alright so here comes my plug if you don't yet have Airbnb sign up with my affiliate code down below and get a free $47. No strings attached. Thanks guys that'd be awesome because I get $29 and you get $47 and that's a win-win. Great. Also one more Airbnb money saving tip. Ask the host before you book if they can remove the cleaning fee. Say you'll clean the place yourself. I've had many places agree to this and I just kept the place tidy. I save $10 to $15 on every booking when the host agrees. It's fantastic. Alright that's it for my top five money saving tips while traveling. I hope this video helps you save your travel dollars in the future. If you guys enjoyed it please give this video a thumbs up and a comment and consider hitting the notifications bell if you haven't already. Alright I'll see you in the next video guys. Bye.