Vacationing on a tight budget is believed to be boring and burdensome, but this is barely the truth. Nowadays there are so many ways to travel it’s hard to narrow your options down to the cheapest one. There are planes, cars, boats, trains, taxis; and so many others that five minutes on the internet and you could plan a trip to Dublin for under $400. (Really)

Lets base your budget off the average, part time working student, working twenty to thirty hours, about $250 a week. If you put aside just half of that a week, in two months you’d have $1000 for vacation, take away $400 for travel and you’ve got $600 to spend on whatever else you’d like. Now you’re probably saying “Oh great but after a few nights in a hotel I’ll be coming home penniless.” and if you want the truth, yeah you probably will, which is why you should never, and I mean never, stay in a hotel. There’s hostels, and co-ops and Airbnb which allow you to find housing or at least sleeping arrangements for less than half the cost of most hotels. Another key to not breaking the bank on vacation is traveling at the right time.

There’s a fluctuation in the traffic of airlines and railways based on the amount of people who need to get from A to B. Keeping this in mind you can plan when the best time might be to fly because costs will be low while demand is low as well. Traveling during the holidays, or over the summer months is normally more costly than going during the post-christmas months or pre-graduation days of May and early June. I’m sure you’ve heard of some hidden gems out there, countries or places that are almost picture perfect but still completely doable on a budget. There are lists of these places all over the internet and they make planning a hundred times easier.

Depending on where you are, a gas tank worth of travel can be drastically different, in Europe you could see another country, here in America however you could still be in your state. In New England, there are countless places that come alive with the fall foliage. Places like Brattleboro and Burlington, Vermont, or how about America’s third-oldest city; Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Even a place as popular as Boston still has places like the New England aquarium, or Improv Asylum where you can see the latest and greatest on the comedy scene. While the Midwest is more barren than the east there are still places like Kansas City, or Milwaukee; and the West coast is home to places like Hollywood, Seattle, or LA which you could drive to all within a day or two. So when you’re traveling the big world with small pockets remember it all comes down to when you go, where you stay, and how you get there.