5 Tips for Fun Family Vacations on a Budget

Kids, Savings, Vacations

Some of the fondest memories I have while growing up was of the times we took our family vacations.  It seems like in those days it didn’t cost nearly as much to travel and, even though we stayed in mostly budget hotels and ate a lot of fast food and sandwiches, we still had loads of fun.

trampoline-241899_1280So maybe today you are wanting to create these memories for your family but can’t find the funds to do so.  Everyday life gets in the way, kids expenses, house repairs, etc., and the short vacation seems out of reach.  But don’t let these things take away potential family memories that will last forever.  Here are some tips originally posted in Moneyning.com which can help you have your fun family vacations on a budget, and some of these will even become part of the memories themselves!

  1. Consider group travel.  Have you thought about vacationing with another family (that enjoy spending time with)?  You can find that splitting the cost of a cabin or vacation home can many times save over the cost of two hotel room, and you can usually find great, roomy accommodations.
  2. Don’t travel during the peak season.  Most people travel during the summer because of kids being out of school and the weather being warmer.  But if you travel during the off-season you can get much more bang for your buck.  Resorts will often give off-season discounts, cruises are much cheaper, and many time you can find travel incentives.
  3. Pack your lunch.  One of the biggest expenses when traveling is the cost of eating out, especially if you have a larger family.  If your kids are like mine they can pack away the food.  One thing we have done is to bring a cooler along.  When we got to our destination one of the first things we did was hit the local grocery store to get snacks and sandwich materials.  We found we could use this to offset at least one meal a day (sometimes two if we had a light breakfast).  This always resulted in a huge savings which can be used to do other things or help stay within the budget.
  4. Order delivery.  Our kids loved pizza and we always had pizza night at least once a week..  Why not have pizza delivered to you hotel room.  Our kids actually preferred that since they could stay around the hotel without having to stop what they were doing to get dressed to go out.
  5. Find out what the local do.  Usually the people who live in the area are glad to share where the best places are to eat and visit.  They may even be able to clue you in to specials and discounts that you could find otherwise.  So strike up a conversation with the desk clerks, waiters, bartenders, and bellhops.  Be friendly and usually people will be friendly in return.

These are just on few tip you can try if you are vacationing on a budget.  Please let me know if you have other tips or what you think of these.

The original article was posted in Moneyning and can be read here.

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