5 Things That Save Us the Most Money While Traveling

I got to thinking about how much money we have saved while traveling over the past year and there are a handful of ways that consistently seem to save us money (both while traveling and while staying put for a while in one place):

1. Cheap food.  We often seek out the cheapest places to eat, from hole in the wall taco shops to the Dollar Menu at fast food places (my favorite is a baked potato covered with a small bowl of chili at Wendys).  We also tend to cook cheap food at the places we are staying (soups, stews, beans and rice Mexican dishes, etc).  If we do go fancy and eat prime rib, you can bet it is from a free comp at the casino.
2. Traveling light.  We each travel with one suitcase that we can carry on to airplanes.  Not only does this save us the checked baggage fee each time we fly but it really limits the amount of clothes we have (this means we hardly ever shop for clothes--why didn't I learn this thousands of dollars ago when I had to have nearly a whole new wardrobe each season??).
3. Free and cheap entertainment.  The good thing about traveling is that everything is new to us when we get to different cities so we don't run out of "new" places to see.  Since we are holding tight to our money, however, the entertainment options that we find have to be both interesting AND cheap (preferably free).
4. Finding the lowest prices on...everything.  I used to be pretty set in my ways. I HAD to have high speed internet at home, I HAD to go to a certain hair salon, I HAD to shop at the department stores my friends went to...  These days, especially when we are in an unfamiliar area, we are happy to just find things that we need.  So far we have found free internet (at lots of places), cheap hair salons (I paid around $2 for a haircut in the Philippines), and have currently rigged up our clothes on cheap-o racks we found at a thrift store (since the set up is temporary and we just wanted to get our clothes out of our suitcases, we got some cheap-o book racks out of our storage unit and organized our clothes on these...no need buying new racks they may or may not be workable in our new house).
5. Using coupons.  Whenever possible we try to use coupons and discounts at the places we go.  We have found these everywhere including: the local newspaper, online, advertised in the window of the business, through Living Social and Groupon, via word of mouth from friends and relatives who live in the area, on the back of receipts from local businesses, etc.