What Does It Mean To Be A Cheap Traveller?

People always seem to want to know how I travel around when I have no money! The truth is I like to travel and I don't think its fair that people with money should be the only folks to travel. So me being my sweet Haitian mother's daughter( I'll explain this in a bit ), have learned some tricks to traveling on a really small budget!

When I was growing up in Brooklyn, NY, I always wanted to wear the cool kids stuff and when I asked my mom to buy them for me she would always say no first and why do I need it! That always pissed me off! I wanted to fit in. Do you know how much torment kids are in junior high! Its insane, kids are always picking on the kid with weak defenses and the non designer gear. My mother thought I was being foolish, my clothes were clean and they matched(sometimes).

Mom just didn't get it or so I thought! So I had to learn to get creative with my wardrobe, by selecting key pieces that blended well without screaming "Bargain Basement Shopper" , coming through move to the right! . I learned to live in junior high but I needed my independence from my mother in high school I just couldn't and wouldn't live through the non cool kids clothes again. So I got my mother to hand me the money for school clothes and boy was I in for a shock.

It had never dawned on me that my parents were not hiding money from my brothers and I. I just thought they were just being cheap. My father was the spender and my was the one making the money and paying the bills. Who know we actual just didn't have the money to buy expensive things if we wanted have a home to live in and food on the table. My god, reality check 101. For me being the oldest with two younger brothers, there just wasn't money to spare for things and it wasn't cause my mom didn't understand she just wanted me to get what was important. Sadly expensive clothes just wasn't it!

So the by the end of the summer before high school started my sainted mother allowed me to do my own clothes shopping and with my $100 I had to learn to use my inner cheapness which I never know I had. So I started to open my eyes to sale signs and not my wallet. You would be surprised by the thing you can find when you start looking with what funds you have to spend then with what you would like to have first.

As I started a relationship with Payless, the discount store, the dollar store and yes the $10 clothing store; the cheap one was born and my reputation as being hella was created!. I lived for the good cheap find that had quality oozing from it! My cheapness become a way of life for me and it just moved for just clothes to going out with my friends, right down to the food that I brought.

But something was missing I always wanted to move out of Brooklyn and see the rest of the world but I never seemed to know where to go and I couldn't go alone right? wrong! I just didn't have what it took and the time to face my fears of I can't do that.

Now lets fast forward to me moving to Maryland. My father had pasted away right before I graduated high school at 16. I wanted to go to college in Hawaii but my mother didn't have to funds to send me and I didn't have the level of cheapness I do now to know I could have still gone regardless. Either way I spent a year at community college in NY when my sainted mother decide to move my brothers and I to Maryland.

Can we say I was shocked. What the heck is a Maryland and why am I going. My mother allowed me to stay but money she gave me ran out cause little old me did not have a job. So I decide to move as well and follow the money. Maryland was hard to get used to at first but then again I learned to adjust and found my cheap store again.

Now the best part to Maryland was that I continued my education meet cool people but most of all I got a job! Well I got more then that one in the 10 years I ended up working retail and trust me if you ain't got the stomach retail is not for you. Its demanding and doesn't pay if you can't climb your way to the top( can we say bitter taste in mouth ). It took plenty of talking to but I found my way into banking and not in the branch but the call center. So I jumped from one headache to another but this one paid more( don't jump for the want ads just yet, it ain't that much more)

My first year working at the credit union got me into thinking again about traveling, due to the extra income. I always good to think but lets be real about I still wasn't making enough so will did I think I could. Well that's cause I started to learning banking theme called...saving! Who would have thought you have to save to travel when you don't use $100 dollar bills for toilet paper!.

I had to think of how much I wanted to save and how long it would take me to save it. So I birth my travel steps( I'll blog that later), which I now use for any traveling I do. Now having bills like rent, utilities and etc, there really wasn't much that I could save so I had to recheck my spending habits which is part of my travel steps. Once I did that I was able to see what I could save and with that I was able to build my travel time line.

With my travel sets I ended up in London the following year for about $1800 and I was there for two weeks and had a grand time. Bet you wants to know how! Catch me at the next blog