Frugal Vacation- How to Have a GREAT Vacation on Limited $

[Liss]

Re:Frugality on Vacations

So, what ways do you save money on vacationing costs?

My husband?s parents own a timeshare in Hilton Head. We are blessed to be able to go on vacation with them each year. That eliminates the need for lodging for our family.

What we are responsible for is food, gas, souvenirs, and any activities we do. In order to keep the cost down we take our own snacks and most of our food. We plan on eating breakfast and lunch in the cottage, which has a full size kitchen.

I also plan on cooking 2 or 3 nights. Nothing fancy but much cheaper than eating out every night. We usually stay for 5 or 6 days so, we plan on eating out 1 or 2 nights.

To help keep the cost down on eating out, we eat dinner early (5:00pm) so we can get a better price. Then we eat a snack, like popcorn, fruit, etc later on. We only plan on 1 or 2 activities that require paying.

We tell our children, ahead of time so they won?t be disappointed and keep asking. We let them help plan, ages 8 and 10, which really cuts down on the complaining. We try to get up early and go to the beach and then come back around 11:30 eat lunch and either go to the pool OR do our activity.

We then like to go back to the beach in later in the evening to watch the sunset, look for shells, etc. We stop at the Visitor?s center when we first get on the island and we get coupons, free information, and a really cool place to tour. The visitor?s center is a wealth of information.

We even research on the internet before we go, which is a great big help. One year we took our bicycles and rode them around instead of using our car. We had less sand in the car and had a wonderful time because the kids love riding backs.

Not to mention healthier. As for traveling we make our lunch keep it in a cooler and stop along the way at parks, rest areas (our favorite) to eat. When we stop for gas, the kids know that they can?t get anything because we already have snacks, and treats in the car.

I save lots of money by planning ahead. We leave our house about 3 or 4 am and this saves money because it isn?t has hot, no a/c, and the kids sleep, for quite a while. In the past we have stopped at a buffet type place for breakfast around 9 or 10 am and considered it brunch.

This helped because we didn?t eat again until we got to the island, except snacks. Since the kids are older we don?t do this as much because they don?t eat free anymore. So a picnic is what we do, and then they get to run off some energy and play for a while.

This makes the trip go by much faster. We live about 9- 10 hours from Hilton Head, so it can be very expensive traveling if we don?t plan ahead. We try not to buy anything on the island because it is more expensive, and usually buy our perishables right before we get on the island.

Being prepared and planning is what makes for a frugal and fun vacation.

Jennifer, ky

god is good!! 🙂

[Author]

Posts