Top Ten Tuesday: Saving on Summer Vacation

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is dedicated to ways to save on family vacations. As a kid I can remember going on very few vacations because my family simply couldn’t afford it. When we did I remember very distinctly being told that I couldn’t do a lot of things because we didn’t have money. Or that we couldn’t really afford to go on vacation.

My husband and I value vacations but don’t want to break the bank trying to enjoy ourselves. That is no fun when you return home! So we save up, try to find discounts where we can and then commit to enjoying ourselves without all the “we can’t afford it” lines.

Here is how we save:

1. Share a residence – for several years now we have gone in with another family to rent a house for the week. We like to vacation at the beach and the houses that are closest to the beach are often bigger homes. Therefore, splitting the cost makes them affordable for the week. It usually ends up being much cheaper than renting a hotel room and with a lot more amenities.

2. Shop VRBO – when we are looking to rent a house I always use VRBO. (this is not a sponsored post). Have you ever used it? There are a gazillion places listed that you can rent all over the globe. It is my first place of research usually when I am ready to find a residence. We have used VRBO for our honeymoon in Roatan, Honduras; for our vacation to Hawaii; for our trip to Panama City Beach, Florida; and for recent trip to Outer Banks, North Carolina. We have always had a great experience. And the house we just rented even came with baby equipment. Score! One less thing to pack in the vehicle!

3. Plan your meals – I love eating out like the next person. Especially on beach vacations where you can dine on local seafood. But every night is a little much. The last few years I have frozen some OAMM meals and packed them nicely in the cooler to take with us. The ones that are mostly defrosted when we get there we eat the first few days. And we proceed from there. This saves us money because we aren’t eating out every night, we aren’t buying overpriced groceries at resort locations and it saves us the time of meal preparation on the night that we eat in.

4. Coupons – I use coupons on the items that I purchase to make food before we leave. And then I make a list of the items that we are going to need to purchase once we arrive. We don’t pack EVERYTHING we will need in the way of food or there wouldn’t be room for diapers! I then go through my coupons and cut out any that correspond or that I think that I might use on items on our “to buy” grocery list. No use saving money at home just to waste it while we are away. And no need to drag my coupon binder all over the world!

5. Grocery Savings Cards – Do a search on Google Maps and find out what grocery stores are located near your vacation destination. Do a little research to find out if they have a store loyalty card. If they do apply and have one mailed before you go or pick one up when you get there. At one of our vacation destinations the local chain actually just scanned a card for us seeing that we were out-of-towners. That was super nice. Perhaps ask about that before you start your shopping or fill out the application.

6. Rewards Cards & Programs – There are many ways to earn rewards with different companies and credit cards. I save up points throughout the year and redeem them prior to vacation to cut our vacation costs. Here are a few that I utilized on our recent vacation:

• Swagbucks – I redeemed my swagbucks for Amazon.com gift cards for some of the last minute supplies that we needed like floaties, ear plugs, etc. There are lots of other things that you can redeem your swagbucks for. There are airline tickets, restaurants.com, Starbucks are just a few.
• Tropicana Juicy Rewards – I searched here for entertainment and dining discounts for near where we were staying. This vacation didn’t have a lot of options so we didn’t end up using any rewards but if you collect Juicy Rewards (which you should) you should check do a search near the zip code where you are staying.
• Cellfire – They have coupons you can download or use right there from your phone which is one way to save money. But they also have discounts for area attractions and dining locations sometimes as well. It is an easy way to potentially save money. Whenever I am in a new location, I change the zip code in my cellfire phone application to the zip code where I am staying. I then peruse the deals and discounts to see if there are any I can use.

7. Credit Card Rewards – I know many of you swear by Dave Ramsey and the envelope system. In this household we only use the envelope system for problem areas like eating out. The main reason we don’t use it is that I love some credit card rewards! And we have a long history of NOT abusing credit cards, we pay the total amount in full each month (otherwise the rewards are null). Prior to leaving on this trip I used my DiscoverRewards to get us a nearly free hotel room for our journey down there (we broke it into 2 days). It was so nice to save that way. I also looked into getting restaurant and gas cards for us to use along the way as well. It definitely saved us money to be eating for free while we were traveling.

8. Search the blogs – You obviously are a blog reader if you are reading this post (especially if you have made it all the way to this point in this post. . .he he)! Do a swagbucks search for “blogs (city you are going to) discounts”. You might just find a handful of well written blogs that can direct you to great savings. Here in Dayton, Ohio (I know you are all considering vacationing here) we have Deals for Dayton. Chances are the place where you going has a great blogger eager to help you out!

9. Off Season – whenever we can we travel in the off season. Sometimes, like this last vacation, it isn’t too terribly “off” but we try. That way you shave hundreds of dollars off most everything from lodging, to food, to gasoline.

10. Ask for a discount – there is no harm in asking! The worst thing they can say is no. There were several places this last week that we checked on discount opportunities. Whether it is AAA or student or military or AARP there is no charge to ask!

What about you? What do you do to save money when vacationing? Or do you just splurge?

This post is linked up to Top Ten Tuesday at Oh Amanda.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 7:53 am and is filed under Chatter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.