Affordable Family Vacations: Road Trips on a Budget
Photo: @diegojimenez from Unsplash
Family vacations when I was growing up consisted mostly of visiting relatives and friends, driving on scary back roads in the dry mountains of western Colorado in my uncle’s old jeep, and being encouraged to order just the cup of soup at every Perkins or Country Kitchen between northern Minnesota and Grand Junction, Colorado.
My mom always did a great job of trying to make the best of it, ensuring we stopped at Mt. Rushmore or the Denver Natural History Museum along the way. When visiting cousins in California we went to the beach and Disneyland.
Still, whether it was intentional or not, the idea I walked away with was that spending as little as possible was the highest priority.
Thankfully, I’ve come a long way from the habits of extreme frugality and choose to spend money on the things that mean the most to me and my family.
Now that my kids are out of the “scream for two hours straight in the car” and fake “I need to go to the bathroom” phase, we’ve started taking our own family road trips. Here are some things we do to keep our road trip costs down without sacrificing on the experience. Of course, many of these things apply to planning a budget vacation no matter how you get there.
Mount Rushmore
Tips for an Affordable Family Vacation
Save enough money to pay for your vacation in advance.
The last thing you want to do is put it all on a credit card that you can’t pay off right away, causing your vacation costs to double or more due to interest. Do you like paying for an extra vacation that you don’t even get to take? No? Then just save up enough money in advance so you can pay for it all right away.
Use a credit card to get rewards and extra protections if you want (I do), but pay it in full on time to avoid interest and fees.
2. Bring a cooler and other healthy snacks.
Gas station stops are a big black hole for your money on road trips. After sitting in a car for hours, the bag of chips, energy drinks, or cups of coffee entice you when your defenses are low. But you can plan for many of these things by packing them ahead of time. A picnic lunch at a rest stop will start your trip off on the right foot.
What I put in my cooler or food bag:
Cheese sticks and/or sliced cheese
Yogurt sticks or cups
Pre-cut vegetables
Fruit
Hummus
Crackers and pretzels
Peanut butter
Bread
Deli meat
Mayo or mustard packets from takeout
Granola bars
Dark chocolate
3. Take reusable water bottles.
Many places offer stations where you can refill your water bottles, but if you’re worried about running out or the quality of the water, take an insulated water cooler and fill it up when you can. This is especially helpful if you’re going to be hiking in hot places.
It was good to have extra water when hiking in Arches National Park in the middle of summer!
Having constant access to free water is not only good for your budget, it is good for your health and safety as well.
4. Stay in places with a kitchen, or at least a refrigerator.
You don’t want to spend all of your vacation time preparing food, but even one meal a day can make a huge difference in your budget. Plus, finding restaurants that everyone agrees on can be difficult. If you know you’ve got a picnic lunch, you can avoid driving all over town to find that Burger King your husband saw a sign for that is actually nowhere near the freeway. You can avoid running all over the city to find an affordable and quick meal that everyone will eat before the kids totally melt down from hunger. Or you can comfortably make the decision to skip the questionable restaurant in the middle of nowhere without fearing that it will be hours before you get to another place you can stop and eat.
Preparing your own food gives you a lot more flexibility and control in addition to being friendly on the budget. Plus, some of the best vacation evenings we’ve had have been at cabins where we roasted hot dogs over the fire after a long day of sitting in the car or sightseeing.
Photo: @kellbork on Unsplash
5. Find lodging that gives you the most bang for your buck.
A basic hotel room might be cheaper, but spending a little more for one that has a pool and breakfast is often worth it, especially if you have kids. A pool provides free entertainment and is one of the most memorable parts of vacations for my kids.
In addition, if you can turn your lodging into part of the experience, you will increase the enjoyment level and decrease the need to go find other expensive activities to fill your time. Sometimes relaxing on a deck with an amazing view is the best gift a busy mom can give to herself.
View from the porch of our cabin near Gardiner, Montana.
Plus if you ask my kids what they liked most about our road trips, they will tell you about the interesting cabins, the breakfasts, and the pools. Worth. Every. Penny.
6. Find less expensive ways to eat out.
If the food experience is important to you, eating in restaurants may be worth it. However, you can’t eat large, fancy meals all the time. Whether you just want to spend less on lunch so you can have a nicer dinner, reduce the amount you spend on food in general, or just can’t eat a giant hamburger and fries every day for a week, there are many ways to reduce costs when eating out. Here are some options:
Share. Hamburgers may be the bread and butter of a Wyoming restaurant, but even the most avid beef lover will struggle to finish one with nearly a pound of meat. If you find yourself leaving lots of food behind in restaurants, consider sharing meals. Our family of five might order only four entrees if we know they’re going to be large.
Choose to splurge on meals where the experience or the food is important and find cheaper ways to eat the rest of the time. When my family was in Chicago, our hotel was across the street from a Whole Foods that had a huge selection of prepared dinner items. We definitely made sure to find what I think was probably the best Chicago-style pizza in the city, but on other nights it was great to swing by Whole Foods and grab another pizza (I know, so much pizza, but can you ever have too much?) or some food from the deli. I can promise you that was much better than tromping all over the city without a plan, desperately searching for mediocre food just to fill our stomachs and appease our hangry children.
7. Look for city passes that give you access to multiple attractions for less.
Many large cities have passes that allow you to save by bundling. Groupon sometimes offers extra discounts on these passes above the original savings. Just make sure it’s actually worth it. If you only have time for one or two attractions, it might be worth skipping the pass and just paying for admission.
The Field Museum in Chicago is part of the Go Chicago and Chicago City Pass programs.
8. Don’t over plan
Sometimes people go to a destination where they think they’re going to try to do ALL of the things. Kids get tired. You get tired. It might be worth it to choose your attractions carefully and explore at a more relaxed pace. Rather than trying to cram in one museum in the morning and one in the afternoon, pick one and spend the rest of the day exploring at your leisure or relaxing at your hotel/cabin (remember that pool I said to get?).
You certainly wouldn’t go to Orlando without visiting any theme parks or go to San Diego and skip the zoo just to save money, but you also should know that filling every day with theme parks and zoos might get tiring after awhile and you might just need to go to the beach for the day.
If you’re in Europe, you can only visit so many museums and historic sites before every old, interesting thing looks like every other old, interesting thing. (And believe me, I LOVE old, interesting things.) Take a break to wander through that garden and have a croissant instead.
The point is to choose the paid attractions carefully so you make sure to get the best experience without overdoing it or buying tickets to places you’re too exhausted to fully enjoy. You’d be surprised at how much you can enjoy for free by exploring the area or simply relaxing.
9.Rethink your idea of the perfect vacation
Not every vacation needs to be the ultimate week at Disney resorts with a cruise or an elaborate tour of Europe. Think about building experiences rather than checking items off a list. So many (white middle/upper-class) Americans have come to believe that every trip must be the ultimate, carefully curated bucket list, once-in-a-lifetime vacation, but the truth is that sometimes simple is better. Just like parenting has become a project of its own where we must give our children the perfect experiences to create the perfect adult, we plan every detail of our vacation to be the very best experience one could ever have.
But there is no such thing as the perfect vacation. No matter how hard you plan, someone’s always going to be upset at something. We moms need to stop putting so much work into everything that it becomes a trip instead of a vacation.
Book something more low-key. Go to a state park and let kids climb on rocks. Rent a fun cabin and sit down and relax by the fire or on the deck. You don’t need to do every single activity all of the time.
Spending more money and doing more activities does not necessarily guarantee a better experience.
Affordable Family Vacations: Balancing Fun with Saving Money
Having an enjoyable yet affordable vacation is a balancing act. Even if you have unlimited funds, being intentional with your time and money is likely to provide you with a better overall experience. Let go of the need to do everything. Don’t spend so much time being cheap that you forget to have fun, but don’t feel like you have to spend on everything either. Many of these tips for saving money on vacation aren’t just about being frugal, they also have the benefit of giving you more flexibility and sometimes being less stressful without sacrificing enjoyment.
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