newelty

Have you traveled on a budget? I mean a real budget, where six bucks can make or break your daily balance?

Evidently, Matt Gross, the New York Times Frugal Traveler hasn’t. Or he wouldn’t have his 2010 resolutions made up of patently obvious items for anyone who’s ever actually traveled on a budget.

Here are two of the six gems of wisdom for the cost-minded:

3. Learn to Love Buses.

4. Learn to Like Hostels.

This stuff makes me crazy, because 18-year-old with a Eurail pass knows these things. How about “eat in fewer four-star restaurants”? “Travel in the off-season”? “Don’t fly first class”?

To dress them up as pearls of wisdom is the equivalent of a how-to article on painting a room including the following:

3. Strip Off Wallpaper. Paint gets lumpy when wallpaper lies beneath.

4. Apply Primer Before Paint.

One related note about his first resolution:

1. Put Down the iPhone. It’s time to remove that pixelated barrier I’ve erected between myself and the world and see what I can find with my own two eyes.

The data plans and international roaming rates for the iPhone are insane, which means you’re already not a frugal traveler if you’re using one abroad. If you’re jumping from WiFi spot to WiFi spot, you’re probably not at the kinds of places I consider “frugal.”

A place with a bathroom down the hall and an elderly front-desk clerk who looks at you strangely when you ask if the establishment has Internet–that’s my version of frugal.

I consider the iPhone a huge boon to my travel experience, and am ready for a reasonable international data roaming plan to be released someday soon. I’m ready to ditch guidebooks filled with absurdly obvious travel advice. (I like Jaunted‘s take on replacing a bookshelf of guidebooks with an iPhone on the road.)

And I can also talk to people, even with a iPhone available nearby. I’m a multitasker like that.