If you want to travel the world for the cost of two downtown lunches (or $25) a day you need to save money when you travel. Saving money on the road is a combination of buying where the locals buy, talking story and bargaining for a good price.

Find the local spots

First you need to find the places where the locals eat, buy groceries and have a coffee. Doing so is easy, if you follow those three simple steps:

Check who is in the place
Is your shop, restaurant or snack place packed with white people that are dressed nicely and talk English? You are in the wrong place buddy, keep looking.

Are you approached outside?
“Mister, good price for you!” and “have a look at our menu!” yelled at you simply because you looked at a restaurant from across the street is a clear signal that the food sucks and the prices are too high. Keep looking!

On the other hand, if nobody seems to care about you, chances are high that the food is excellent and reasonable priced.

Follow the mom
See the mother with her three kids over there. If she’s going into that odd looking shop at the corner to buy some cloths for all her kids, it is very likely that you’ll find a good and cheap t-shirt there as well.

Ok, now you’ve found you local spot. But once you arrive there, you are still looking like the odd tourist lost in a side street. Not the best situation to be in if you want to get a good price – side street, tourist, feeling and looking lost.

What now?

Well, you move on to the second point and change the situation fast by switching on your “social-me”, start talking story and make friends with the first person that you see.

Smile a lot and crack a few jokes. You’ll notice that the whole situation is much more relaxed now because you talked story and established some kind of relationship between you and the vendors.

Third you need to bargain to make sure you get a good price. If you want to win the bargaining game when traveling do the following:

• Never accept the first price offered
• Shop around and tell vendors the price differences
• Ask for prices in the local language
• Ask a random person on the street how much they’d pay

If you don’t know how to get a good price and need a bit more detail, read my post on how to bargain on the road and become a bargaining pro.

Here you have it, my 3 successful money saving strategies when traveling.

To sum things up, remember to find the local spots, be super-social and play a hard bargaining game.

Now it’s your turn, how do you save money when traveling?