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Travel is a great way to expand your cultural horizons, meet new friends and reconnect with old ones, but it can get expensive. How do our bloggers do it without breaking the bank?

For those of you who are traveling overseas with a group of friends, I would suggest renting apartments instead of hotel rooms. I travel with 3 other friends and we have found the apartments to have more space, free Wi-Fi and cheaper than getting 2 hotel rooms. Although this seems to be changing in some places, the apartments usually don’t include the high tax rate that hotels carry.

The locations are right in the heart of where you want to be, and you can save money by cooking your own meals and doing laundry (if washer and dryer are included). Most places include free Wi-Fi, or at the very least a computer available to use which is a huge plus--and savings, too. Also, you get great local information from the owners.

We have used most of the popular sites like www.homeaway.com; www.airbnb.com and www.vrbo.com with good success when looking for place for 4 or more nights. For less than 4 nights, www.craigslist.com has been a great resource using search for vacation rentals by owner. Many of these will have a broker, but we have found them helpfully for finding and negotiating apartments for less than 3 nights. The rules we follow are: do not pay for the entire stay upfront; an acceptable deposit rate of no more than 1 night (unless through one of the sites); and there must be recent pictures of every room.

If you are planning on hopping around a lot, this may not be a great choice. However, if you are staying in one city for a week, I highly suggest considering the option.

Veronica
Look at condo options at your vacation destination as opposed to a traditional hotel room. Condos come with fully-equipped kitchens, which means you can cook and don’t have to dine out every meal. A two-bedroom or three-bedroom condo split amongst a group of friends often ends up being much less expensive than everyone getting their own hotel room, and also provides a place to hang out after a night out!

Juanita Soranno
Check out Couchsurfing and ASW. These are great resources to meet locals where you'll be traveling! Don't over plan your trip. If your itinerary reads more like a meeting agenda, you'll miss the out on great spontaneous opportunities that may present themselves. I traveled through Thailand and was able to get my scuba diving certification and attend the Half Moon Festival, all because I didn't schedule myself to the minute. Increase your potential for adventure!

Trang

While some of you out there may not appreciate this tip, bunking with family is always a great way to save while traveling. I’m lucky to have family that is spread out on several continents, including both coasts (West and East), Europe and SE Asia. If I’m looking to save a few $$$ on lodging, I could simply choose one of those destinations to travel to and I have. So go out there and look up your long lost 3rd cousin and save some dollars while traveling!

How do you save money while traveling?

Do you know how to balance your checkbook? (Or am I dating myself with even the mention of checks?!) If you do know what I’m talking about, then perhaps a better question since I suspect everyone knows how to do basic math – Do you actually balance your checkbook? I’m the first to admit that I do not (ironic considering I work for a bank, I know!).

Back in college, I would make half-hearted attempts, but would inevitably forget to record a cash withdrawal, check deposit or debit card transaction at some point. My ATM receipt was my sole means of ensuring that I had “enough money” in my account (despite only having a vague idea of what “enough money” meant). Sound familiar?

But now I’m an adult who’s responsible for more than just myself, and I have regular expenses that I can’t go without paying. Well, I technically could but then my child would go hungry and we’d be kicked out of our home (hello diapers and formula, mortgage payments and property tax!). Thankfully, my financial institution (Wells Fargo of course) has recently launched Cash Flow Monitor, a very cool tool that I really, really wish existed when I was in college.

How Cash Flow Monitor (CFM) Works

Say you’re in school and have your monthly rent, cell phone and cable/internet bills and car loan payments. You have one-off purchases like that new laptop for school or books for the new semester. Maybe you have a part-time job as a barista at the local coffee shop and some cash from your parents on a regular basis.

How do you keep track of all the money going in and out of your account? Here’s how CFM could come in handy:

• Plan ahead. You no longer need to do mental math to figure out how much money will be left after you’ve paid your bills. CFM will take care of that for you!
• Take control and don’t get dinged. The Cash Cushion (as determined by you) lets you quickly see (and act on) potential low balance days.
• Automate it. Schedule your payments using bill pay or transfers and let the bank take care of paying your bills on time – one less thing for you to think about when you’re in the midst of midterms.

And a quick tip that I’ve found to be useful that I want to pass along – CFM knows what Wells Fargo knows, which means that the more you tell it (i.e., the more transactions you add to bill pay, transfers, etc.) the better it will be at estimating your future balances.

Check out CFM and tell us what you think!

We’re still beta testing CFM, which means we would love for people like you to try it out and provide your feedback so we can make it even better. You will need to be an existing Wells Fargo customer (i.e., have a checking account and access to online banking).

1. Go to https://labs.wellsfargo.com/cm
2. Log in using your existing Wells Fargo online username/password
3. Start using CFM and tell us what you think via the surveys sprinkled throughout the tool or via the feedback link in the tool

Thanks in advance for your input. We can’t guarantee that we’ll be able to act on every bit of feedback we get, but we do promise to try!

Do you know how much your latte costs over the course of a year? If you spend $3.50 a day 6 days a week to include study time, you spend $84.00/month. Per year, that adds up to $1,008! What do you have to show for it? Coffee stains on your favorite shirt and yellow teeth? So how do you make sure your wallet stays healthy?

You know the basics.

Spending shouldn’t exceed your income, you should keep track of what you spend, know the difference between needs (food, shelter) and wants (concert tickets, a daily latte) and plan accordingly, but how do you make all of that knowledge work for you?

Be responsible for your own destiny.

Take ownership of your own finances starting now. You are in charge of your life, right? Who knows you best? You have the power to choose the way you want to live now and into the future, so how do you go about matching your income level to your lifestyle choice? Creating a spending plan can help you get there and can lead to long-term financial stability, an attractive quality both personally and professionally. (It is possible for employers to request financial background checks )

Creating a Spending Plan.

A spending plan is a great way to understand how your money comes and goes and helps you manage it. It can help identify areas where you can cut expenses and increase savings. Start with tracking your spending for one or two months to see how much money is being spent daily and monthly. Your income includes Work-Study, money earned from a job or even an allowance. Then itemize your expenses into categories like, rent, food, utilities, education, entertainment, etc. and keep in mind the differences between fixed, variable and discretionary expenses:

Fixed: Expenses that do not change from month to month. (Rent, monthly parking fee or car payment)

Variable: Expenses that have the ability to change each month. (Electric bill depending on how many lights you leave on or the water bill)

Discretionary: Expenses that you choose to spend money on. (Going out to dinner, ordering a latte, cell phone usage, movies, concerts, etc.)

A Cash Flow worksheet is a great tool to use to illustrate income and expenses in a simple format.

Once you have completed the above tasks, take your total income column and subtract your total expenses column to get a new total. What are the results? Is your wallet experiencing flu like symptoms or feeling happy and healthy? Ask yourself what adjustments can be made to ensure you are living the lifestyle you want but are not living paycheck to paycheck because your favorite band keeps calling.

Nothing is ever written in stone.

Go with the flow and make adjustments on an ongoing basis. $21 a week in savings equals $1,092 in a year — and over $5400 in five years! Seriously, is that latte really worth it?

How to make it work for you.

Write your goal today and put it on paper along with a timeline. Tips on making effective goal writing include:

• Be specific and realistic; You know yourself best
• Start with small, short-term goals (a 6 month goal)
• Add longer-term goals as well (1 year, 5 years)

Healthy wallet = Happier life

Remember, a spending plan is only good if you have money to spend. Being financially savvy shows a great deal of maturity because it shows you understand the difference between wanting to do something and being able to pay for it and apply it to your daily life. We tend to live in a society where we want instant gratification, yet there are some serious pitfalls—including bankruptcy—we can encounter if we live in the moment. By following these steps you should be well on your way to having a healthy wallet and the happy lifestyle you choose.

Student LoanDown readers, I'd like to introduce you to Jean Chatzky, a blogger on our sister site Beyond Today®. Jean is a financial journalist working to help our community find solutions for financial issues of all stripes.

In her post on Beyond Today, Jean addresses the financial surprises of college. I hope you find it as interesting as I did! (—DF)

One of the smartest things I've done consistently over the past decade or so is to surround myself with top-notch recent college grads. These folks have joined my small company as interns and reporting assistants. Some stick around long enough to be promoted. Others have taken what they've learned and gone on to do other fabulous things.

Not only does having them around provide an endless supply of energy—but also ideas and information. Whenever I have a technical problem (and reader, you know how frequently this happens) I have someone to talk me off the ledge and nudge me in the right direction. When it comes to Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter and yes Facebook, I feel like there's a brain trust in house.

Today, though, I asked them a different question. I'm sending my son off to college in a few weeks and I needed a heads up on where the financial surprises were likely to lie. Who better to ask than people who have—quite recently—been there, done that. So, here are a few tips courtesy of Maggie McGrath and Cadence Ely-Mooney, synthesized for nervous parents like me.

Click here to see the full article...

Editor's note: Today we're excited to introduce Asha Richardson, a guest blogger from Youth Media International.  Asha's a Bay Area  native and freshman at Mills College. She has been reporting at Youth Radio/Youth Media International for two years, and her work has been featured on NPR , American Public Media, PRX , and the Huffington Post. On campus she is an Economics major and the historian for the Black Women's Collective. In her spare time she enjoys photography, writing poetry and having adventures with her friends.

When I started at Mills College  this year, managing my own money didn't seem so hard. I got a free rug from a friend, picked out a table from the re-use depot on campus, and bought a used refrigerator for half the price of a new one.

But as I began to make friends, we wanted to go out and have fun — and fun adds up quickly. We would go out for frozen yogurt, but end up shopping and going to a restaurant for a dinner, and I'd be out $40 by the end of the night.

Some of my friends were broke before the second month was over. I wasn't much better off. When I checked my statement online and realized I only had $19 in my checking account, I knew I was in trouble.

Now that I don't have to ask for permission each time I want to buy something, it's easy to lose track of where my money's going. Temptation is everywhere: from shiny new textbooks to a pair of Steve Madden  heels I need for the party next weekend!

I have found a few ways to save: I put a certain amount of money aside that I can blow and put the rest away, and I make sure I have a strict list of what I need when I go shopping. That's helpful, but the temptation to spend can be so hard to resist! What else could I do to manage my money?

Well, what better way to get you to stop spending than getting your friends to help? I mean, in real life, I ask my friends if an outfit is cute. So why not use Facebook to get their opinion on how much they think it should cost?

With that in mind, a few of us at Youth Media International  got together to figure something out. We decided early on to create an app that helps young people resist temptation. After many meetings with Context Optional , the developer we partnered with to build the app, we came up with "Stop Me From Spending!" 

Last week Barbara laid out a number of options for borrowers to extend or postpone student loan repayment — important information for new grads to have as they enter the real world. This is a topic that we get lots of questions on — probably second only to how to lower student loan interest rates.

But I'm going to play devil's advocate  here, because I think it's important for you to consider another perspective. I'm going to tell you not to take advantage of these options unless you absolutely have to.

Michelle Singletary, one of my most favorite and down-to-earth personal finance columnists with The Washington Post , had this to say about extended student loan repayment in a piece published on May 17, 2009:

But can I give you some hard but well-meaning advice if you're one of the many graduates saddled with student loans?

Instead of immediately opting for repayment plans that will stretch your payments out until you're in middle age, try to find other ways to handle this debt.

I know these are tough times. Nonetheless start your loan repayment as soon as possible, even if it means taking a second job, or a roommate (or two or three), or yes, dare I say, moving back home for several years.

You could handle this debt if you delay going on to graduate school, which would only pile on even more debt. If you are going to have trouble finding a job to make the monthly payments on your undergraduate debt, how in the world are you going to find employment to service tens of thousands more as a result of an advanced degree? Trust me, an advanced degree doesn't guarantee a big salary.

You don't get to buy a new car, an upgraded wardrobe, waste your money on liquor at happy hours, or take vacations until this debt is extinguished.

And don't look at me with that face. Only after you've exhaustively scanned your budget and cut every possible expense (such as deleting the texting option on your mobile phone) should you consider extended repayment options.

Tough love from Michelle, but her advice is spot-on. Here's how she ends her column:

I've met an incredible number of people -- too many -- who really could have paid their student loans under the standard payback period but because they didn't want to live frugally, saw their loan balances jump significantly over the years.

If you truly can't afford to fully pay what you owe, take advantage of the extra breathing room. But remember the more you delay, the more you may pay.

Something to think about.

We already talked about ways you could possibly lower your monthly student loan obligations. But if you're looking for a way to postpone your student loan payments, there may be an option for you as well.

Under certain circumstances, borrowers may be eligible for a deferment or be granted a forbearance. Now, in both cases, you aren't required to make payments to your student loan for a short period of time. However, there are some differences that are important to understand. I'll give you the scoop on each:

• Deferments: These are for federal student loans. There are several types of deferments for folks in different situations.  You need to meet the criteria of these situations in order to be eligible for the deferment. If you are granted a deferment, know that in most cases, you’ll still be accruing interest. (The exception is for subsidized Federal Stafford Loans, which are based on financial need — the interest accrued during deferment for those loans is paid by the government.) If you don’t qualify for a deferment, you may be able to postpone payments with a forbearance.
• Forbearances: Forbearances are available for both federal and private student loans. These are granted at the discretion of your lender. Interest will continue to accrue on your loan during forbearance (even for the subsidized Federal Stafford Loan). Federal forbearances are available for borrowers experiencing financial hardship and other situations. Private student loan forbearances vary by lender, so ask your lender what options are available for you.

If you're having difficulties repaying your loan, it's very important to talk with your lender about options and the paperwork you'll need to apply for them. You don't want to fall behind on payments, and a deferment or forbearance could help.

Folks, we've made it through another graduation season. The gowns and mortar boards are packed away, and now many graduates are focused on their finances during the first months out of college. Student loan repayment is just down the road.

As you look ahead to that first student loan payment, you may be realizing that it's going to be a little tough to swing. You may have borrowed more than you can afford to repay or may not have secured employment quite yet. (Side note for those of you just starting to take out student loans: Make sure you budget properly so you don't borrow more than you can repay.)

Whatever your situation, there are options available to help make it easier to pay your student loan. Here are some ways you may be able to lower your interest rate or monthly payments:

• Choose a different repayment plan. For federal loans, there are a number of repayment plans other than the standard repayment plan. You may be able to have your payment based on your income, extend your repayment if you have over $25,000 in federal loans, or start out with smaller payments that gradually get larger over the repayment term. And check with your lender to see what repayment options are available for your private student loans.
• Take advantage of discounts from you lender. Ask your lender if there are any interest rate discounts available for your loan. For example, you may be able to save money if you have your monthly student loan payment automatically deducted from your checking or savings account.
• Consolidate your loans. By combining your federal student loans  together into a new loan with a longer repayment period, you'll usually lower your monthly payment. For private student loan consolidation you may even find that your interest rate is lower if your credit situation has improved or if you bring on a cosigner with excellent credit.

Remember that if you're lowering your monthly payment by extending your repayment period or paying just the interest, you may end up paying more interest over the life of your loan. However, in the grand scheme of things, if it prevents you from missing payments and defaulting on your student loan, it might be worth it.

Looking for a way to postpone your student loan payment? We'll talk about deferments and forbearances later this week, so stay tuned!

Meanwhile, hit me up with any questions you have about different repayment options.

Have you ever been in your favorite store with a cool new pair of jeans, a new t-shirt, and a slew of other clothes in hand, ready to pay when the cashier says, "If you open a store credit card account with us today you'll get 10% off your purchase?" At that moment you consider how great it would be to have a credit card at your favorite store — without having to pay for that $500 charge right away.

Before you decide to sign up for that store credit card, you might want to consider that typical annual percentage rates (APRs) on credit cards from a retail store are about 23%. Ouch!

If you are able to pay off your purchases right away, the percentage rate might not matter to you (just remember the possible effect on your credit). But, if you think that paying a little bit each month is more your style, you should see if the savings will be worth it. To do that, you'll need to know how your rate is calculated. 

Let's break down what a 10% savings at the register for a $500 purchase looks like in one month:

1. Figure your average daily balance.  Add balances each day (purchases minus payments) and divide that by the number of days in the billing period. We'll use 30 days for this example. Say you make no additional purchases or payments for the first 15 days, and then on day 16 you make a $50 payment and on day 21 you make a $75 purchase. So your balance was $500 days 1-15, $450 days 16-20, and $525 days 21-30.

Here's the math:
($500 x 15 days) + ($450 x 5 days) + ($525 x 10) = 15,000
15,000 divided by 30 days in the billing period = $500 average daily balance

2. Calculate the interest. After you have the average daily balance, you can find out how much interest you'll pay that first month. Take your APR divided by 12 to find out how much interest you're charged each month. Then take that number times your average daily balance.

   Here's the math:
   23% APR divided by 12 = Monthly rate of .019166
   .019166 x $500 = $9.58 interest charge

3. Was the savings worth it? Back to your original sale: You saved $50 at the register (10% of $500), but after a month on your store credit card, you owe $9.58 on the balance. That lowers your savings to $40 after the first month. And unless you pay off the remaining balance, those savings will continue to drop.

While I am an advocate of using credit when it makes sense, I'm highly in favor of knowing what my rates are and what it will cost me in the long run. It's easier to make better choices when you know exactly what that retail therapy  will cost.

We all strive to be above average in some of the things we do. Scholars are hoping to surpass the average grades, athletes are striving for higher than average statistics, you get the picture.

Yet we tend to settle on being average in other arenas. And, yes, sometimes it's just fine to run with the pack as just your average Joe or Jane.  But there is one area that you should never find comfort in being average — your finances.

Why not? I can tell you from personal experience that finding comfort in being average can come back to bite you!

When I graduated from college, a little over $2,000 on a college credit card followed me into the real world. Now for someone who had a scholarship to cover college expenses that seems a bit high, right?

Well, here's the deal. Looking into some credit card facts  I kept hearing over and over that the average college student graduates with over $2,000 in credit card debt. So I thought, "What the heck?" If my counterparts are dealing with the same situation, I can charge a few things, too.

However, when we get stuck thinking that the debt is inevitable, we become less conscious of how much we are spending on things we don't really need. Part of that $2,000 on my credit card was for an iPod, and be sure that I whipped out the plastic for a pair of shoes or two (or three...).

So in the end, thinking average college debt was OK helped me develop some pretty bad spending habits. And unfortunately, those habits stuck with me until I started working for a bank and talking about financial education!

I challenge you to be better than average when it comes to your finances — both during college and after. Think twice about charging that sweatshirt at the campus bookstore. Resist ordering a pizza for dinner when you could use your pre-paid meal plan at the campus cafeteria.

Don't fall into the average trap with your student loans, either (the average for student loan debt is almost $20,000 ). Consider a part-time job to supplement your living expenses rather than taking out more student loans. Pay your interest during school to avoid capitalization.

Each tiny step will put you leaps and bounds in front of the students who settle for "average."