Traveling On A Student’s Budget: From Hitchhiking To Couch Surfing
Young people around the world like to travel around and see new things, meet new people and create memories. The number one issue that most students face is their lack of money for such excursions into the unknown. Luckily, there are ways to travel at relatively low prices and still see the world and experience everything it has to offer.
Hitchhiking
The most popular way of traveling cheaply (or even for free) is hitchhiking. Finding a Good Samaritan every once in a while shouldn’t be too difficult. All it takes is raising your hand next to the road and hitching a ride to wherever the driver is headed and is willing to take you.
Paying for lunch or for drinks along the way is a great way to repay their kindness and keep moving on. Just remember to be careful about hitchhiking and don’t be afraid to be picky about your drivers – some people might want to do you more harm than good.
Volunteering
Many student organizations offer free travel and accommodations for their volunteers, offering you a great way to travel cheaply. While you will have to do some volunteering along the way, it still beats paying for your own expenses. You will not only see new places but also learn new skills and meet new friends, which is a whole other benefit to volunteering that you should consider.
Cruising and crewing
Many overseas cruises looking for bartenders, housemaids, chefs, etc. These jobs offer a great way to travel the sea and earn some money along the way. It’s a great way to travel around at literally no expense and even end up on the positive when you are done with cruising. If sea or homesickness is not a problem for you, definitely think about cruising.
Travel internships
There are agencies and firms out there that pay for people who travel around and promote their brand. Just imagine traveling the world in a Coca-Cola minivan. It offers the company cheap publicity and marketing and it gives you a chance to travel around the world at no expense whatsoever. While you will have to take photos of everything you are doing and abide by the contract of the company that is financing you, this is a minor issue when you take into account everything that you are getting.
Flying smart
Not all flying companies have high costs. You can easily find cheap flights all around the world if you look in the right places. One such website is Ryan Air and while you can’ travel to literally any location, you can still find a huge number of cheap deals on offer.
Look for cheap flights and providers that can help you travel to your desired location as cheaply as possible. You will probably have to adjust your dates accordingly and travel light, but it’s a great way to spend as little money as possible and still see the world.
Freelancing
While not a method of travel itself, freelancing gave birth to a type of people you may have heard of – digital nomads. These people travel around the world with nothing but their backpacks and laptops. They work wherever they end up sleeping that night and travel around for very low prices.
They can afford all of that because they are freelancers – all of their work is done online and there’s no need for static job placement. Pay someone like TrustMyPaper.com in order to write my paper and see what a freelancer’s level of writing is. Think about freelancing the next time you are thinking about traveling the world at an affordable price.
Trade labor
You can combine hitchhiking with trading labor wherever you travel. Some inns, hostels, and family businesses will happily offer you food and shelter in exchange for labor. You can work a couple of days in each place and move on along your journey, hitchhiking along the way. This is a cheap and effective way of travel if you are in going through a rural village area where people are more welcoming and willing to trust strangers.
Travel contests
You and your friends can apply for a travel contest that pays for all of your expenses in exchange for meeting certain criteria. These are usually racing around the world with little to no support from the organizers, apart from the media coverage and an instant way out if you give up.
These adrenaline-fueled races and competitions are a wonderful way of bonding with your friends and creating memories that will last a lifetime. How many people do you know that took such a challenge? It’s risky, exciting and most importantly – you get to travel the world cheap.
Couch surfing
Perhaps the oldest trick to traveling cheaply, couch surfing has been around for a while. You can sleep at someone else’s place provided that they allow for couch surfers in their home and then move on once you get some rest.
This is a great way to meet new people and pay very little for your travel expenses when you put everything on paper. While not many people will let you stay the night because they don’t know you, those that let couch surfers crash for a night have often been couch surfers themselves.
Conclusion
Traveling on a small student budget takes some ingenuity but it’s certainly possible. The important thing is to always stay in touch with someone back home and have a way out should you get stuck. Traveling completely isolated from your real-life can have huge consequences and it’s quite risky.
While it’s smartest to travel in groups, traveling this way is one of the best experiences you can have. Being a modern nomad and traveling around with only your backpack at hand is a wonderful experience that everyone should try at least once.
SAT Prep Secret: How Student With 1,050 SAT Score Overcame His Counselors Low Expectations By Gaining Admission Into Elite College
Alhambra,CA (PRWEB) May 29, 2006
Patrick was not your common high school pupil. With effective mother and father, you could fancy he was bound for an elite east coast institution. But while that may possibly be the case now, it wasnt a number of years in the past.
Reduced grades (a 2.five sophomore GPA) and SAT scores (1050) werent his only struggles. Brilliant, but rebelling against stress from his parents and fierce higher college competitors, Patrick floundered at a local prep college. To make issues worse, his teachers and counselor misplaced self confidence in him.
Out of the blue something changed.
Patrick met Jonathan and Melody Mitchell, co-founders of the Ucan Prep. Jonathans creed college students will rise to a teachers expectations manufactured an impact on Patrick.
Soon after a yr lengthy academic makeover, Patricks reduced GPA enhanced dramatically (to a 3.8 in his junior 12 months), his SAT scores soared (410 factors on the old edition SAT) and he gained admission into some of the very best liberal arts US colleges (including Bates and Colby, where he is currently enrolled).
A 2005 Ucan alumni, Patricks accomplishment inspired the class of 2006. These seniors test scores on the new SAT and admission to leading schools have been excellent.