How to travel with no money

How to travel without money? Many people love traveling. Discovering new places and meeting new people. Common belief is that traveling is expensive. This doesn't really have to be the case. How to travel with no money? First of all, change your attitude towards money. Then change your attitude towards traveling. Here are the best tips.

How can I travel with no money?

Traveling is actually easier than living without money in one place, When done right you need less money to travel, or just no money at all. Travel, or life without money consists of these parts:

  • Food - dumpster diving is great in cities, staying and working in farms works in many other places
  • Shelter - bring your own (tent) or stay with locals
  • Moving around - hitchhiking and walking are obvious ways to get around

Stay with locals

On hospitality exchange websites like couchsurfing, bewelcome.org and trustroots.org you can find very friendly people who are able to host you for free. Don't be a freeloader though. It's a nice system if you're a nice person. Bring a gift (which doesn't have to cost money), be a nice person and learn, share and teach.

Another way is to go WWOOFing (working in organic farms) or use a website like helpxchange. You help in a farm or in a household in exchange for food and lodging.

Traveling to the north pole without money

As if traveling with no money isn't already crazy enough some folks go to places out of the ordinary.

June 15th 2013 we're starting our trip from the Polar circle back to the Netherlands. A distance of 2577 kilometers. Hitchhiking, without money. We don't have a clue where to sleep and what to eat. If we eat. But we have an especially good cause: attention for Foundation Metakids. To reach our goal we'll be dependent of hospitality of our encounters on the road.

Traveling overseas with no money

Going to other continents with no money at all is hard. Your best bet is to have a good skill so that people, companies or organizations will pay you to go to places. One obvious way is to learn sailing and to offer your services to captains with boats looking to go to far away lands. Some folks even start begging for money.

Free food

We have an entire article on how to get free food, two thirds of those tips also work while traveling: 1. Ask for surplus food at restaurants, shops and other companies that are likely to throw out food. 2. Find food in dumpsters or in nature.

Simon Dabbico

Simon Dabbicco: "Many people believe that travelling is something that only a few of us can afford. I’d like to prove not only that money is unnecessary, but also that travelling without money is more fun."

Further reading