Resources

Airbnb allows you to stay in various types of accommodations all over the world ranging from shared rooms to entire houses. I’ve used it in Mexico to find myself a studio apartment and I find it useful for stays between 3-4 weeks in length.

One of my favorite websites, Booking.com gives you the most flexibility by allowing you to book cheap hostels to fancy hotels. It’s my preferred site to book a hostel. Plus, you can also book other travel options like flights, airport taxis and car rentals.

If I need to book a hostel in a city, my first choice is always Hostelworld. I love the map feature which shows at a glance all the available properties in a city with their rating and prices. This makes it easier to book a hostel in your ideal location. Hostelword also makes it easy to filter your search results and they have extensive reviews for almost all their properties. They also have a mobile app for iOS and Android.

Although, I usually don’t book with them directly as they require a deposit right away. So, I usually search on Hostelword and then book my hostel on Booking.com as they are more flexible with reservations.

Marriott is the largest international hotel chain in the world with more than 6,500 properties in 127 countries around the world. Their reward program, Marriott Bonvoy, can provide excellent value for hotel stays and points can even be transferred to over 44 airline partners. 

Although I usually stay in hostels or Airbnb’s, I’ve been able to treat myself to free hotel nights thanks to the points I received with the Amex Marriott Bonvoy credit card, instead of paying full price.

Couchsurfing is awesome community that allows members to stay with other travelers for free! Once you sign up and complete your profile, you can then send messages to other members to request to stay with them.  Usually, you sleep on a couch but sometimes you can sleep on a spare bed and have a private room to yourself!

I’ve been a member for a couple of years and I’ve been able to “surf” in multiple cities around the world and make some great new friends. And even if you already have accommodation booked, you can join in local events and meet new people/locals by checking the “events” section of the app or the website.

Skyscanner is my go to website to check the price of flights. It’s easy to use and I enjoy how the search results are easy to understand at a glance. For each result, they indicate which airline, name the layover city (if applicable), the entire flight time and the price making the decision for your next flight much easier.

If you’re undecided about your travel destination, you can type “everywhere” in the search box and it will show you the lowest price to visit other cities and countries on a specific date. Also, if you have an exact destination in mind but are flexible with dates, you can search by “whole month” to see what day of the month is the cheapest to fly.

Tip: Make sure to do your flights searches in incognito mode or in a private browser when researching the same flight over the course of a couple of hours and days.

Flight connections is a great website to use when planning a trip. It allows you to discover visually all the non stop destinations you can fly to from your home or departure airport. Select 2 cities and all the airlines that fly between them will appear on the left side of the screen with their time table, the distance in miles and the approximate flight time. Another nifty feature is that you can filter your results by airline alliance or by a specific airline. Then, you can input your travel date and check prices for flights right away!

Lastly, you can look up airports by country and city or by 3 letter airport code which will provide some basic info about the airport and the airlines that serve it.

Great Canadian Rebates (GCR) is a website that offers cash back rebates on almost every online purchase with over 700 retailers. This includes Canadian stores such as: Sport Chek, Amazon.ca, Home Depot and many more. The cash back rate will vary between 1% to 8% with the average being 4% for most vendors; but they also provide cash back when you apply to certain financial products (such as 100$ for the Amex Cobalt card).

In general, it takes 2-3 months to receive the cash back and the methods of payment are Paypal, egift card, or direct deposit sent to your bank. If you’re interested in earning cash back with your online Canadian purchases, I’d appreciate it if you would use my referral link here. 

TopCashback is an popular American cash back website with 5,000 different merchants. This includes mostly American retailers but they do include some Canadian retailers like Best Buy, Home Depot and Staples so it’s worth comparing with GCR to see has the higher cash back rates. There are 3 payout options which include an Amazon.com gift card, PayPal or ACH (Automated Clearing House) direct deposit to an U.S bank account. Payout delay time can be up to 14 days but I recently purchased NordVPN service through TopCashback and it took 14 weeks to receive my payout! Nonetheless, it’s still a great cash back website and you can join through my referral link here.

I personally use Tangerine Bank as it’s one of the best online banks in Canada. My main draw to this bank was that there are no monthly fees with their chequing and savings accounts, they have an easy to use website and mobile app and it’s FREE to withdraw cash at over 3,500 Scotiabank ATMs in Canada. Although they don’t have any physical branches, I still find myself using all their services online and it’s fairly easy to contact their call centre 24/7 if there is a problem.  There’s free and unlimited debit transactions and pre-authorized payments with their no-fee chequing account and it’s easy to transfer money between accounts. Also, they offer clients competitive interest rates on their various savings accounts including TFSA and US$ savings accounts.

Learn more about Tangerine bank with my full review.

Sadly, the Stack Prepaid MasterCard will be discontinued as of September 11, 2023!!!!

The Stack prepaid MasterCard is the best way for Canadians to withdraw cash at an ATM in a foreign country. Why? Most banks in Canada charge about 3-5$ for an international ATM withdrawal. But Stack has NO domestic or international ATM withdrawal fees!

And since it’s a prepaid card, it’s easy to load as much money as you want (min of 50$) either by direct payroll deposit, Interac e-Transfer or bill pay. Plus, Stack regularly offers deals with many popular Canadian retailers to give you cash back so it can be used in Canada also!

Sadly, on February 1, 2022, the Foreign Exchange (FX) fees for the Stack Prepaid Mastercard increased to 2.5%. Each month, cardholders who spend a minimum of $350 CAD in purchases will be reimbursed their FX fees on up to $1,000 CAD of FX spend outside of Canada.

Note that you will need to download the Stack app on iOS or Android to use their service.  Click here if you want to get Stack and earn a free 5$ credit upon activating your card!

XE.com is my preferred website to check foreign currency exchange rates like USD/CAD and EUR/CAD. They show the mid market rates for each currency pair and also present a historical chart for the past day, week, month and year. XE offers international money transfers but I can’t comment on their service since I haven’t tried it. I prefer to use their app (iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone) while traveling to calculate and get a general idea of how much things cost in a foreign currency.