Affording a trip to Missoula when you live in the UK and money is tight can be hard. Obviously, Missoulians love to talk up their hometown as it’s surrounded by mountains and has plentiful rivers and an outdoor lifestyle to enjoy too.
To make the trip become more affordable, here are some suggestions about how to turn it into a reality.
Choose the Most Affordable Route
It depends where you’ll be travelling from as to what mode of transport and route makes the most sense. Certainly, air travel will require an international flight, but it’s more about how to move around once you’re in the States and need to transit to Missoula. Most likely you’ll need multiple connections to reach Missoula.
There are at last two bus services that serve Missoula. Getting there by bus requires some patience because the duration is considerable when you are coming from places like Chicago or Seattle. However, it’s far more scenic than travelling domestically by air!
When you wish to save money, compare hiring a car versus air travel versus bus/train. There are savings to be had when exploring every option carefully.
Booking Early Saves Money
Making early reservations and waiting for the best season before visiting saves money in the long run. Early bird discounts are often available when picking up travel tickets before everyone else. The same goes for hotel bookings too.
Service providers like the assurance of some seats pre-booked. It makes sense to offer a discount to customers to ensure that. They then price up (or down) the few remaining seats as the departure date gets nearer and nearer.
Self-Catering and Camping/RV Parks
When you’ll be taking outdoor trips and camping or hiking through nature, plan to use self-catering to make daily meals less expensive. This might mean taking packed lunches on a trek to avoid pricey restaurants or at least a few snacks and some water to stretch time between meals.
Campgrounds are cheaper than hotels and cosier too. They’re easier to get to if you hire a car to get around. There are plenty of them to pick from including some just a few miles away and on the lakefront too. Some offer straight camping while others are provided for RV owners who are travelling into the area (companies like Cruise America offer RV rentals too).
Finding the Money
Saving money up over a few months by being frugal with other expenditures can bridge some of the gap between what you have now and the amount you need for the vacation. Use the trip as motivation to cut back on the little luxuries now, so it won’t feel like a deprivation.
When you get nearer to the trip departure date, if you don’t have enough money together yet but you have bad credit, think about getting loans for bad credit from a lender like LoanPig. Their shorter-term loans are ideal for people who’ve had trouble with lending in the past but feel capable of making the repayments on time now.
When planning a trip well ahead of departure, it affords you the opportunity to get creative about finding the money to get away. It’s only when you’re impatient that it becomes hard. This also allows time to use multiple approaches to raise all the money towards it.