Guest Author - Leyla Garofalo

We’ve all heard the old business mantra “time is money”. Some of you probably want a vacation just to get away from the pressures brought on by this golden rule of working life. But by applying this principle to your next personal vacation, you may end up with a more pleasant travel experience. Hopefully after reading this article, you’ll realize how valuable your time is to you and work it in to your travel budget.

We all know that the cheapest way to travel is usually the most time consuming one. “No big deal”, you might think. But unless the travel is part of your journey, it may be a very big deal, at a minimum an inefficient means of travel may be taking a big chunk of your hard earned vacation days. Just think about the number of vacation days you have. How many are you wiling to spend on getting to and from your place of interest?
The same goes for your lodging. The least convenient location is probably going to to cost you less. Before you make that choice, be sure to take all the other factors into account:
• The gas or public transportation fare you’re going to have to pay to get to and from the sight-seeing or activities that you’re there for.
• The fact that you have to be more organized when you leave your accommodation every morning to start the day. Having to come back just to pick up an extra sweater or freshen up a bit could become quite the timely ordeal.

Timing is money too. When you pick the right moment to travel, you save money. In a nutshell, the strategy here would be to go against the tourist trends.
Always research your destination. You want to make sure there isn’t a very unpleasant legitimate reason for there to be an “off season”.
Plan your weekend get away right before, in between, or after the holidays. When everybody is taking a break from traveling, you strike and score a great deal.
If you can, try to fly in the middle of the week. Everybody wants to travel on and around the weekends and therefore, you should not. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are usually the cheapest days to fly.

Picking the cheapest travel option should be a balanced combination of money and time spent on traveling. Next time you book your budget trip, just ask yourself: “Is the money I’m saving really worth my time”?