A travel lover who has impressed social media users with her budgeting has shared her favourite money-saving tips. Amy On Her Adventures, a blogger who posts on TikTok as @amymundye, claims she’s travelled “on around £40 a day for nearly two years,” visiting several bucketlist destinations.
Keen to share her tricks, Amy posted a video explaining how she keeps her costs low. In a recent post, the blogger reacted to a comment praising her for her low budget. Amy told followers: “Whenever I post any TikTok talking about my budget when travelling, I get so many comments like this and also comments telling me I’m lying.
“So I thought I’d go through my best budget tips with you guys after travelling for 18 months through central and South America with about £40 a day including all my accommodation, all my food, internal transport, activities, everything.”
First, Amy explained how she saves money on transport. “One is gonna be a really obvious one, but just take overnight buses instead of flying. I managed to get all the way to Ecuador from Mexico before flying, and the only reason I flew then was because I was going to the Galapagos Islands,” she shared.
“Sticking with transport, use local transport instead of the private tourist buses. You can get these like private mini bus transfers all through Central America, sometimes in South America, but they can sometimes be 10 times the price of local transport.” Amy added: “Honestly, they’re so much more fun. You get to practice your Spanish. It’s more of a cultural experience.”
For her third point, Amy advised to cook your own meals when you can. “After a few months, if you’re on a long trip, you’re gonna really miss home-cooked meals. Not all hostels have kitchens, so my rule is if the hostel has a kitchen, I need to try and cook for myself. If it doesn’t have a kitchen, my first go-to is to get street food or to get local food,” she shared.
“Number four, and I think this is like the make or break with travelling, a lot of the time and budget is your alcohol intake. Now I just decided on this trip to not drink much alcohol at all. Of course, if I met a group and we just went on a big trip and we all wanted to go out, I’d go. But I wasn’t just drinking for the sake of it and going out every single night.”
Amy continued: “Number five, you don’t need to go on every single tour. Sometimes you can work out how to do it yourself. Number six, get off the beaten track, leave the most touristy places, try and go somewhere a bit more local. These were my best moments on my whole trip, the homestays, going to random places that no one else has ever heard about.
“Number seven, take part in free walking tours. Of course, the tour itself is like a fun, almost free activity – you pay a tip. But I got so many good recommendations from walking tours run by people who really know that city, so just ask some questions. Ask where their favourite local lunch spot is, what their favourite things to do there are, and normally, all their recommendations are really, really good. I’ve never seen anyone else talk about them, and they were free or really cheap.”
The blogger said her eighth tip was for people visiting Latin America. “Learn as much Spanish as you can,” she advised, suggesting you can save money by booking Spanish-speaking tours.
“Another small one is you do not need eSIMs. You can get local SIMs so easily for like a tenth of the price,” she suggested. “And finally, Number ten, if you have the time and you’re on a bit of a longer trip, try out volunteering. I stayed for two weeks on a Colombian farm, completely for free through World Packers. All I had to do was help look after their dogs, so it was so cute. It was so much fun.”