Travel Book Review: How To Travel The World On $50 A Day by Matt Kepnes of Nomadicmatt

I met Matt Kepnes in London back in November 2011. I heard he was at a party, so I crashed the party and introduced myself to him among others. He’s a pretty cool guy, we exchanged pleasantries and he was kind enough to take this picture with me. I wanted to meet him as I’d read his stuff at NomadicMatt.com, liked what he had to offer about traveling frugally and really wanted to meet the person behind the blog.

Since then, we’ve kept in touch in person and online. Fast forward to February 2013 and Matt has written a whole book about traveling the world cheaply. I requested a copy for review and got one, thank you. Here are my thoughts.

Go Buy It.

O.K. I’ll write something about its content to convince you; please read on.

The 255 page book is a actually a good read with tons of tips on how to really travel the world or most of it anyways on $50 a day. Now when I used to work for my ex-airline, that would barely get me a discounted airline rate at the Holiday Inn in London-Heathrow Airport, but Matt’s book tells you how you can go camping, housesitting, couchsurfing, hosteling among other things in London of all places and spending just about $50 if you really take it easy on the eating and sightseeing.

He lays the book out by telling you how he got started his blog back in 2008.  I specially liked the airline part of the book of course, as he talks about using low fare carriers and alternate airports for lower fares. Plus a piece on frequent flier miles; how to accrue them and use them. I loved his piece on finding the right bank to use to avoid foreign transaction fees as well as ATM fees. This is especially important as its about a 3% transaction fee to use your card and banks like Citibank will charge you a fee to even use banks internationally that are labeled Citibank; long story for another time…

Some of his tips are not for everyone, like working on an organic farm to make ends meet, but he does give advice on how to save money though and that works for everyone. I’ve never done the farm thing, but I think I’ll look into it for warmer climates ;-).

As you know, I’m quite versed about traveling, but Matt has some really good ideas in his book that I’ll incorporate into my travels.  The guy really goes in-depth (9 pages) about getting a backpack. For me, I just go to Walmart when school is about to begin (Walmart is weird; you can’t find bags any other time) and buy one; done. But to each his own.

The book covers the world (well, most of it) by breaking it down into regions he’s visited. As such the book’s details does not cover the Caribbean and oddly enough the U.S., Canada and Mexico, plus the Middle East, India, Central Asia (the ‘stans’) and Africa. So if you’ve visited these places, maybe you can start writing your own book. He tells us about accommodations, food, ground transportation, how to book airline tickets and how much money you need in each place and even where to get vaccinations if needed.  There are plenty of Internet resources to choose from as well.

The book launches on February 5, 2013 and can be found on Amazon.com.  I highly suggest you get a copy.  Then come back here and leave a comment and tell me what you think about it.  Let’s see if you agree with me. Also leave a comment on Amazon.com as well.

If you leave a comment below (by Feb., 11, 2013) about why you deserve a copy of the book, I’ll pick the best one and buy you a copy of the book; if you are picked and you’ve already bought it, just send me the receipt and I’ll refund what you paid for it. But guess what, there has to be more than 15 comments, so start commenting (one per person please :-)). Share with your friends.