Going along with my previous post about why family vacation is important, I decided to participate in this blog program from TwitterMoms about 10 creative and affordable vacation ideas. Family vacations may be important, but everyone knows money is tight right now, especially with a new baby in the house! So what can you do? Here are my ideas…
1. Drive. Skip the flight this year and drive to a closer destination. We’re in IL and we love just going into Wisconsin and enjoying the lakes and trees! But nearby we also have Chicago, MN, Iowa (where we both went to school!) and new places we’ve never been yet: Ohio, Indiana, Missouri or even Michigan!
2. Make somewhere familiar something new and fun. For example, Steve’s family owns a lakehouse in WI and we’re there all the time in the summer. But Steve and I were planning a weekend getaway this weekend for our anniversary and decided to save money by going to the lake. Now, it’s not new, but we’re going to make it exciting by spending the day in the city, eating out somewhere nice, and relaxing together at the lakehouse. Perfect vacation!
3. DEALS! When I’m booking a trip, I spend days on every travel site searching the best deals. Sometimes it’s cheaper to book hotel and flight together, sometimes it’s not. Some sites are cheaper than others and sometimes you can find specials. Gotta search around!
4. Along with searching around, make sure you clear your cache on your computer! If you go to a travel site and see a flight for $250 and you check it the next day and it’s at $350 you’re thinking, oh crap! I better buy it now! Well, you just fell into their trap. They know you visited their site recently and jacked the prices. If you clear your brower’s cache and reload the travel site, chances are prices will be back down (this doesn’t work every time, but it’s a good bet).
5. More deals– make sure you’re following your favorite travel companies on twitter! They’ll often tweet about specials, sales, or even discount codes.
6. Travel around the season. If you can plan your vacation in the off-season, you’ll save money.
7. If you can’t travel in the off-season, try to at least fly on weekdays. Monday-Wednesday flights are usually cheaper and weekday nights at hotels are less expensive.
8. Get a hotel room with a kitchen. Buying eggs and bread, etc for cheap meals made yourself can save LOTS of money over eating out all the time.
9. Visit relatives and stay for free! It’s a good reason to get in touch, right?!
10. Travel with friends and save money by booking as a group or sharing a hotel room. Vacations with friends or extended family can be more fun anyway – the more, the merrier!
Do you have any awesome cheap travel tips??? We’d love to hear them! Like I said, we’re going to the lakehouse for a mini-vacation this weekend, but would love to be able to go somewhere this summer too!
I wrote this blog post while participating in the Toyota Sienna and TwitterMoms blogging program for a chance to get a $30 gift card. For more information on how you can participate, click here.
Follow Baby Dickey!
Question? EMAIL ME: erdickey at gmail.com