What is a family to do with all the money they are saving by reading Pocket Your Dollars? Let Brandy Koster tell you how her family has used it toward traveling. Since she is used to saving money in every area of her life, her trips are also very budget conscience. She has a 5-person family (meet her three kids above), which this leads to some challenges in a world built on the 4 person family model. Take it away Brandy…
Establish a purpose. One of the most important things to do before actually doing the planning of a vacation is to decide what you want to get out of your time away. For our family, we usually want time away from all the stress of our lives, family time together, have fun, and make fabulous memories for our kids. With this in mind, we can plan on forgoing many of the things that add extra, unnecessary expense of a vacation.
The key to the vacation planning game is research. Usually we already have an idea of where we want to go. The internet becomes indispensable because we will research our first idea of a vacation and see if there is a similar location that is nearby, but cheaper. For instance, we have thought of going to Ft. Myers, FL to see the Twins spring training, but discovered that Clearwater, FL has nicer beaches and better hotel prices.
Research as many different ways as you can think of to research.
Visit travel websites. Travelocity, Orbitz, and similar sites can provide an idea of how much airfare, hotels, and car rental are going to be. Try all of these sites and research the trip with each segment separately and as a package (the flight with the car rental and the hotel). Also, call these companies directly. Ask the company to match or beat the price that you saw online. They often will beat it if they can verify that you really can get that price elsewhere.
Contact tourist offices. Email or call the visitor’s center or tourism office for wherever you are going and surrounding communities. Ask them for free maps, discount cards, coupons and brochures. Sometimes they even can recommend local restaurants that are a good value or mail you coupons for hotels.
Plan ahead and book early. Start watching and researching the costs far ahead of when you are going. This way you will know a good price when you see it. We knew we were going to Orlando the summer of 2008 in 2006, so we started tracking the airfare every 3-4 weeks. We noticed that it never went below $350 and the beast prices were gained if a person books far out, so when we saw that airfare was $340 for our dates, we booked it immediately. Sometimes a last minute trip results in a great deal, but most often, the early bird gets the worm.
Also by planning ahead of time, you can anticipate the trip and have fun getting ready for it. When I know there will be a big trip coming up, I buy the supplies over time. I buy extra sunscreen when it’s on sale. If we are going somewhere sunny when it’s cold here, I buy an extra swimsuit for everyone on clearance instead of paying full price in February (if I can find one). We have given our kids things that we needed to buy for the trip as Christmas and birthday gifts. This builds the excitement and saves money.
Tomorrow Brandy will share part 2 in this “Vacation on a Dime” series. Later this week you’ll here the specifics about how her family saved big money at Disney World.
Your turn: Which travel websites have you found most helpful in getting great vacation deals? And, if you have found this info helpful please leave a comment and let Brandy know you appreciate it.
About Carrie Rocha
I use http://www.kayak.com for airfare, rental cars, and hotels. It is a travel aggregator website that pulls flight/hotel/etc prices from the all the different travel websites (travelocity, orbitz, etc) as well as the airline websites and then ranks them by price. You can also search weekends for the cheapest weekend to travel as well as flexible dates. You can also sign up for travel deals emails from them.