I want to start by saying something that might surprise you: solo travel is often cheaper than group travel.
It sounds counterintuitive. Surely you save money when you split costs with other people? And yes, sometimes that’s true for accommodation. But solo travel eliminates an enormous number of financial compromises: the nicer restaurant the group wants to go to when you’d have been happy with street food, the expensive activity everyone is doing but you’re not really excited about, the extra night at a destination that’s someone else’s favorite but not yours.
When you travel solo, every dollar you spend is a dollar you chose to spend. That discipline, combined with the right strategies, makes solo travel genuinely accessible, even on a regular salary.
Here’s how to fund it and how to make the most of every dollar once you’re there.
Step 1: Know Your Actual Number
The biggest mistake people make when saving for travel is keeping the goal vague. “I want to save enough to travel” is not a plan. It’s a wish.
A plan looks like: “I need $2,400 for a two-week trip to Portugal, and I want to leave in eight months, so I need to save $300 a month.”
To get to your actual number, research your destination specifically. What does a mid-range accommodation typically cost per night? What’s the average daily cost for food (street food, local restaurants, no tourist traps)? What are the main activities you want to do, and what do they cost? What’s the round-trip flight running for your travel window?
Add those up, then add 20% as an emergency buffer. That’s your number. Now reverse-engineer the savings plan.
Step 2: Open a Separate Travel Savings Account
This sounds boring. It works.
When your travel fund sits in your regular checking account, it’s too easy to dip into it for things that seem urgent in the moment. A separate account, ideally one that’s slightly less convenient to access, creates a mental and practical barrier that protects your savings.
Many banks offer free savings accounts with no minimum balance. Open one specifically labeled “Travel Fund.” Set up an automatic transfer on payday, before you have the chance to spend that money on anything else. Even $50 a week is $2,600 a year.
Step 3: Find Your Monthly Savings Opportunities
Saving for travel doesn’t have to mean suffering. But it does mean looking honestly at where your money goes and deciding what matters more.
A useful exercise: go through your last three months of bank and credit card statements and put a small mark next to every expense that, if you’re honest, was not worth what you paid for it. The subscriptions you don’t use. The takeout when you weren’t actually hungry, just tired. The impulse purchases that didn’t bring lasting satisfaction.
Now calculate what those come to per month. That number, redirected to your travel fund, is often more significant than people expect.
You don’t have to cut everything. You have to make intentional decisions about what you value more: the habit or the trip.
Step 4: Book Your Flights Smartly
Flights are often the largest single expense of a trip, and also the one where strategic timing can make the biggest difference.
Book international flights 3-5 months in advance for the best balance of availability and price. Set price alerts on Google Flights, Kayak, and Hopper for your route, so you’re notified when prices drop. Be flexible on dates if possible: flying midweek (Tuesday or Wednesday) is consistently cheaper than weekends. Consider nearby airports, sometimes flying into or out of a secondary hub nearby saves significantly.
Avoid booking at the very last minute for international flights. The “last-minute deals” that appear sometimes are real, but they’re not reliable enough to build a plan around.
Step 5: Keep Accommodation Costs Low Without Sacrificing Safety
Accommodation for solo travelers has a wider range of options than people often realize.
Boutique guesthouses and small family-run hotels are often cheaper than chain hotels and significantly more interesting. Social hostels with private rooms are a good option if you want to meet people without sharing a dorm. Apartment rentals through platforms like Airbnb or local alternatives can be economical for stays of a week or more, especially if they have a kitchen.
Look for places with high ratings from solo female travelers specifically. Read reviews carefully. The cheapest option is not always the best value if it’s in a location that requires expensive taxi rides, or if the reviews suggest it isn’t actually safe.
Step 6: Eat Like a Local, Not Like a Tourist
The gap between what tourists spend on food and what locals spend is enormous in almost every destination.
The tourist path leads to restaurants with English menus prominently displayed out front, inflated prices, and food calibrated for foreign tastes rather than authenticity. The local path leads to the market stall, the neighborhood lunch spot, the morning bakery where regulars go before work.
Set yourself a simple rule: at least one meal per day from a local market or street vendor. This alone can cut your food budget significantly while consistently producing the most memorable food experiences of your trip.
Grocery stores are also your friend for breakfasts and lunches. A quality breakfast from a local bakery plus a grocery lunch plus one proper restaurant dinner is a financially sustainable and genuinely satisfying daily food rhythm.
Step 7: Seek Out Free and Low-Cost Experiences
The most valuable experiences of any trip often cost very little.
Many world-class museums offer free entry on certain days or for certain categories of visitors. Research this before you go and plan around it. Free walking tours, where you pay what you like at the end, exist in almost every major city and are frequently excellent, especially for orientation on day one.
Parks, neighborhoods, markets, viewpoints, coastal paths, public plazas, these cost nothing and are often where the real texture of a destination lives. The best afternoon I’ve had in almost every city I’ve visited was an unplanned wander with no agenda and no entrance fee.
Step 8: Travel During Shoulder Season
High season exists for a reason: the weather is good and the conditions are favorable. But shoulder season, the period just before or just after peak season, often offers dramatically lower prices with conditions that are still perfectly pleasant.
Portugal in April or October. Japan in late November. Greece in May or October. Italy in shoulder season is a completely different experience from August, cheaper, less crowded, and in many ways more beautiful.
Research your destination’s seasonal patterns. The difference in cost between peak and shoulder can fund an additional trip.
A Note on the Bigger Picture
I want to say something that goes beyond the practical.
Sometimes the barrier to solo travel isn’t money. It’s the belief that spending money on yourself, on something that doesn’t benefit your family or your career or any external obligation, is a luxury you haven’t quite earned.
I disagree with that belief profoundly.
Taking care of your own life, your own curiosity, your own growth, is not selfish. It’s necessary. The version of you that has traveled, that has navigated the world on her own terms, that comes home with a sense of her own capability refreshed, is a better version for everyone in your life, not just for you.
You don’t need to earn the right to take up space in the world. You just need to decide to do it.
The Woman You Meet When You Travel Alone covers the practical and emotional side of making solo travel financially possible, along with everything else you need to plan, prepare, and actually go.
