This article appeared in Marie Claire and is about how to travel without spending excess money. Here’s an excerpt:

“SHARE AND SHARE ALIKE: A NEW GETAWAY
…Think you can’t afford to go abroad? Rather than shell out for a pricey hotel room, some pleasure-seekers swap apartments to pare down costs. Lauren Ragland, 30, and her husband, from Brooklyn, NY, traded spaces with a Parisian named Philip. The $1500 they saved in hotel costs bankrolled a side jaunt to Barcelona- but the rewards weren’t just monetary: Swapping let them “explore the city less like a tourist,” says Ragland. Sure, she worried about giving a stranger her house keys carte blanche, but Philip provided references-and was an ideal houseguest. “The apartment looked better than we left it. My husband still talks about how perfectly our bed was made,” she says. Maureen Dempsey, 31, saved $700 in dog-boarding expenses when she and her husband went away for two weeks and found an Irish student to stay in their home-in exchange for free pet-sitting. The unexpected upshot? Their house sitter was, conveniently, a veterinary student. And if you don’t have a swanky pad to offer up, sites like Sabbaticalhomes.com and Caretaker.org let you register as a house sitter for people who want someone to keep an eye on their places.”

by Sandra Barron, Marie Claire