3 Airport Hacks to Save Money, Save Time and Travel Cheaper.

The simplest, but most effective ways to spend less money and time.

After one decade, 51 countries and more than a hundred airports visited, I noticed some patterns that could help me to spend less. In hindsight, they look incredibly simple. Still, in the beginning, I was not doing any of them.

The 3 hacks below, part of my second book (Budget Travelers, Digital Nomads & Expats: The Ultimate Guide: 50 Tips, Tricks, Hacks and Ways to Free Stuff & Cheaper Flights), are some of the simplest, but most effective ways that I found to spend less money and time.

1 — How to not pay for extra luggage during the winter

If you enjoy travelling with low-cost airlines like me, probably you will extract an enormous benefit from the next paragraphs. Especially if you are a fan of winter destinations.

Because winter clothes warm enough to subzero temperatures are not a good match for restricted luggage allowances. By restricted I mean those of RyanAir, EasyJet, Wizz Air and similar budget airlines.

But there is a solution to the baggage problem.

Substitute your Puffy Jackets

The best way to describe this type of jacket is to think about a middle-term between the Michelin mascot and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters. I am talking about those colourful coats, that seems to have air trapped inside. They are excellent to keep you warm, even at alpine temperatures, but they have a terrible defect for economical travellers:

They occupy a disproportional part of your baggage allowance.

To make things even more complicated, there is also a second dilemma. Some areas have wide ranges of temperature, depending on factors like altitude or time of the day.

Those that visited Sochi, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics, realized that temperatures in the city can be almost 20 degrees Celsius higher than in the suburbs. Same applies to places like Tehran and their altitude variations or Santiago de Chile, where the daily temperature variations have an incredible range. In the early morning, the weather can be below-freezing while at noon is suitable for beach sunbathing (well, not in Tehran). Therefore, the same puffy jacket that makes you warm and cosy, two hours later feels like a sauna.

How to be prepared for that while keeping space in your luggage?

I will summarize the answer in one word: windbreakers.

Windbreakers are light jackets made of synthetic material, frequently used by casual runners during the colder season.

To achieve optimal thermal isolation, they should be used with one or two layers of wool (or similar material) sweaters. In this way, you will keep your body warm.

The windbreaker will not allow wind to reach your skin, while the lower layers of wool keep your body temperature and natural warmth. If the temperature increases, just take off one layer or two, until you feel comfortable.

The best part? One windbreaker and two layers of wool-sweaters will take the same or less space than a puffy jacket in your luggage! Just take care to not lose your compacted luggage in the airport arrivals, a problem that we solved in a previous article.

With this hack, you are ready to the warm weather of a beach in Viña del Mar or to a ski trip in the Andean mountains (hint: if you are in Chile you can do both in the same day).

2 — Get rid of your coins still at the airport

It is a common hobby to collect coins from all over the world. My mom too shares this interest, and for this reason, I frequently bring her some change from my trips. However, you don’t need to have 10 of the same Ethiopian birr, Albanian lek or Laotian kip coins. Still, this is what is most likely to happen if you bring it back home.

To handle paper bills of exotic currencies, exchange houses charge large spreads (the difference between the real rate and what they charge you). If you try to exchange coins, chances are the cashier will simply laugh and call the next in line.

Therefore, unless you want to keep those coins for the rest of your life (or until the next visit to Addis Abeba), better just give them to some passer-by. Or spend them at the airport. In the first case, you win a thank you, in the second, some overpriced souvenir to give to your mother-in-law.

3 — Take a cab at the departures sessions

It is fine if you saw the title above and thought:

What a prehistoric stuff! Who takes cabs in those times of rideshare apps?

I would think the same if not for the fact that dozens of countries don’t have access to ridesharing applications. Denmark, Saudi Arabia or Bulgaria, for example. Either because of market conditions or by government regulation, chances are that at some point you will be in a situation where your phone will not bring you a driver in a few clicks. You will need to take a cab to leave the airport.

Our natural impulse is to walk out of the arrivals terminal and choose a driver from a bunch of taxis waiting at the door. Even this being the most convenient way, it is not the cheapest.

A simple trick is to instead of taking a cab in the arrivals area, go up and take it at the departures level of the airport. Taxis bringing people to depart leave the airport empty, which is a waste of time and fuel for them. Therefore, there is a big possibility they will offer you a better rate than the taxis in the arrivals area.

You save money and time just by taking the stairs.

Talking about saving money, other ways to do it while travelling you can check in this article explaining Why You Should Never Fly on Fridays, and Instead Choose This Day and in this one with 3 Secrets to Travel Cheap Post-Pandemic and Beyond.

See you in my next story!

Author: Levi Borba, founder of Colligere Expat Consultancy, former RM specialist for the world´s greatest airline, writer of the books Moving Out, Living Abroad and Keeping Your Sanity and Budget Travelers, Digital Nomads & Expats: The Ultimate Guide. You can check some of his articles here.