Tips for keeping solo travel financially friendly

Want to travel around but don't have a travel buddy? Traveling alone can come with single surcharges and not having someone to share costs with can make solo travelers blow through their budgets quickly. 

On the latest episode of PennyWise, host Nat Cardona is joined by Sally French of NerdWallet with tips for solo travelers who want to be fiscally responsible while exploring the globe.

Read more on NerdWallet here!

About this program

Nat Cardona is host of PennyWise as well as Lee Enterprise's true-crime podcast Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles. Lee Enterprises produces many national, regional and sports podcasts. Learn more here.

Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Welcome to Pennywise Lee Enterprises podcast. I'm your host, Nat Cardona

Today we're talking solo travel. It's getting more and more popular these days, but let's face it- Traveling by yourself can get really pricey. Thankfully, we have NerdWallet travel expert Sally French here with us to give us tips on how to make the most of it all. 

Today we're talking about the topic of solo travel, keeping it fun and I guess financially friendly, you could say. 

Okay, I love it. First things first. From the Nerdwallet article, I read the amount of people opting for solo travel has gone up as compared to past years. Is that correct?

That is correct. So what Nerdwallet has found is actually based on Google searches for solo travel, they have increased 59% in the first half of this year versus the same period in 2019. More people now are interested in solo travel travel than they were pre-pandemic.

No, that's what they say. So what's the big difference that I guess people are just eager to get out there, huh?

Yeah, You know, I think there is definitely this uptake since the pandemic of people being okay out there, being solo. We spent so much time alone and now people are spread out. People have moved away, but people still want to go on trips. People especially want to take those bucket list trips. So sometimes the best way to take that bucket list trip might just be by yourself.

Yeah, there's a few steps you got to take first. Let's talk about the travel in itself, that airplane ticket. Any advantages to flying solo?

Well, this is actually an area where you can save money. So one of the challenges with flying solo or traveling solo is that it can be more expensive. You're not able to split the cost of that rental car, of that ride, share of that hotel room. But with airfare, in some ways, you can find a better deal. You might just be able to get that last available flight if seats are sold out for two.

That's not going to work If you're traveling with someone else. If you're by yourself, that can be better. Another thing is you might be more inclined to be okay with that middle seat. What we've seen is that airfare prices are actually down this year versus last year. They're down this year versus 2019. They're down this year versus what they were ten years ago.

And a big reason for that is because airfares have engaged in this practice called unbundling or bundling, where they'll charge a lower base airfare, and then they'll add all these extra costs, extra cost check bags, extra cost to board early. And one of those extra costs is to pick your seat, especially with families. People want to sit together.

And so we see a lot of air. Airlines will pay. A lot of travelers will pay extra to be able to take their seat to travel with their family members. But if you're traveling solo, you don't have any family members to travel with. And so you can probably skip that expense. The reality is you're probably going to end up in the middle seat, but maybe not a huge deal if you're a solo traveler looking to save money.

Seriously, at the end of the day, it's just tapping the person next to your shoulder. Got to get up quick. It's never a big deal.

But I remember going on a flight. You're going to remember the trip. You're not going to remember the middle seat anyway. At least I.

Totally. They keep remembering that something you touched on just a bit ago is the other important part of travel. And traveling alone is picking that place to stay. So when we put a price tag of, let's say 150 bucks a night on a hotel room, that's often great if you're traveling with a friend, you split it down th