Last year, I was talking with a friend right after she had returned from a relaxing week in the Caribbean. "We did an all-inclusive," she said to me with a glimmer in her eyes. "A what?" I had no idea what she was talking about. After chatting about it for a quite a while, she clued me in on how an all-inclusive vacation works and what some of the perks were. To say I was intrigued would be an epic understatement. According to my friend, she could travel to any all-inclusive vacation spot in the Caribbean or Mexico and have almost everything included in one low price. I couldn't believe what I was hearing; my friend and her husband had paid only $700 per person for an entire week at an all-inclusive resort in Cancun. Not only were their flights and lodging included in her cost, but all of their food and drinks (even alcohol) were included as well. She seemed downright enthusiastic about their experience and went on and on about how amazing the whole thing was. I had to find out more.

To satisfy my curiosity, I started playing around with dates and locations on travel sites like Expedia and Travelocity. What I found out was a complete jolt to my system: all-inclusive vacations were cheap. Dirt cheap. Since I love to travel and hate to spend money, I started to wonder if I should go on an all-inclusive vacation myself. My husband and I had been putting off a honeymoon for nearly seven years at that point, mostly due to being stingy with our cash. Could an all-inclusive vacation provide the answer?

Our First All-Inclusive

Once I showed my husband my research, he quickly got on board. Of course. Why wouldn't he want to travel to a tropical beach and enjoy unlimited food and drinks all day and night? We bounced back and forth between several locations. I initially had my heart set on going to Aruba. However, my enthusiasm waned as the price crept slowly upward with each passing week. Then it was Club Med in Turks and Caicos. Then Jamaica. Then Mexico. We ultimately chose to do our first all-inclusive vacation in the Dominican Republic. When all was said and done, we paid less than $1000 per person including airfare to spend 7 days and 6 nights at an all-inclusive resort in Punta Cana.

Forget what the magazines say about travel. Forget what you see in commercials. They're all wrong: Travel isn't expensive. How do I know? Because I've been traveling the world for six years and have found that everything you learn about travel is generally wrong.

Experience has taught me that travel isn't expensive. Locals don't spend hundreds of dollars per day in your destination -- and you don't spend hundreds when you are home -- so why do something different when you travel? Traveling taught me that there are myriad ways to cut expenses and turn your dream vacation into a reality a lot more easily than you might think possible.

We're conditioned to believe travel is expensive for few reasons.

There are plenty of possible reasons you could want to leave the U.S. Perhaps you've always dreamed about making the sand and surf your front yard or longed to master a foreign tongue. Maybe you've been offered a job abroad. Maybe you feel your taxes are too high. I'm not here to question your motives, traveler. I'm just here to pass along what I know and help you get to your new home with your personal finances in order.

Settling Your Accounts

You're going to need a bank account when you first land on that once-foreign soil. Common expat advice is to set up an online savings account before leaving. Start out by keeping your money with a well-established and nationally available bank -- at least until you get a good sense of the banking landscape in your new home.

Be aware, though: If you're still a U.S. citizen while living abroad and ever wind up with more than $10,000 in your new accounts, you'll need to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts with the stateside IRS. You can be hit with serious penalties for neglecting to do this, so do the paperwork or renounce citizenship before you start making any serious money.

I've been traveling for more than a month now. While much of this travel has been for pleasure — I spent three weeks in Turkey with my cousin — there's been plenty of work involved too. While I've been traveling, I've also been writing — and networking with other bloggers. Over the past month, I've attended two conferences, and spent three days meeting with folks in New York.

FinCon 2012

In early September at FinCon (the financial blogger conference), I spoke about the future of financial blogging. While there, I reconnected with many of my colleagues, including Jim from Bargaineering, Flexo from Consumerism Commentary, Adam from Man vs. Debt, Ramit from I Will Teach You to Be Rich, Neal Frankle (the Wealth Pilgrim), and Kylie Ofiu (an Australian personal finance blogger).

I love budget travel. Maybe it's from watching too many episodes of Europe Through the Backdoor and drinking the Rick Steves Kool-Aid, but I wonder if you'll believe me when I tell you that I wouldn't travel any other way.

Last year I was considering taking a trip with friends — an all-inclusive spa vacation at a fancy resort. Ultimately I declined because all of the selling points — meals included, C ondé Nast Traveler seal of approval, fancy spa treatments — were actually drawbacks for me. There's nothing wrong with all-inclusive trips, mind you. They're easy to plan, and you don't have to worry about where you'll eat or how you'll get from point A to point B. They're a good option for a lot of people, and even culinary adventurer Anthony Bourdain has sung the praises of staying put and vegging out.

But our vacation dollars are limited, and my husband and I like to explore. The trip would have cost double what we paid for our honeymoon to the same destination (literally right down the beach), and the honeymoon included scuba diving, cooking classes, and renting a car — things we'd have to pay extra for if we took the spa trip. I also thought about how we enjoy checking out local restaurants, but with an all-inclusive meal plan, we'd be paying for meals that were essentially covered in the trip package.

T

It was always my dream to be paid to travel. I thought I'd write guidebooks or be a tour guide. A few years ago, my wanderlust was acting up again, so I crunched some numbers, adding up the cost of living where I was (New York) versus traveling for month. With some careful planning, I spent a month in Paris and ended up with more money than when I left.

The cost of staying in one place
I'm sure most of us know our monthly expenditures. Rent, utilities, Internet, cable, Netflix, gym membership, gas, cellphone, and the list goes on. Granted, all of us have different interests and different monthly expenditures, but there's usually a basic bottom line for all of us. I thought if I could zero that out, then a month away would become more of a reality. Living in New York made it easy to sublet my apartment for a one-month stint. I raised my rent price a couple hundred dollars to cover my utilities, Internet, and cable. I put my Netflix and gym memberships on hold, and at the time, pay-as-you-go was all the rage so my cellphone had no contract. My car stayed parked out back and my gas expense dropped to zero. My monthly expenses dropped from around $1,500 to nothing at all.

Accommodations
I knew I wanted to be centrally located in Paris, but didn't need much more. On Craigslist I found a lot of graduate and doctorate students who had to travel for their dissertations. They were looking to rent out their apartments for cheap, real cheap, just so their rent wouldn't be a total loss. Not only that, most everyone I talked to was willing to negotiate. I ended up with a small room on the top floor of the building (the former maid's room) for €150 a month, less than a fourth of my rent back home. The student was traveling to Africa and was happy to have someone to watch his cat. (If you want to go even cheaper than that, you can try house-sitting. Friends of mine have been paid to stay in beach houses in the Caribbean or mountain homes in Montana. I have yet to do this myself, so I'm curious if any of you have stories.)

Food, and becoming the invited guest
When I travel, everything is new. Yes, five-star restaurants are appealing, but street food gives me the most pleasure. Some of my best meals had been Nutella crepes and crusty baguettes, often for less than €3. At home, not only was I prone to $8 burritos when I didn't have a chance to make something after work, but I'd also have a small dinner party for friends at least once a month. This often meant having either wine or liquor and cooking for five, a lot pricier than cooking for one.

When abroad, I'm usually the one who's asked to dinner. Through volunteer work, attending free book readings, or helping someone carry groceries down the street, I found myself being the invited guest to at least one dinner party a week, and it was a great way to try some of the traditional French dishes, learn the language, and interact with people. Put yourself out there, learn some niceties, and you might be surprised how willing people are to want to share their culture and open their doors.

Many people think travel is expensive, that it's too costly for the average person to enjoy. To many people, a trip around the world or a long vacation might seem like a good idea, but it simply isn't affordable. I'm here to tell you that view is wrong.

You can afford it. I know you can. I've been traveling across the globe for five years. I don't have some rich uncle, haven't won the lottery, and don't have my parents pay the bills, yet I've managed to travel debt-free for five years thanks to a combination of savings and working overseas.

Since I travel on a tight budget, I've found creative ways to keep my costs down without sacrificing comfort or quality. After all, what's the point of going to Italy if you can't afford the food? Why visit Brazil and not see the Amazon? I learned to dive before going to Australia; I wasn't going to miss the Great Barrier Reef.

The following article is written by Craig Ford. Craig blogs at Help Me Travel Cheap where he helps newbies turn credit card sign-up bonuses into free travel.

To entice you to sign up for a credit card most credit card companies offer a sign-up bonus.

The sign-up bonus is the life blood for a growing population of American travelers. They scour the web looking for the best credit cards with sign up bonuses. They get the cards, get the bonuses, and turn a single credit card application into a vacation that most of us only dream of taking.

When I was 23, I stayed at my first (and last) Ritz Carlton, in Palo Alto. It was only a stop on a string of fabulous business hotels from which I'd collected small bars of soap and shoe shine mitts: The Breakers in Palm Beach, Hotel Nikko Beverly Hills, the Pierre and the Plaza and the Waldorf-Astoria and three different W Hotels in New York City — I could go on. Fan-freaking-tastic.

I loved it, but as I was traveling on business, I rarely got to experience much more than the heady delight of opening the door to a room that cost way more than my shoes (even my nicest shoes). I wasn't paying the bill, ultimately; but I would have to pay out of pocket for things such as:

• minibar purchases ($7 for a candy bar at the W?)
• phone calls (before the days of ubiquitous cell phones, I think I spent $14.98 for one call)
• valet tips (evidently $5 is a starting rate at these fancy places)
• breakfast ($10 for granola, $12 if you want milk)

Now that I'm an adult traveling on my own dime, I stay at hostels. Continue reading...

I'm in the middle of a month-long trip to the East Coast: a little work, but mostly tourism. Although the conference I attended was in New York City, I flew to Philadelphia because it'll be easier for me to get back there after I've hung out with family and friends.

That meant I needed to get myself from Philly to New York, from there down to Washington, D.C., and then back up to Philly to do my visiting. The total cost of those three trips was — wait for it — three dollars and fifty cents.

That is not a typo. I spent $1 for each of the three tickets and 50 cents to book them.