couchsurfing, camping, hostels
buy from supermarkets and prepare your own food
look for any discounts you qualify for —youth or student? for example
Plan plan plan! A bus or rail pass might not be the cheapest option. Some places allow hitch-hiking, but of course that isn’t always the cheapest option.
If you really want the cheapest airfare then go in winter, but then that would pretty much exclude camping to save money.

Sign up for aifare alerts with Bing, Farecompare, etc. Expect airfares in the low $1000s (maybe $1100-$1400); if you are diligent and react quickly, you might snag something under $800; most of the cheapest airfares have 30 day max stay, however.

You should bookmark this page and check it often: http://www.farecompa…

Thank you kindly, this is loads of help!

Using your money wisely is very important, but don’t try to skimp and not spend money on your trip if it affects your adventure. You are going during the peak season… is this the only time you can go? If you go in the shoulder, or off season then you get way more bang for your buck. I’d rather go for a solid 3 week trip where I didn’t have to worry if I had a place to sleep or money for dinner… than go on a 4 week trip where I was pinching pennies.

Camping and couch surfing are good ideas, and do your homework to find some cheap hostels that might be a little more outside of the city center could help you save some cash too. The thing that I did to save a lot of money was to eat and drink wisely. If you are drinking then talk to people and find the happy hour bars to drink on the cheap. Also when you are eating it’s good to do some shopping at the local market for meals, and go out and picnic for lunch or make your own dinner.

yeah, definitely pinched into that time frame, I can’t go during the off season. We’re going to shoot for three weeks, but we might have to cut back to two. I’ll be doing plenty of couch-surfing and looking into cheap hostels. But if I plan on going from spain to the netherlands to italy, wouldn’t you all think the eurail pass would be my best choice with regards to saving money? i’d consider hitch-hiking, but we want to see lots of different places in not so much time, so hitch hiking probably isn’t as dependable as the train.

Some kind of railpass will save money with this itinerary. What does railsaver recommend on the Eurotrip planner?

It said the Eurail 5-country Austria/belelux/france/Germany/Italy 10 day second class youth select pass, but this pass wouldn’t include spain or the czech republic, both places I really want to visit… it also says in big bold red letters “Potentially Invalid, find the best railpass again”…

yeah, I’ve gotten that, too. Not sure where it comes from. You could try entering the itinerary at www.railsaver.com to see if it comes out the same. Follow the “I have a good idea of my itinerary” route and click “I prefer purchasing railpasses (to point to point tickets) ‘only when it saves money.’”

thanks for the help, and this sight seems like a great reference, but i tried entering my travel info but the most current year i could set my travel info to was ’08. is this site not updated? it gave me some basic advice, but when i tried to check how much the tickets would be, the link had expired or something… old website??

[quote][, but i tried entering my travel info but the most current year i could set my travel info to was ’08. is this site not updated?/quote] The prices for train tickets and railpasses change very little from year to year — and the comparison between tickets and a railpass stays pretty constant. I would use the recommendation from railsaver as a “best guess” on which, if any, railpass, railpasses or combination of pass and point to point tickets is best.

Frankly, the only way you can find out what tickets actually cost is to go to the national rail company website for the country you’re traveling. International tickets (from one European country to another) can be very difficult or impossible to price on-line. The sites that sell railpasses usually sell individual train tickets, too. However their prices are at least 30% more than you’d pay if you bought at the train station or used the national rail company websites. Finding an exact answer to the railpass question requires an exact itinerary (dates and times), a willingness to buy non-refundable low fare tickets several weeks in advance and hours and hours of time checking prices on numerous websites that may or may not be all that easy to navigate in English.