CONSUMER BRIEFS / TRAVEL

If one of your resolutions for 2009 was to save more money, consider these penny-pinching travel tips:

* Instead of buying individual fold-out state maps for every place you visit, invest instead in the latest road atlas for the entire United States and Canada, and keep it in your car. Print out city and other, more detailed maps from your computer.

* Although you can’t bring bottles of water through airport security, you can bring empty bottles. Rather than paying high prices for bottled water at the airport, bring your own reusable bottle, send it through security empty, and fill it up at a water fountain on the way to your gate.

* Check your destination’s official tourism site for coupons and other money-saving offers.