By Ed Hewitt

updated 6:16 p.m. ET May 16, 2008

With a tightening economy across the board and travel expenses in particular putting the squeeze on your budget (can you say "fuel prices?"), many travelers are looking for ways to "Go Anyway" without going broke as well. However, while it's important to keep an eye on your budget while traveling, there are certain parts of your trip where you may not want to cut corners. Following are my guidelines for when and when not to worry about money when traveling in a recession economy.

Let's start by saying it's not necessarily all bad news out there for travelers — the dynamics of supply and demand sometimes work for you and sometimes work against you. As more folks opt to take fewer trips, take shorter trips or even stay home, the opposite effect is that there are more empty seats, open hotel rooms and rental cars on the lot — in short, more good deals.

For me, an upcoming trip to visit family will turn out to be the least expensive such trip I have made in a decade. Just by doing very standard booking engine searches, I found low airfares, a great hotel rate (even in high season) and a rock-bottom rental car rate. The cost of gas on the trip may be formidable, but it will be offset by these other savings. (I'm considering renting bikes as well.) Before you decide travel is too expensive at the moment, check to see what a trip would really cost you. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Airfares

When to worry: Advance purchase benchmarks

In the current pricing environment, when you are coming up on any of the advance purchase price-hiking benchmarks (usually 21, 14, 7 or 3 days before your flight), it is time to stop dallying and make your purchase — because by the next morning, fares are almost certain to have jumped upwards. For more information, see Tips for Finding Cheap Airfare.

When not to worry: Finding direct flights
For my money, the one thing worth digging a little deeper for — and paying more for — is a direct flight. I have three reasons for this: delays, cancellations and baggage handling (maybe that should really read "one reason": airlines). A problem with any of these three increases dramatically when you have a connecting flight, and can very quickly get bad enough to ruin an entire trip.

Lodging

When to worry: Booking mid-range chain hotels
For most trips, lodging options vary considerably; from hostels to heavily-starred hotels, you can almost always find a room, and your wallet is your only worry. Your average chain hotel is a lot like the next, and it has become much easier to avoid real dumps by checking the reviews on a site like TripAdvisor. Unless one of these hotels consistently ranks low in user reviews, you are safe saving a few bucks when you make your final choice. For more tips on saving money on your hotel, see Get the Best Hotel Rate.

Another place to look for potentially considerable savings is by booking a hotel that offers complimentary breakfast. If you are traveling with a family of four, paying for breakfast could cost you $30 or more every day for the same food that costs you about $8 to serve yourself at home. Over the course of a long weekend, you can save into the triple digits by eating downstairs with the road warriors watching CNN.

When not to worry: Choosing an "official" hotel
The real estate agent's mantra of "location, location, location" is the key to knowing when to pay a little more for a more convenient or expensive hotel.

For example, if there is an official "convention hotel" or "wedding hotel" that costs a few dollars more per night, I say go for it. You will have all your stuff right upstairs with no need for any additional driving, and will save on gas, parking, taxis, restaurant meals (by stocking your hotel room with groceries and snacks), even a rental car. This approach can save you both sweat and money in the end.

Driving

When to worry: At the pump
When it comes to driving expenses, the pain is at the pump — and you are more exposed to high gas prices while traveling than at any other time. When driving near your home, you likely know where to go to get the best gas prices, what the local averages are and which stations to avoid. While traveling, you have less local knowledge and thus far fewer choices. It doesn't help that most gas stations that are conveniently located for tourists and travelers — on interstates, in town, near airports — are often priced the highest.

Check out Gasbuddy.com for a rundown of the lowest gas prices across the country. You might even learn something by checking your own home town; I just did a search in my area, and it looks like I can save about 15 cents a gallon by going two miles north from my house instead of my usual two miles south. Also, don't miss our tips for saving gas and money.

One more suggestion in these days of record gas prices: Before handing over your credit card, make sure the station does not have a different (read: higher) price for credit card purchases as compared to cash purchases. In these cases, the station is passing on their credit card processing fees to you. Without fail, the price advertised on the sign will be a locally competitive cash price while the credit card price is considerably higher. I see credit card prices at these stations positioned at about six to eight cents higher per gallon, and these numbers go up as prices go up.

When not to worry: Hard to say
Gas prices do not seem to have topped out yet, and with Memorial Day just around the corner, it's fair to fear the worst is yet to come. If prices push past $4 a gallon, driving a couple hundred miles roundtrip to go to the beach, a lake or a concert could cost you $40 - $50.

But let's look for a bright spot: It's easy to share driving expenses, so when your car is full of people it's actually not that expensive to drive somewhere. So if you have a family or group of four, and it costs you $10 each in gas to get to the beach, it's not the dealbreaker that a $40 roundtrip might be when you travel alone.

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