I recently attended two World Cup games in Brazil — my first time in the country and second time attending a major international sporting event (I saw ice dancing at the Torino Winter Olympics in 2006). I’ve learned a lot about how to spend smartly despite inflated prices and sometimes limited options, and a lot of this advice applies to any major sporting event or popular international event, such as a festival.

Here are my tips to avoid letting your budget go completely out the window while maximizing your fun:

Note: In 2014, I wrote a weekly blog series on budget travel for eHow. This post is from that series, so you'll have to head over to their site to read it in full. Thanks for reading!

Click here to read the full article