How to Travel for Free: Our $0 Accommodation Strategy
We spent a year traveling the United States full time — house sitting in Manhattan, camping at the Grand Tetons, spending weeks in Seattle. We did it almost entirely for free. Here’s exactly how.
What “Almost for Free” Actually Means
Under $600
Total spent by 2 people · 2 full weeks · New York City · including food, transport & all spending
Two weeks in Manhattan. Two people. Under $600 total — including food, transportation, and all spending.
Most people assume traveling means hotels, flights stacked back to back, and spending your way through every city. That’s vacation travel. What we did is different.
When your biggest expense — lodging — disappears, the math changes completely. Add in cooking your own meals, using public transit, and actually slowing down long enough to live somewhere instead of just tourist through it, and you end up spending less than you would at home.
Almost for free doesn’t mean zero dollars. It means the cost of traveling became less than the cost of staying home.
The Two Things That Made Travel Possible
House Sitting w/ TrustedHousesitters
This is the foundation of how we travel. If you’ve read our house sitting guide, you already know the basics but here’s the short version: you care for someone’s home and pets while they travel, and you stay for free.
No money exchanged. A real home. A real kitchen. A real neighborhood. And typically, the stays are longer than a week.
Our first house sit was in Manhattan — a pre-war studio apartment with two cats in October of 2024.
We flew from Ohio to New York City, and for two full weeks, we paid nothing to stay there.
That one trip changed our lives. We found ourselves laying in bed scrolling the Trusted Housesitters app like it was the best new form of social media (did we mention the app is worldwide?!)
For the next year we went on to house sit in Detroit, San Francisco’s Cow Hollow neighborhood, Asheville, and Seattle’s Capitol Hill (all within our first year of joining THS).
Each sit gave us a real home base, which allowed us to cook all our own meals & be able to work from home (or the nearest cute coffee shop).
What house sitting gives you
Join Trust Housesitters At 25% Off
Dispersed Camping Near National Parks
For us, house sitting covers long stay in new cities.
Dispersed camping is the adventure in between.
For our two-month road trip across the US, public land became home.
BLM land and National Forests allow free dispersed camping across huge stretches of the country — no reservations, no fees, no crowds, and often times right outside of national parks.
FAVORITE CAMPING LOCATIONS OF 2025
01/
The Grand Tetons, WY Zero dollars for a campsite with sweeping Teton views right outside the park entrance.
02/
Olympic Peninsula, WA Fell asleep to a river and woke up in the Hoh Rainforest & near Rialto Beach.
03/
Yosemite, CA Free camping in the pines, 1 minute from the south entrance — no reservations needed.
04/
Zion National Park, UT Watched the red cliffs turn gold at sunset from our free campsite just outside the park.
05/
Capitol Reef, UT Woke up on top of the rocks w/ panoramic desert views & no campers in sight.
06/
Colorado Springs, CO Free wooded camping with cool mountain air, a fire under the stars, and close to everything.
How to Plan a Cross-Country Road Trip (Through the National Parks)
How to Start Traveling Now (Even If You Think You Can’t)
We want to be honest about this: we spent four years in our small town thinking we couldn’t do any of this. And in those four years, nothing changed (except eventually our mindset).
What finally broke us out wasn’t money.
It was simply making the decision to go, have fun, and figure it out along the way.
So here’s the actual starting point:
Do you have money to get yourself to your desired location & support yourself while you’re there?
If yes — that’s enough to start!
What About Income While You Travel?
You don’t need to have it all figured out before you go. Often times the trip brings the clarity that you’ve been needing. But having something that earns while you move is what makes full-time travel sustainable.
For us, it’s our travel blog and hotel and lifestyle photography business — both fully location-independent. We tried three different business models before landing on the one that actually checked all of our boxes: income, flexibility, and alignment with the life we actually want to be living.
There’s no shortage of ways to earn online. The key is finding what fits you — your skills, your interests, and the kind of life you want to build.
Some Workaway positions even offer paid placements: farm work, hostel work, yoga instruction, childcare — with housing included. It’s worth looking into if you’re starting from scratch.
How to Become a Digital Nomad:
A Realistic Guide to Location-Independent Living
The Part Nobody Talks About
Traveling this way isn’t just about saving money. It genuinely changes how you feel and move.
We spent four years in our hometown trying to see our potential clearly, and it wasn’t until we got into new environments that things started to unlock.
Every city we’ve stayed in has brought its own lessons and unexpected moments.
We’re not trying to stay budget travelers forever. But the process — learning to live with less, to slow down, to build an income that supports you anywhere — that’s the part that actually changes your life.
And the earlier you start figuring it out, the more of that life you get to experience.
Where to Start
- Join TrustedHousesitters — covers free accommodation worldwide
- Join Workaway — work exchange for lodging, meals, and sometimes pay
- Read: Travel House Sitting 101
- Read: Budget Travel Guide
- Read: How to Become a Digital Nomad
