As a broke college student who also has an insane level of FOMO (fear of missing out), I often feel the need to travel to new destinations. A simple scroll through TikTok can send me down a spiral of looking for budget-friendly travel options. Recently, a friend and I decided to go ahead and book a trip to New Jersey, and I want to walk you all through how we planned this out, ensuring we saved as much money as possible.
Research, Research, Research.
When traveling, you need to know everything you can about the location you will be going to. As for myself, I have only traveled out of the state of Ohio twice, so I had some anxiety in regard to going to the eastern coast. My roommate and I sat down and looked through various websites discussing our destination, Newark, New Jersey. We found that the area was relatively safe, only a thirty-minute drive from New York City, and it was also a college town. (Which gave us a sense of relief, as we both are students at Bowling Green State University.) Following this, we looked at our options for traveling within the city, deciding whether or not we needed to set aside a budget for things such as Uber. Ultimately, through this research, we found out that the city is extremely walkable, especially within the area where we will be staying.
We also went ahead and looked into different restaurants in the area. In total, our trip will only span four days, and we both desperately want to try some new food while in the area. Through doing this research, my roommate and I were both able to save an immense amount of money, as we knew what we were getting into when booking this trip.
Ultimately, we decided that the best option for us would be to travel via train, specifically the Amtrak rail system. I have experience traveling through them in the past, and it was extremely smooth and cost-effective. In total, for a round-trip ticket, I spent $200. Where if we chose to travel via plane instead, for the dates we chose, we would have spent $400 one way. The trip to New Jersey will be about 19 hours in total, and though this may not work for some people, it works for us. We are traveling with the purpose of attending two New Jersey Devils hockey games, and our travel time will not affect them in any way.
In regards to where we are staying, we went through a number of websites searching for something affordable, before settling on AirBnB. We were able to find a place to stay only a ten-minute walk away from the ice arena, which averaged out to $60/night, totaling $235 for our stay. The location is a perfect distance between the ice arena and the train station, while also giving us the freedom the explore the city a bit.
Choosing travel dates.
Lastly, I wanted to note how we planned out our travel dates. As we are both college students, we had to be very careful that our trip would not overlap with any classes or exams we had. So, we compared the New Jersey Devils hockey schedule to our academic calendar, looking for anything that could overlap. We found that within the month of January, there were two back-to-back home games in New Jersey, that just happened to fall on the weekend of Martin Luther King Day. On top of this, we also noticed that the tickets for these games were extremely affordable, and decided to go ahead and book our trip. We would only be missing our Friday classes and would be back in Ohio just in time for classes that following week.
After discussing our plans for several hours, we booked our trip, confirming that everything lined up. Our train tickets, AirBnB, and hockey tickets are all being added to our wallets as we now wait in anticipation for January to roll around.
We also kept track of everything in an organized manner, as I wrote down every small detail about our trip. I have four pages of paper full of notes such as how long the train ride is, our layover, what time we should be at the ice arena, and so on. And, I also kept track of several different price-downs, so that we really could choose the most affordable option in the end.
I do want to note that I am extremely grateful that I have the ability to go on this trip, and we both worked hard to be able to afford this. Keep an eye out for an article looking over my experience in New Jersey!