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Craft a budget<br />
Without setting a limit for yourself<br />
ahead of time, your spending can<br />
add up quickly between dining<br />
out, that extra drink with dinner,<br />
souvenirs, and tours. A budget<br />
can help you be more conscious<br />
on how much you’re spending<br />
and what exactly you’re spending<br />
your money on. Caitlyn Hughes,<br />
a junior nursing major at The<br />
University of Alabama, always sets<br />
a maximum amount that she can<br />
spend on certain things, like no<br />
more than $40 for a meal or $700<br />
for a plane ticket. Hughes finds<br />
this practice beneficial because<br />
it keeps her from “getting ripped<br />
off” and spending all of her money<br />
all at once.<br />
Pack your own<br />
food<br />
Before Celia O’Bryan, a junior at<br />
Hope College, left for a weekend<br />
trip to Paris during her semester<br />
abroad, she made sure to pack<br />
multiple peanut butter and jelly<br />
sandwiches to limit how much<br />
she’d have to spend on food. With<br />
most Airbnb’s and hostels you’ll<br />
have access to a kitchen, and<br />
some hotels have mini fridges<br />
in the rooms, so you can store<br />
premade food or stock up on some<br />
cheap and easy groceries like<br />
sandwich ingredients to cut down<br />
on expenses. Depending on your<br />
hotel or hostel, they might also<br />
provide free breakfast.<br />
Stay in a hostel<br />
When traveling in Morocco,<br />
University of Alabama junior<br />
Brooke Tuthill, an international<br />
studies major, stayed in hostels<br />
that averaged around $10 a<br />
night, which was much cheaper<br />
than staying at a hotel. Tuthill<br />
said that as long as you do some<br />
research, you should be able<br />
to find “a decently nice hostel<br />
for fairly cheap.” Hostelworld<br />
and Hostelbookers are great<br />
resources for finding hostels, and<br />
both have rating systems that<br />
include an overall score as well<br />
as a breakdown of categories like<br />
cleanliness, safety and location.<br />
There are also reviews that you<br />
can read before booking. If the<br />
idea of sharing a room full of<br />
bunk beds with mixed genders<br />
makes you uneasy, some hostels<br />
do provide female-only rooms and<br />
single rooms. Don’t forget to bring<br />
your own lock (or two) for the<br />
storage lockers.<br />
Websites for<br />
cheap flights<br />
Websites such as Skyscanner,<br />
Student Universe, and even<br />
Google Flights can find the<br />
cheapest flights and compare<br />
them for you. Kennedy Toomey,<br />
a computer science major at The<br />
University of Alabama, used Kiwi<br />
to catch a flight from Barcelona<br />
to Dublin, then from Dublin to<br />
London while she was studying<br />
abroad in Spain. She liked Kiwi<br />
because it checked her into her<br />
flights when it was time and sent<br />
her the e-ticket. If you’re not ready<br />
to make the purchase yet, you can<br />
sign up to receive notifications<br />
if the prices change. If you have<br />
flexibility with the dates you<br />
can travel, then you’ll be able to<br />
find that the flights can get even<br />
cheaper.<br />
Spring 2020 45
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