Get out a piece of paper and write down all your fixed expenses, like rent/mortgage, car payments, cable/streaming bill, cell phone, insurance, school payments, etc. Add them all up.

Then write down everything you want to spend money on. This is how much you spend on things like food, drinks, going to the movies, shopping, your daily Starbucks coffee, cigarettes, sports tickets, your midday snack, and other similar things. If you don’t know what you spend your money on, keep track of your spending for two weeks and come back.

When you add it all up, what do you get? Most likely a lot of money.

And I’m sure there will be many costs you didn’t know about. These are what financial experts call “phantom expenses” because we never notice them because they are so small. People lose money and don’t even know it. A dollar here and there adds up to a lot. Over the course of a year, even a bottle of water or candy bar every day can make a big difference.

How does this relate to traveling?

You think you can’t go around the world because you don’t have enough money. People tell me, “I can’t afford it. I have too many bills to pay.” Most of us have expenses we can’t get rid of, but when you travel the world for a long time, many of those costs go away. If we cut our “phantom” expenses, cut our fixed costs, and find other ways to save, we can build up our travel fund much faster.

In short, you need to make a budget if you want to start traveling more or save up for a specific trip. You can save enough for an around-the-world journey without working a second job if you just limit your everyday spending, become more economical, and adopt a simpler lifestyle. I used these tips before my first trip around the world, so I know they work (and still use them to keep my living expenses low).

Obviously, if you make less money, it will take you longer to save enough money to travel. But longer doe not mean never. Over a long time, a little bit every day adds up to a lot.

Here are some easy and creative ways to cut costs, make money, and get on the road sooner:

Try not to buy too much. I’d rather have the time and money to travel than to work really hard just to buy things. Even when I see something I think I’d love to own, I try to think about the places I’ve been and the memories I have. This helps me put “value” in perspective.

As I said in the beginning, most people don’t have a budget, so the first step to saving money is to figure out where it’s going. In an age where you can tap an app and a car comes, it’s easy not to think about how much we spend. Use a service like Mint or a spreadsheet to keep track of all your expenses. When you start to pay attention to where your money goes, you might be surprised.

Start keeping track of your spending, and keep doing it, so you can keep cutting out the easy ways to save money and figure out where you’re wasting money. You can do this with a spreadsheet or a site like Onomy or Mint.

This is our best advice. Prices for hotels, tours, and even food will be much higher if you travel during the holidays or during the peak travel season.

We’ve traveled a lot when it wasn’t the high season. We’re making our way through Eastern Europe right now, and it’s winter. What do you know? The weather has been pretty good, there aren’t many tourists, and we’ve been able to get discounts on all of our apartments and hostels. We’ve also been to the Caribbean in the summer, which is hurricane season, but we’ve never seen a hurricane there. We’ve only found cheap hotels, free ferry rides, and tours for half price.

Financial experts have said this for a long time. Set up a separate bank account and have money put into it automatically every time you get paid. No matter how much you save there, putting it in a separate bank account means you won’t spend more than you should. Think of this as a bank for your money. Don’t go in there. It’s your money for trips.

Most of the time, it’s cheaper to fly on Monday or Tuesday instead of Thursday or Friday, and the second flight of the day is cheaper than the first.

Have a thing for Starbucks? So, Starbucks really wants your money. Coffee is a daily cost that eats away at your money without you even realizing it. That $5 USD coffee you buy every day costs you $150 USD in a month. At $1,800 USD per year, that’s enough to live in Southeast Asia for two months.

What’s more important: your daily cup of coffee or spending more time on the beaches of Thailand or in the jungles of Borneo?

Sure, it seems obvious that you should give up your cup of coffee. And yes, the time you save by not having to buy one is useful. This would be “small thinking” financial advice that isn’t worth the time or effort under normal circumstances.

But right now, you want to go on a trip, so every dollar counts.

It can help pay for your trip or even make you money, depending on where you live and where you’re going. A few years ago, we took a two-month backpacking trip through Southeast Asia and rented out our New York City apartment while we were gone. SE Asia is a great place to travel on a budget, so our travel costs were so low that we made money. We found a renter on Craigslist, but you could also list your place on Airbnb, VRBO, or Home Exchange, or look into a house swap.

Restaurants are expensive, but we all need to eat. Cook more often to keep your food costs down. I learned how to cook in college, which has helped me ever since. Before I went on my first trip, I cut the number of times I ate out each week to two. I made every other meal myself. I would save dinner’s leftovers for lunch the next day, which helped me save more money.

You don’t even have to be great in the kitchen. If you want to learn how to make delicious and nutritious meals quickly, you may find many resources online. Meals never take me more than 20–30 minutes to make.