Tag Archives: budget

10 Ways to Save Money on a Vacation to a City

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1.  Try to find as many free excursions as possible.

Most cities have free activities that are enjoyable. By finding free activities to include in your travels, it helps bring down the overall cost of the trip.

2.  Stay at a hotel with a continental breakfast.

Breakfast at restaurants gets pricey. For a family of six, even a cheap breakfast out can cost $50-60 a day. On a ten-day trip, this equates to an extra $500. By staying at a hotel with a continental breakfast, you avoid this expense. Another option is to purchase breakfast foods at a grocery store (if your hotel has a refrigerator) and eat in your room before you start your activities for the day.

3.  Stop at a grocery store to purchase groceries. 

Having groceries in your hotel room cuts down on eating out costs. Not only can you pick up breakfast items or items to make sandwiches, you can also pick up snacks for your stay, as purchasing snacks from vendors is much more expensive than purchasing packaged items at a grocery store.

4.  Try to limit meals out to one per day.

Many families use vacations as an opportunity to eat out. However, eating out costs can become a major expense during travels. If you are wanting to travel economically with a large family, this is one of the best ways to limit costs, while still allowing your family opportunities to enjoy local cuisine. By eating out only once a day rather than three times a day with your family, you can save over $100 a day, which equates to over $1000 for a 10-day trip! This extra money can be used for another trip or for additional excursions and experiences on your current vacation.

5.  Consider eating lunch out, as lunch meals are typically less expensive than dinner.

Although lunch portions are typically a little smaller than dinner portions, lunch prices are often substantially cheaper than dinner prices. Also, when traveling with a family, it is often nice to allow time to wind down in the evening, so lunch, while you are out and about anyway, is the perfect time to eat out.

When we travel, we frequently purchase sandwich items to eat in our hotel room for dinner. After a long day of excursions (often in the heat of summer), we often do not feel extremely hungry at the end of the day, and we look forward to watching TV and unwinding with the kids in our hotel room. Sandwiches and snacks in the hotel are a cheap meal and also provide us this opportunity to relax and unwind before setting out again the next morning.

6.  Research the city transportation schedule.  If the city offers a discount for riding at non-peak times, plan your day to hit those non-peak hours.

Riding city transportation at peak times can be double the cost of riding at non-peak times. This can equate to a substantial amount of money when traveling with a family. By planning your day around non-peak times, you still can have a substantial amount of time to explore the city, while saving money. For example, in Washington, D.C., if you ride the metro after 10:00 a.m. you pay about half price. This allows you time in the morning to relax and enjoy continental breakfast before starting out. Then if you ride the metro back to your hotel after 7:00 p.m, which also was a non-peak time, you again pay about half price. This schedule allows you to save money, while still allowing you nine hours or more to explore the city each day.

7.  Utilize the fresh fruit or refreshments that your hotel offers; they make great snacks and treats throughout the day.

Many hotels have complementary cookies, fresh fruit, or other snacks that they make available for guests. Grabbing one of these items allows you to save money on a snack or treat later in the day. We never use these items as our entire source of snacks when traveling, but sometimes when we are exploring a city in the heat of the day, an apple is a welcome, refreshing snack. Also, the cookies often prove to be a nice treat at the end of a long day.

8.  Consider staying in an inexpensive suite-style hotel to have beds for everyone in your family.

Many budget-friendly hotels are moving away from suite-style rooms, opting for more traditional-style hotel rooms. However, if you can find a hotel that offers a budget-friendly suite, they typically have room to sleep 6–two queen beds and a pull-out couch. Rather than having people sleep on a cot or the floor, this provides a budget-friendly way to have beds for everyone in the family.

9.  Stay outside of the city, as hotel prices are usually substantially cheaper.

Staying downtown can be convenient because you are right in the heart of where you will be vacationing. However, even the cheapest hotels in a city are often three times the price of hotels outside of the city. In addition, hotels located in downtown areas often do not offer continental breakfasts. By staying outside the city, even with the added transportation costs of having to travel into the city, you will typically save a bundle.

10. Create a reasonable budget and stick to it!

It is easy to get carried away on vacation. When you are traveling, all of the excursions sound fun and many people fall into the trap of thinking, “I am going to enjoy this because it may be the only time I ever visit this place.” The problem with this mindset is that it often causes people to go over budget, and then the next time they want to travel, they think about how expensive traveling is and have second thoughts about planning a trip.

By creating and sticking to a budget (or even spending less than your budgeted amount), it often makes you feel that travel is more of an option. Spending less on a trip, often does something in your brain, where it begins to feel like traveling is not that expensive so you can do it more frequently. On the other hand, some people save thousands and thousands of dollars for one trip, creating a massive budget, but this can create a feeling that trips are so expensive that they can only be taken occasionally. By creating a budget that is reasonable and sticking to it, it empowers you to feel that traveling more often is within reach!

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Saving Money for a Trip

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The idea of saving money for vacations comes easy for some people, but more challenging for others.  Depending on your income, expenses, number of children, and other factors, traveling may feel more or less out of reach.  My husband and I decided many years ago that we wanted to make opportunities for our family to travel and have new experiences, so we have found ways to make it work based on our various seasons of life.

Here are some of the strategies we have discovered that help us save money for our travels.

1. Create a separate account for travel

By creating a separate account for travel, you can take the money that you save throughout the year and put it in the account.  When you are saving money in some of the ways listed below, you can take the money that you would have spent on those expenses, and put it into your travel account.  The account can be a separate account at your bank or just an envelope, along the lines of Dave Ramsey’s system.  By having some type of separate account, you intentionally devote money toward a fun vacation, allowing your family to reconnect and unwind.  By having a specific travel account, when it comes time to travel, it also helps you stay on budget because you know the amount of money you have in your travel account.

2. Get Rid of Unnecessary Expenses in Your Life

One thing that we have done to help save money on travel is to get rid of cable TV and internet. (Gasp.)  Our family decided this was an unnecessary expense that we could live without. When we need internet, we use our phone as hotspots to assess the internet, and we have a TV antenna when we want to watch TV.  Do I sometimes miss just being able to turn on the computer and have internet access?  Absolutely.  Do I love watching the old westerns that play on our antenna based TV?  Not really.  However, Andy Griffith kind of grows on you after awhile.  By getting rid of these two things, my family saves about $1500 per year, which becomes a large portion of our travel budget.

3. Limit Going out to Eat

Going out to eat can be a major expense for families.  By the time you get drinks, appetizers, and meals for a large family, you can easily end up with a bill over $100.  My family loves to eat, but this is another big place we try to save money.  We limit meals out to once or twice per month.  We also typically opt not to get beverages or appetizers.  Instead, we opt for water (drinking soda and other beverages at home) and if there is an appetizer that sounds really good, we either go to the store and purchase an entire box of the appetizer or we find a recipe online that tells us how to make the appetizer at home.  At restaurants we primarily stick to meals. Also, one of our favorite restaurants offers two free kid’s meals with each adult entrée.  If we want to go out to eat, we plan our evening out on a night with free kids meals.  By doing this, it substantially cuts down on the cost of our bill.  That is not to say that sometimes we don’t splurge and get sodas, appetizers, and steaks.  It is just limiting the frequency of those occurrences and placing the saved money into our travel account.  Also, making unique meals at home can become a fun hobby.  We have made hotdogs with macaroni and cheese on them, hamburgers with eggs on top, and many other fun creations that can be found at restaurants. By limiting meals out, it has encouraged our family to spend time cooking together and exploring new recipes. 

4. The Newest-Coolest Technology

Technology can also be a major expense.  Having the newest-coolest phone, TV, game system, or ipad can be fun, but the reality is that they will be outdated within the next 2-3 years anyways.  Now, I do realize that some people’s “thing” is technology, and they would much rather have great technology than travel.  If that is you, then that’s perfectly fine.  However, if you are wanting to save money for travel, perhaps you can live with your 5 year old TV another year or two, and maybe the kids can take turns with the one Ipad they already have.

5. Thrift Stores and Sale Racks

Young children outgrow their clothes quickly.  Rather than buying new clothes for them every year, try to find the best thrift store in town…the one that has great clothes and reasonable prices.  The thrift store that I use sells name brand kids clothes for $1-$4 each, depending on the item.  I also shop sale racks at stores.  Children’s Place and Crazy 8 have amazing sales, and very cute clothes!  I also opt for sales racks myself.  My favorite store is somewhat expensive, and even though I browse the store to see what cute things they have, I typically only purchase items off the sales rack.  Finding stores that have good sales and reward programs are great options for a family trying to save money.

There are obviously other ways to save money for trips, such as picking up a part-time job on the side or working over-time at work.  Even older kids can make some extra cash for souvenirs on the trip by mowing grass or babysitting.  However, the above strategies are ways we have found to save money as we go through our “regular” life.  We don’t go out of our way to work 60 hour weeks to save money.  We just make sacrifices throughout the year, and by doing that, we easily save the $2000-$3000 that we budget for travel each year.