Essential Travel Tools and Apps

In terms of the latest travel tools and apps to help you save money on your next vacation, make sure you don’t leave home without the ones below. Each one of these is an app or service that we currently use, so please ensure you sign up using our referral links to get some free credits for both of us!

Note: The below recommendations include affiliate links. This is at no additional cost to you and gets both of us bonuses when you sign up or make a purchase using the link. Each of these are items that we personally use, and the opinions are solely our own. If you have questions, check out our Affiliate Disclosure page.

  • Hotel / Lodging
  • Transportation
    • Uber ($5 credit)
      • Trains are one option, but sometimes when crunched for time it’s better to take Uber/Lyft
      • Sign up here using our referral link for $5 off your first ride!
  • Cell / Communication
    • Project Fi ($20 credit)
      • Free texts, cheap data, and cheap (or Free WiFi) calling anywhere in the world.
      • Another option is having a phone that allows you to purchase local SIM cards at each location you’ll be traveling. If you’ll be moving often between regions, we recommend Project Fi since it’s cheap ($20 base rate, then $10/GB of data anywhere in the world)
      • Sign up here using our referral link for $20 off your first Project Fi bill!
    • Kindle (or other e-reader)
  • Finances and Cash Back:
    • Raise.com ($5 credit)
      • Raise allows purchasing gift cards at great discounts, often offering 5-10% savings (see blog post about saving 10%+ on many travel services such as AirBNB, Uber, cruises, flights, and hotels)
      • Sign up here using our referral code here for $5 off your first purchase.
    • Cash-back Portals (TopCashBack ($10 credit), Mr. Rebates)
      • Who doesn’t like free money? Any time you buy anything online, especially higher value items, it’s worth 30 seconds of your time to click through to your website (e.g. Amazon) using a cash-back portal. The two primary ones we use are TopCashBack and Mr. Rebates.
      • Get cash back (in addition to your credit card rewards, coupons, etc.) when you click-through to a website before buying, such as up to 10% back on Amazon, 1.5% on eBay, 5% at Walmart, and pretty much any other online store you can think of. CashBackMonitor is a good overview of the various cash back portals.
      • Use our referral link for TopCashBack and get $10 in credit for both of us
  • Credit Cards
    • Chase Sapphire Reserve (50,000 bonus point referral offer – worth $750+ in travel awards, and we get 10,000 points for the referral)
      • Many will be turned off immediately by seeing the $450 annual fee on the card, but don’t realize that you automatically get $300 in travel credits redeemed, essentially making the annual fee of this $150. When you then factor in free TSA pre-check / global entry screening ($100 value), the travel insurance, amazing rewards, and other perks, this card is hands-down the top travel card out there today for the frequent traveler.
    • There are many other cards that we use and recommend. We’ll share them in a future series of blog posts to help with optimizing credit card rewards for travel and for life.
  • Other Misc. Apps
    • ExpressVPN (30 days free for both of us if you sign up  using our link)
      • Essential VPN service to ensuring your private data and accounts stay secure when using WiFi while traveling.
    • AwardWallet (free upgrade to AwardWallet Plus, a $30 value)
      • Use this free tool to keep track of all your various rewards accounts – credit cards, frequent flyer accounts, cash back accounts, etc. Able to see at a glance all your rewards to help optimize planning, and ensure that your rewards never expire again! Referral link provides a free upgrade coupon to AwardWallet Plus ($30 value).
    • Passive income sources, such as:
    • LastPass password manager (free – or referral link for 1 month free of Premium)
      • Having a secure password manager is a good first move, but LastPass offers many other benefits that we use while traveling such as: storing encrypted photos of our passports/IDs, encrypted storage of all credit card info so that we don’t need to travel with all our cards physically, and ability to store other critical info
    • Facebook (for Marketplace and Events)
      • Other than documenting and sharing your travels, Facebook has two key things to enrich your travel experience
      • Facebook Marketplate – essentially the new Craigslist, but less sketchy (since you can see the profiles of people you’re dealing with), and makes it easy to buy or sell anything while on the road. Forgot that French Press or other item? Not a problem – find one for cheap using this!
      • Facebook Events – useful to look up local events in the area, including farmer’s markets, special events, social gatherings and more