Plan your trip far in advance 

If you wait until the last minute, you're basically asking to spend an arm and a leg on travel expenses, by planning your trip far enough in advance you'll have plenty of time to look for ways to save.

Skyscanner is a great tool to use to help you find and compare flights that you can afford. The website allows you to look at the whole month at once so you can easily see which days are cheapest to fly on and which airlines are the cheapest to fly with. You can also put a price alert on a flight and Skyscanner will email you when that flight's price goes up or down. The best part is when it comes time for you to buy your ticket Skyscanner automatically transfers you to that airline's website to book your flight, so you can be confident that the ticket your buying is real.

Rome2Rio is another great resource that helps you find the cheapest way to travel between cities. With Rome2Rio all you have to do is type in the city that you're in and the city that you want to go to, and it'll show you all the different ways you could get there and approximately how much each travel method would cost. Rome2Rio is especially great for European travel because of how many cheap train options there are! Both Skyscanner and Rome2Rio can be accessed as a website or an app so they make it easy to start planning your trip from anywhere.

Another plus about planning your travel far in advance is that it will give you enough time to research when traveling to that place is most affordable and you can then build your schedule around that. Generally, April, May, October and November are the cheapest travel months because they're in between big breaks and holidays. If you can be flexible with when you can travel your wallet will thank you.

Make a savings account for your trip

Create a system of saving for your upcoming trip, whether you take a certain amount of money from every paycheck to put towards your trip or start a second job where all of the funds go solely towards your trip, whatever you decide, stick to it and start saving. A great tool to help you save is an app called Acorns. Acorns works by sinking all of your different payment options to one place and helps you save by automatically transferring your spare change into a saving account that you can withdraw from at any time.

For example, if you buy something that is $4.50 Acorns will round up and transfer that extra .50 to your saving account so it looks like you spent $5 while really that extra .50 was put into your savings. Acorns will also invest in you so the longer you allow your saving account to grow the more you will find in there. Let every time you put money away for your trip serve as a reminder about how excited about that trip you are.

You don't have to travel far to have an amazing trip

Traveling doesn't always have to be an international experience, you can road trip to different states with your friends and have an incredible time! If you drive with friends you can split the price of gas or if you're not able to drive you can buy an inexpensive ticket on a Greyhound bus. If you're staying for a longer period of time consider booking an Airbnb. You'll live like a local and most Airbnbs have kitchens, so you'll be able to save money by grocery shopping instead of eating out every meal. Hostels are also great options for very little price and if you're traveling alone, they're a great way to meet people your age.

Avoid tourist traps

There are tons of free things to do in every city, including going to the beach, park, museums on free days and window shopping! Tourist attractions are often overrated and over prices, so pick one or two things you really want to do, but don't waste your time and money trying to do everything!