The Ultimate Travel Hacks Guide To Save Money On Your Overseas Trips!

Planning for your next overseas getaway and want to make sure that you are maximising your spending?

You’ve come to the right place!

We’re the personal finance experts and have compiled the ultimate travel guide so you can get the most bang out of your hard-earned cash for your holidays!

Let’s jump right in!

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TL;DR: The Ultimate Travel Hacks Guide

This guide is going to be very in-depth and hence, long. So to make it easier for you to navigate, we have split this article into the following sections (click to jump):

• Must-Haves Before Any Trip

  • Credit Cards to Maximise Your Travel Spending
  • ShopBack Account

• Planning for Your Trip (Months before)

  • How to Save Money Buying Flight Tickets
  • Best Websites for Accommodation and Experiences
  • Best Trip Planning Apps
  • Best Ways To Exchange Foreign Currency (Best Multi-Currency Accounts And Cards / Money Changers)

• Leading Up to Your Trip (A Week Before)

  • Best Travel Insurance
  • Best Data Roaming and Portable WIFIs for Your Data Needs
  • Useful Apps For Travelling By Country
  • Complimentary Lounge Access
  • How to Get Tourist Tax Refunds

• Post-trip

  • Make Use Of The Duty Free Store
  • Should You Keep Your Foreign Currency?
  • Claim Cashback

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Must-Haves Before Any Trip

Credit Cards to Maximise Your Travel Spending

As they always say, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!” And this couldn’t be farther from the truth when it comes to saving money on travel.

Travel spending will set you back a few thousand dollars at least, so why not optimise your spending and possibly save yourself hundreds of dollars with rewards, cashback, and more?

Travel spending comes in two main categories:

1. Flight and accommodation expenses
2. Spending while overseas

Flight and accommodation expenses

For flight and accommodation expenses, the best way to pay is by using credit cards such as these:

If you’re not a frequent traveler or prefer cashback, opt for an unlimited cashback card.

The general rule of thumb here (even if you don’t have a specific credit card) is to make sure that you ARE earning the most rewards you can since this is the biggest spend you will make!

Pro Tip: Do read the T&Cs of your credit card and make sure that travel-related spending qualifies for rewards! You can also use this service, Max, a website launched recently that utilises the Visa Merchant Lookup API to furnish MCCs.

Spending while overseas

Whether you qualify for a credit card or not, or whether you are a cashback or miles person, we’ve detailed the best travel spending cards that you need to get before your next trip here:

These cards ensure that you get the most out of your daily expenses such as dining and shopping while you are overseas.

Best Cashback Credit Cards for Overseas Spending

NTUC/Trust Link card is only included as it is special with 0% FCY fees. You may find other credit cards with much better cashback rates.

Best Miles Credit Cards for Overseas Spending

For miles players, using miles credit cards will only make sense depending on how you value a mile and how much you’re paying for miles overseas. I have included the cost per mile for the best miles credit cards and when paired with amaze for easy reference.

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ShopBack Account

What if I told you that you could enjoy credit card rewards AND get EXTRA cashback with an account that doesn’t even need you to earn at least $30,000 in annual income?

That’s the ShopBack account!

I’m sure most of us are familiar with hotel/flight booking websites such as booking.com, agoda, Expedia, and Trip.com. With a ShopBack account and the ShopBack plugin installed, you can get an additional cashback of up to 5.5 per cent!

Plus, ShopBack has a ton of deals for not just travel-related things but your daily shopping needs in Singapore as well.

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Planning for Your Trip

Now that we are equipped with our money-saving tools, it’s time to actually plan for your trip and start booking all the necessary things such as flights, accommodations, and experiences!

How to Save Money Buying Flight Tickets

The first big thing we need to do is buy our flight tickets. Aside from waiting for fare deals for discounts, you can make use of the following sites to compare flight prices:

• Cheapflight.com.sg
• Skyscanner.com.sg
• Kayak.sg
• Expedia.com.sg

Personally, I’m not too much of a fan of such third-party websites as you’ll never know if your booking actually went through with the airline. Thus, I usually use them to suss out which airlines are cheaper then and book directly with the airline.

Some of us may also know of the “go incognito” or “use VPN” method to get a flight cheaper because of currency conversions and whatnot.

However, there is a risk that the airline may not honour your tickets (as with the fiasco of some cheapos buying super cheap business class tickets due to technical errors) and you may not be able to get help if you do need it locally. So I’d avoid that risk.

The real way to get cheaper flights though, is to do the following (with reference to a flight to Japan):

Book Early

When it comes to flight booking, the common tip is to book your flight at least two to three months earlier for cheaper fares.

What Days Are Flights Cheapest?

Depending on the airline, there are also certain days when flights are cheaper.

As you can see, for Singapore Airlines, flights tend to be cheaper on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays while being more expensive on the weekends and Mondays.

Based on what I found out, Mondays and weekends are typically more expensive as there are more people going on business trips during those days and Mondays are also the day when airlines review the flight ticket prices.

Fly During Off-Peak Seasons

For Japan, January and February are some of the cheapest months to fly as these are the off-peak months. If you want to experience the Cherry Blossom season which starts in mid-March, you’ll have to fork out more.

For cherry blossom lovers, I’d advise booking a flight to Japan during the last few days of March as you’d be paying less compared to the peak month of April!

Off-peak seasons vary from country to country so you’ll need to do a little more research if you want cheap tickets.

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Best Websites for Accommodation and Experiences

Got your flight tickets settled? The next step is to plan your itinerary and book your accommodations.

If you’re budget conscious, the go-to site I’d recommend first is Airbnb.

You can find really great and affordable places and immerse yourself in what it feels like to live like a local.

Otherwise, hotels are your next best option.

Compare, compare, compare! Just with flight tickets, if you are willing to do your homework, you can save hundreds of dollars by comparing prices on such third-party websites and the official site of your chosen accommodation!

As an example, I saved about a couple hundred dollars by booking directly with the hotel instead of using Trip.com, even with its vouchers! Of course, I’m not bashing Trip.com but prices are different because hotels reserve a portion for direct booking and another for such third-party reservations. These prices then fluctuate based on demand and supply. That’s what I heard at least.

Most of these sites also list experiences that you can add to your itinerary. But be sure to read the reviews and research thoroughly before booking. My personal recommendation, if you are travelling within Asia, would be Klook.

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Best Trip Planning Apps

When you’re planning, you may also want to use an itinerary planning app to make things easier:

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Best Ways To Exchange Foreign Currency

If you are overseas, you are going to need foreign currency. While cash is important, there are two other ways to spend in foreign currency, credit cards and multi-currency accounts. We’ve already covered credit cards for overseas spending above, so we will focus on the ways to exchange for foreign currency.

Best Multi-Currency Accounts And Cards

Spending with credit cards incur a foreign currency conversion fee. And while they do earn rewards when you spend with them, not all cards have rewards that offset the currency conversion fee.

This is where multi-currency accounts and their associated cards come in. Most offer no currency conversion fees and a better conversion rate than what the banks offer.

Best Money Changers

While there are plenty of ways to pay in developed countries with digital payments, you’ll still need cash when you travel. So here are some of the best money changers in Singapore to get you sorted:

Locking in a Good Exchange Rate

If you are converting currency way before your trip, you could lock in a favourable exchange rate and have your dollar go even further.

However, this method requires you to be knowledgeable about foreign currency exchange and general trends. If you know that the foreign currency you need is going to be stronger compared to the Singapore dollar in the future, it is a good idea to lock in the exchange rate now.

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Leading Up to Your Trip

Finally! It’s just a couple weeks left till your flight! But there’s still some work to be done for a pleasant trip.

You’ll be needing essentials such as travel insurance and travel data, plus know-how on how to get tax refunds and more!

Best Travel Insurance

I know, I know. Insurance? Again? Urgh.

As repetitive as it is, travel insurance is imperative whenever you go overseas! It can cover you when you have a mishap overseas, catch some mutant variant of COVID, or lose your baggage.

But hey guess what? We have it all sorted for you too. 

 

 

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Best Data Roaming and Portable WIFIs for Your Data Needs

Could you survive without data? Well, maybe. But most of us need the internet for lots of things so here are the best data roaming and portable WIFIs for you:

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Useful Apps For Travelling By Country

Just like how Singaporeans use Grab, Google Maps, Telegram and so on, it is also good to do some research about useful apps in your destination country which will help you save time and money.

If you’re going to Bali for example, having Grab and WhatsApp handy is essential for uber cheap (get it?) ride-hailing and communication with local contacts.

In general, make sure you have Grab for South East Asian countries and Uber for the West. In terms of communication, WhatsApp is pretty universal.

For places like China, Japan, and South Korea though, you’ll need to download other apps.

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Complimentary Lounge Access

Taking a layover flight or just want to have a relaxing time before your flight?

Remember to check your card benefits for complimentary lounge access where you can get free flow refreshments and snacks, free WIFI and more!

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How To Get Tourist Tax Refunds

Remember our friend GST? Yep, there’s a GST, or Value-Added Tax (VAT) whenever you purchase goods overseas as well.

In some countries, you are able to get a tourist tax refund on goods that you’ve bought overseas if you meet the minimum spending requirement.

For the love of money, please don’t be a blur sotong and just pay taxes overseas when you don’t need to!

Here are a list of countries that have or do not have tourist tax refunds:

If your destination does offer a tourist tax refund, keep the receipts of your purchases and go to the tax refund counter at the airport before you leave the country to file a claim.

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Post-trip

Make Use Of The Duty Free Store

Sick of GST and the recent GST hikes? Well you’re in luck as you can shop at the Changi Airport Duty Free store!

But remember not to just buy more for the sake of “saving”. Just get what you need!

Should You Keep Your Spare Foreign Currency?

After your holiday, it’s inevitable that you will have some leftover foreign currency, be it in cash or in your multi-currency account.

If it’s a small amount and you’re going back to that country in the future, its fine to keep it there. However, if you have say thousands of dollars worth, it’s better not to leave it lying around!

Why? Well, you’ll be exposed to foreign currency exchange risks and your 100,000 yen which was worth SGD1,000 then would drop in value to about SGD968 now. Such drops in value far outweighs the conversion fees if you were to convert the foreign currency back to SGD.

Secondly, leaving money around in your tin can or your multi-currency account is just letting inflation eat up its value. Your thousands of dollars in foreign currency could instead be in an account with high-interest earning money for you.

Pro Tip: If you have a friend that is going to the same country as you did, you can skip conversion fees and just exchange the currency with them!

Using YouTrip and have money stuck on it? You can send it to another YouTrip user too!

As for Revolut users, remember that you can send your spare money back into your bank account to earn interest.

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Claim Cashback

If you have used ShopBack, or other websites such as Trip.com which have cashback rewards, remember to check on them and claim them after your trip!

For frequent travelers, it is wise to stick to one of these platforms so you can fully utilise whatever cashback you have earned if it is stored on the platform such as Klook where you earn coins to spend on a future expense.

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How Are You Saving Money While Travelling?

Phew, that was a LOT of information! But that’s not even close to everything I want to cover. At least not yet! There are still topics such as how to redeem your miles for flight tickets, selecting travel destinations based on budget, how to get the best out of DFS, and more!

So bookmark this article for future reference as we will be updating this mega guide soon!

In the meantime, what are some ways you are saving money while travelling? Share with us below!