Personal Savings Stories – Sarah and Her Husband Enjoy 3 Months in Europe for $6,000

A big THANK YOU to everyone who has sent in their Personal Savings Stories and photographs. I hope by sharing other people’s money savings tips here on One Hundred Dollars a Month we can all find new ways to save rock our budgets this year.

~Mavis

This week we are featuring Sarah B.

Hello Mavis,
I have loved reading your blog for a couple of years. I grew up in a family who LOVED saving money (we almost never ate out, shopped clearance racks and very rarely turned on the heat/air conditioner) and since being on my own/got married have tried to continue the tradition. There are a couple of tricks though, I am allergic to milk (the casein/whey) and we just moved to a tiny town with very few options.

I was going to talk about how we are trying to go zero waste and are trying to not buy much if anything this year (we decided this in early December and I laughed out loud when I read your New Year’s resolutions!). Before we moved though, we quit our jobs and took a three month ‘vacation’ in Europe for about $6,000!!

1. The first thing we did when we knew we were going to go abroad on a budget was sign up for HelpX (although Woof was a close second). Helpers work for about 20/hrs per week for free room and board. We loved it as we were able to ‘slow travel’ and get to know the ‘real’ areas of life and not just the touristy areas, all while not paying anything other than travel to get there.

We were able to email back and forth with the hosts to make sure we were a good fit and knowing if it was a private room inside of the house or a more private back house.  🙂 Note, you do have to pay $20 for a 2 year subscription, but we saved so much money using this tool, it was by far worth it!

2. My husband can eat SO much, but we were still able to split most meals (splitting our costs in half!). Every once in awhile he needed a snack of some sort, but I always tried to have nuts on hand as he can get prreeeeeetty cranky veeeery fast.

3. Bed and Breakfasts (especially in England and Ireland) were SO helpful as we ate HUGE breakfasts (for no extra costs) and were either able to skip lunch or just have a smaller meals.

Now that we are back we are having withdrawals of not traveling (especially as we are on a budget), but have been able to get away a couple of times, either leaving early in the morning and coming back late at night or booking our hotel reservations at the last minute.

Lastly for those not interested in traveling tips, we live in a 100sq ft apartment (also cuts down on a lot of costs!) and can’t garden (for now!) but I still grow ALL of our herbs from seeds in our kitchen window and whenever a friend or family member has a fruit tree that they can’t use all of the fruit or want help picking I always volunteer. I can’t remember the last time I had to pay for citrus or avocados! One time I was even just walking around my neighborhood and complimented a stranger on their orange tree, only to have them insist on sending me home with over 25 lbs of fruit! When that doesn’t totally fill our fruit and veggie bowl, I have a hard rule about only shopping at one store per week; I save time and money (since you can’t be tempted by things like cookies and candy!)!

I hope this helps and inspires!

~Sarah B

If you would like to have your Personal Savings Story featured on One Hundred Dollars a Month, I would love to feature it on the blog. Just answer 5-7 {or all if you really want to} of the questions listed in the original Personal Savings Story post and submit 3-5 QUALITY photos to go along with them.

Send submissions via email to onehundreddollarsamonth @ gmail.com {remove the spaces} and be sure and put Personal Saving Stories in the subject line.

If I feature your pictures and the stories behind them on One Hundred Dollars a Month, I will send you a $20.00 gift card to the greatest store in the world: Amazon.com. It’s that easy.