Earlier this week, my husband, the boys and I were able to go on a little mini-vacation. Although the hotel where we stayed was not exactly frugal (it included an indoor waterpark), we did try to cut costs as much as possible, while still making it a fun vacation.
How did we do that? While we ate both dinners in the hotel restaurant, we also brought breakfast, lunch, and snack foods with us to eat in the room. When we did eat in the restaurant, we ordered water, since we knew we had other drinks waiting for us back in the room. Believe me, my boys were not concerned about the "eats"...it was ALL about the swimming.
We budget for this trip each year, so it's included in our monthly vacation budget amount, but I'd rather save money on parts of the trip (like breakfast and lunch) so that we can enjoy additional mini-vacations throughout the year. Normally, we do a lot of camping as a family, but it's hard to camp during the winter when there's snow on the ground :-).
What do you do to save money when you're on vacation? Or do you figure it's your vacation and go all out?
Sherry
We did some of this when we went on our CHRISTmas trip this past year. 😀 It is amazing how much you save when you aren't going out to eat plus all the calories, too. LOL!
Your Frugal Friend, Niki
Great post!
We are the same way! In fact every year we vacation at the beach with my inlaws and we always get a room with a small kitchenette in it. We bring frugal canned/boxed groceries from Save-a-Lot with us and buy perishables once we get to a nearby supermarket.
🙂
Anonymous
Eat a big continental breakfast as late as we can in our hotel........ eat a small snack that we pack mid afternoon. Family buffets like CiCIs pizza buffet is great deal for dinner or anytime of day. Or we catch an early lunch which is cheaper than dinner..... Sometimes we save a few restaurant gift cards received at Christmas for our later in the new year vacation.
As much of an inconvenience as it may seem.... we book several different hotels based on coupons from those room saver magazines that you find for free at travel plazas. We vacation off season so we get some pretty good deals this way. One time we stayed at a 5 star resort for $69 dollars a night mid week (an internet deal). Then we used those room saver coupons for the rest of our vacation. We spent less than $400 dollars for a week's vacation in hotel stays.
Camping in a tent and riding bikes is a very affordable and often the most memorable vacationing in the hearts and minds of our kiddos, too.