How To Earn Money For Travelling
You can earn money for travelling by combining what you already make with a few extra ways to bring in cash before you go.
And you don't necessarily need another job to do it. If you need £1,000 for your trip and you've got five months until you leave, that's £200 a month, or roughly £50 a week. Suddenly, the holiday fund doesn't look quite so terrifying.
That £50 could come from an extra shift, selling something you don't use anymore or spending some of the time you'd normally be scrolling on your phone playing games that pay you for hitting different milestones.
That's where Prograd comes in. You can find games that pay real rewards for playing and progressing, alongside other earning opportunities including the occasional paid survey.
How much money should you save before travelling?
How much you should save depends on where you're going, how long you're staying and what you want to do while you're there.
Start with flights, accommodation, transport, insurance and food, then add the costs that are easier to forget: luggage, airport transfers, activities, nights out, visas and a bit of emergency money.
Once you've got a rough figure, divide it by the number of weeks until you leave.
Need another £600 with 12 weeks to go? Your target is £50 a week. That's much easier to work towards than vaguely telling yourself you need to “save more”.
How can you make extra money for travelling?
The quickest way to grow your travel fund is usually to combine a few different ways of earning rather than looking for one side hustle to pay for everything.
Extra shifts are an obvious place to start. Hospitality and retail can work well if you want fairly predictable income, while babysitting, dog walking and other casual jobs can fit around work or university.
Selling things you don't use anymore can give you a quicker cash injection too. That old phone sitting in a drawer isn't doing much for you, but £100 from selling it could pay for several days of your trip.
Then look at the gaps in your day. Twenty minutes on the bus, half an hour before bed or an evening when you're sitting around at home can all become opportunities to make a little more online.
If you only have evenings available, we've put together some of the best evening side hustles in the UK.
Can you make money for travelling by playing games?
Yes. Some mobile gaming offers pay real rewards when you download a game and reach certain milestones.
You might need to get to a particular level, complete a challenge or progress through the game within a certain amount of time. Hit the requirement and you earn the advertised reward.
If you're already someone who spends half an hour playing games while watching TV or sitting on the train, it's worth seeing whether some of that time could be earning towards your trip instead. It also gives you something more interesting to do than filling out endless questionnaires.
The amount you can earn varies between games, so always check what you need to do and whether you think the reward is worth the time before you start.
And think about those rewards in terms of your trip. £10 could be lunch. £25 might cover an airport transfer. £50 could pay for the activity you've had saved on TikTok for the past six months.
Are paid surveys worth doing for travel money?
Paid surveys can be worth doing for a little extra travel money, but they're better as an occasional extra than the basis of your savings plan.
If you've got 10 minutes spare and there's a decent survey available, there's no harm in doing it. The problem is that you won't qualify for every survey and individual payouts can be fairly small.
Prograd has occasional survey opportunities alongside its gaming offers, so you don't need to choose one or the other. Do a survey when there's one worth your time. Play towards a gaming reward when there isn't.
How can students make money for travelling?
Students can make money for travelling through part-time jobs, summer work and flexible ways of earning online.
Term time might mean squeezing earning around lectures and deadlines, but the summer gives you a much bigger window to build up your travel fund.
You could work more shifts for a few weeks and use quieter evenings to earn online, rather than relying on either one to find the entire cost of your trip.
If you're heading away after exams, our guide to making money online during the summer break has more ideas.
You can also look at our guide to good part-time jobs for university students if you want something with more regular hours.
Can you make £100 towards your holiday quickly?
Making another £100 is often much easier than trying to work out how you're going to find £1,500 for a holiday.
Break your travel fund into smaller targets. Get to £100. Then £250. Then £500.
You might make £40 from an extra shift, £30 selling clothes and the final £30 through gaming offers. None of those amounts feels enormous on its own, but together you've just put another £100 towards your trip.
If that's your next target, we've put together 10 ways to make £100 fast.
Should you save money as well as earning more?
Yes. Cutting £100 from your spending gets you £100 closer to your trip just as surely as earning another £100.
That doesn't mean spending the next three months refusing every invitation and eating beans for dinner.
Look for money you're spending without getting much from it: subscriptions you barely use, delivery fees, impulse purchases or the takeaway you ordered because you couldn't be bothered to cook.
Then actually move whatever you save into your travel pot.
If you're at university, our student money-saving guide has more ideas for cutting costs without making student life miserable.
Can you make money while travelling?
You may be able to make money while travelling, but check what you're legally allowed to do in the country you're visiting before relying on it.
A tourist visa doesn't automatically give you permission to pick up local work, and longer-term remote working can come with its own visa and tax rules.
For shorter trips, there's a good argument for doing most of the earning before you leave. You've probably spent months looking forward to going away. You don't want to arrive and realise you've got to spend half of it working because you didn't bring enough money.
Build the budget beforehand and anything extra you earn while you're away really is a bonus.
Is Prograd worth using to save for travelling?
Prograd can be a useful way to add extra money to your travel fund because you can earn when you've actually got the time.
There's no CV to send off or another shift you have to turn up for. Open Prograd, find a game you want to try and work towards the available rewards. You'll also find other earning opportunities, including occasional surveys.
It probably won't pay for your entire trip on its own, and we'd be suspicious of any app claiming it would.
Think of it as one part of the plan. Your job might pay for the flights. Selling old clothes could cover your insurance. Gaming rewards could become some of your spending money.
Put it all together and the trip starts looking a lot more bookable.
Your next target doesn't have to be huge
Stop staring at the total cost of your trip for a minute.
What's the next £100? Maybe you'll make £50 from an extra shift, £20 selling something you don't need and another £30 playing games in your spare time.
Then you do it again. Eventually those £10s, £20s and £50s stop looking like random bits of extra money and start looking a lot like a plane ticket.