How to plan a vacation on a low budget, in 5 easy steps

When planning a vacation, there are basically two ways to go about it: choosing the services of a travel agency or plan every detail of the vacation yourself. While choosing the travel agency option means you are free of a lot of details that become the agency's job, it also usually means that your vacation is more expensive, as the travel agency ads its fees to every service it does for you. Here is how you can save costs.

1. Decide early what you want your destination to be.

Then decide when you want to go on vacation, keeping in mind what the weather is like at your destination, how crowded it is, what events take place there at the same time.

2. Book your plane ticket in advance.

The sooner you book your flight, the less you pay for the ticket. If you don't have fixed dates for your vacation, pick your dates according to when the tickets are cheapest. Choose a low-cost company and you could pay as little as 20 EUROS to fly to your desired destination.

3. Choose a hotel.

After deciding where you want to go and how you are going to get there, you need to decide where you are going to stay. There are a lot of online hotel reservations websites that have offers from thousands of hotels worldwide. You can choose your accommodation according to price, location, facilities or all of them combined.

4. Do not forget about medical insurance.

The medical insurance is usually taken care by the travel agency, so if you are planning the vacation by yourself, be sure to contact an insurance company and select the type of insurance appropriate for your trip.

5. Think about how you get to your hotel from the airport.

Many hotels offer shuttle transfers, for free or at a surcharge. That is a good way to make sure you get to the hotel as easy as possible. Taking public transportation or coaches is an inexpensive solution, but you will probably also need to do some walking or change several means of transportation, as it is unlikely that the bus will stop right in front of your hotel (unless you specifically choose the hotel on this criteria). And of course, you can always take a taxi. Just be sure to gather information about how much should a ride cost from the airport from the hotel, what should be the route, what taxi companies can be trusted, so you don't end up paying three times the normal value.

That's it! All you have to do now is pack your bags and hope for good weather.