We know that one of the biggest concerns for travellers when you travel to New York is that it is an expensive city. And we can corroborate this after spending 7 days there and that you can spend a lot of unexpected money if you don’t take into account some tips or ways to save money. That’s why, after our experience in the city, we want to bring you this post of tips to save money in New York.
Before reading this post, if you want to know more about what we did in our trip to New York, we recommend to visit our complete 7-days guide in New York.
If you have less days or you just want to know which are the must-see places of the city that never sleeps, we recommend you our post of must-see places of New York, where you will find detail of all the places you should see and adapt in your visit days.
With that being said, let’s go with our tips to save money in New York.
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Where to sleep
It was one of our first premises to save money in New York. In the research process, as we expected, midtown Manhattan was the most expensive. It’s true that staying in the centre of the Big Apple is an advantage because you have everything much closer, but we think you can save a lot of money if you stay a bit further away from the most central area. Obviously, we wouldn’t recommend staying anywhere too far away from the city centre as you’ll spend a lot of your day commuting and it can be a hassle, but there are some good options out there.
We opted for an option that we highly recommend if you want to save money in New York and that is to stay in the Hunters Point area, a neighbourhood in Queens, which is just across the street from the centre of Manhattan and where you can get to Times Square in 10 minutes from the station. Our hotel, which was very good, cost us 30% less than the average price we found in Manhattan and only for being in another district, which was 15 minutes away from the centre of the city, so it is one of the best tips we can give you. The hotel was calledFeather Factory Hotel.
Save in New York: Flights
We managed to find flights for €450 return at Easter from Barcelona. Basically we used two typical tricks to lower airfares:
- Book well in advance (planning is key in a travel budget). To go at Easter, we took the flight in October, so it was quite a few months earlier and the price was obviously not what it would have been if we had taken it later.
- To have a short stopover in a European city. We know that stopovers can be cumbersome, but in our case, we managed to make super short stopovers that lowered the price of the flight by €200.
On the outward journey, we flew to Munich from Barcelona, and then flew from there with Lufhtansa. On the return, we stopped in Zurich for a 45-minute stopover and flew with Swiss Air. The experience in both cases was super good and it was totally worth the small stopover to save us some money.
Food
Another major concern for travellers when they travel to New York is food. New York is known to be expensive when it comes to eating out (especially in quality restaurants). The truth is that in our experience, you can find everything.
Our main trick to save on food was to combine a restaurant with some fast food every day, in order to balance costs.
Another of the tips that we find most useful as it allows you to save costs + eat something healthier, are the Delis. These are supermarkets where they have an area with lots of ingredients where you can make your own personalised bowl of food by weight. There are lots of them all over the city, with varying quality and prices. Our favourite was Whole Foods, a huge supermarket whose bowl-making area was amazing and delicious. It cost us less than 20 € a meal, so it was worth it.
As for breakfast, we went for supermarket food that we bought the day before to recharge our batteries. We didn’t want to spend 20 euros a head on a full breakfast at any chain, so we bought something cheap, like a sandwich, and then bought coffee to take away. BEWARE OF CAFES, you can be charged up to 10 euros for a takeaway coffee depending on where you go.
Another factor to note is alcohol. Drinking is very expensive, so if you want to save money in New York, we would recommend not drinking too much alcohol. To give you an idea, a beer can cost you $9 anywhere. IMPORTANT TIP: Most restaurants give you free water, so you shouldn’t have to pay for a drink 🙂
Finally, we also made use of the fast food street stalls. We think it’s a great option if you want to save money, because for less than 10 euros you can have dinner and, in many cases, it was very tasty. Plus, it’s super typical, so it’s worth it!
To give you an idea of the distribution of the meals we had:
- Day 1: this day we arrived and only had dinner in the Hunters point area, a frankfurter in a street stall (10$ pp).
- Day 2: We ate atWhole Foodsin Bryant park (20$ pp) and had dinner at the Shake Shack hamburger restaurant (15-20$ pp).
- Day 3: We ate atJacob’s Pickles (30-35$ pp) and we had a frankfurter for dinner at a stall in the Broadway area.
- Day 4: We ate atLos Tacos no 1 (15 pp) and we had dinner at McDonalds (15$ pp)
- Day 5:We had lunch atLittle SpainofHudson Yards (30€ pp) and the dinner was atEllen’s Stardust Dinner (20-30 $ pp)
- Day 6:Uncle Lou of Chinatown for the lunch (25$ pp) and dinner in a pizza slices restaurant (10$ pp)
- Day 7:Brunch atHenry’s End25€ pp and dinner atLa Nonna (25$)
- Day 8:african food atTeranga (20$)
As you can see, the total expenditure on lunch and dinner in 8 days in the city is 270$, an average of 30-40 euros per day, which does not seem exaggerated at all.
Save in New York: Activities
Yes, there are ways to save in New York when you do activities. The city has several cards with which you can save part of the price of admission to the city’s main attractions. If you are visiting the city for several days, we recommend you list the things you want to visit, and in case there are several attractions that are
If there are several attractions included in any of the city cards, it’s worth buying them, as you’ll end up saving money.
We took theCityPass , a card that allows you to select between 3, 5 or 11 attractions. In our case, we chose the 5 attractions one that included:
- (Mandatory) Empire State Building
- (Mandatory) American Museum of Natural History
- (Choose between 3) Top of the rock
- (Choose between 3) Memorial and Museum of the 11S
- (Choose between 3) Circle line
- (Choose between 3)Intrepido Museum
- (Choose between 3)Guggenheim Museum
We selected the first 5, saving a total of90$.
There are other great options of card likeGo City New York o la SIghtseeing day passwith similar ways of selecting activities to the City Pass.
Save money in New York: Broadway
If you visit New York, you’ll almost certainly want to see a Broadway show. And, guys, it’s worth it. It’s amazing, a level of performance and quality of show of 10. We, not being great lovers of this kind of shows, chose Aladdin and we were delighted with what we saw. What’s the problem? It is expensive. The average price is over 100$, so get your wallet ready. There are few tricks we can share with you, but we’ll tell you how you can save some money:
- Obviously, taking places of poorer visual quality will help you save money. We took a place in the upper tier and, thinking it would look worse, we saw it quite well. It cost us $107 per head, so it’s not too bad.
- One option you can use if you want to save a lot of money is to use the last day ticket booths with discounted tickets. The only problem is that you can only choose from what is available at the time, so you don’t have much flexibility. The place where you can do this is in Times Square and it’s calledTKTS.
Save Money in New York: Travel Insurance
It may seem a cliché, but in this city it is essential to take out travel insurance. As you may already know, the United States has a private health service, mostly with prohibitive prices. That is why we believe that it is a place where, yes or yes, you should take out such insurance. As always, we use the services of IATI insurance, our preferred travel insurance company.
In this case, we took out the Star IATI insurance, the one with the most comprehensive cover, because knowing how expensive the USA is for any health issue, we preferred not to have any unpleasant surprises that would ruin us on our return. Luckily, we didn’t have to use it.
We leave you a 5% discount on IATI insurance, so if you are thinking of taking it and you like our content, you will help us a lot 🙂
Save Money in New York: Public Transport
Public transport in New York is great. We got around during our stay on the underground and had no problems at all. The subways are very busy and you’ll constantly have trains coming and going, so we wouldn’t recommend taking taxis or chauffeurs or anything like that. The main points of the city are a maximum of 30 minutes away by metro.
We took a 7-day, unlimited travel pass for about 30$ per head to use the metro. You can buy this card at any station and ask the staff for help if you have any doubts (many people speak Spanish, so it’s easy).
It goes without saying, but we did a lot of walking around the city and found it easy and enjoyable, so it’s also a great option if you’re fit and have the time, although you should be aware that the distances are long.
Save Money in New York: low commission cards
It’s a classic savings tip in any foreign country, but it’s a reality you should be aware of when you travel. Withdrawing cash with your usual bank can incur large fees at the end of a trip. The big recommendation we would give is to get a card with no foreign fees, such as Revolut. We use this card for travelling and we are very happy with it. We have always been able to withdraw money in all the countries where we have used it and the service, quality of the application and the options you have within it are great, so we totally recommend it.
It is also true that in NY you can pay by card in most places, so you won’t need too much cash.
New York is one of our favourite cities, but we know that if you don’t know some tips and advice it can be very expensive. Saving money in New York is possible and with this post we’ve proved it to you. If you follow all the recommendations, you will be able to save a lot of money.
If you want more details about recommendations or our full travel budget, contact us through our social networks and we’ll be happy to go into more detail.
