
04 Oct Living on a Budget:Traveling
I’m going down a more light hearted path today as a friend encouraged me this would be great information to share and it’s on two topics I’m passionate about: traveling and living on a budget!
Colby and I live very frugally – we know our money is a gift from the Lord and we want to respect how and when we use it. Because we spend little and do everything we can to keep our expenses to a minimum this allows us extra money to travel! People are always surprised with our big and long trips every year. But, we have the vacation days, and have saved the money, so why not!? Not only do we live on a budget, but we travel on a budget to. If you are not on a budget, money is growing in your back yard or you don’t like to travel then this post is not for you!
Hotels:
- Sign up for a rewards program. We use Marriott and love it. They have what seems like an ongoing promotion that if you stay 2 non-consecutive nights, you get 1 night free. While Colby lived in Georgia last year and I would go visit him I was not allowed on base, so our only option was to stay in hotels. We would hotel hop every night I was there. We would stay in a Marriott one night, and then drive 1 minute down the street and check in to another Marriott. This means we got a free night. So every weekend I went (2 nights) we accumulated one night free. Those free nights sure do add up and we had over 7 free nights for our last trip.
- Sign up for credit cards. I don’t suggest doing this if you have bad credit scores/history or if you are taking out a big loan soon, but there are so many ridiculously good deals when signing up for credit cards. This website lists top credit cards with the best deals.
- Marriott offer the Look No Further Program, which guarantees a 25% discount off any other lower rate found. I would say about 80% of the time I can find a lower price on Kayak.com. I then go fill out this form and get 25% off the Kayak rate. That means if a room is $125 on Marriott and $100 on Kayak, Marriott will give you the room for $75 ($50 discount). It can save you so much money it’s crazy. And with the stay 2, get 1 free deal, it sometimes feels as though they are giving away rooms for free.
- Look for hotels with free parking and breakfast. These are probably the two things that I hate spending money on the most. Food and car expenses. Avoid them both.
- Clearly I know most about the Marriott program, but we also have a Choice and Hilton account and I know Choice has very low priced hotels as well.
Flights:
- Use Bing. This website is great. When we are not using miles, I use it to book all our flights. It gives you predictions on when to buy. It tells you the history of fares as well as predicts what they will be in the future.
- Of course, flying on a Thursday is cheaper then a Friday, as a Monday is cheaper then a Sunday. If you have a flexible schedule, avoid flying on the weekends. Anytime you can avoid flying during prime time, you will find a better deal.
- Again, sign up for a reward program. We have AA (American Airlines), BA (British Airways), United, SW and US Airways, but mainly just use AA and BA. BA is hands down the best credit card/rewards program we have ever come across. A flight that costs 25K miles RT on American (considered a reward flight), is anywhere from 9K to 15K on BA. So you get double the amount the flights for your miles. I don’t even know how they do this. Even though you book through the BA website, you fly on AA. It’s a steal. I actually don’t want to tell anyone, because I don’t want this to get revoked, ever! I don’t know the last time we bought a flight. Oh, and the booking fee is just $2.50 per person! So the majority of the time we spend $5 to fly! What would cost us 50K AA miles to get to Kansas to see Colby’s family, only costs us 18K miles and $5 with BA. It’s genius, but booking can be confusing, so if you are seriously interested, let me know.
Eating
- I am not a normal person in the fact that I do not enjoy eating out. “Say whhhhat?” Yes, that is right, due to our frugality, I find that eating out is the biggest money waster, ever. When we travel, we are usually on the go during the day, doing active things like hiking. We stay at hotels that have free breakfast. For our last trip, I made a bunch of granola and health bars ahead of time. I also brought mixed nuts. We would get extra fruit at the hotels and on our hikes eat the granola/fruit/nuts, etc. Basically we would eat big breakfasts, snack all day and then only food expense of the day was dinner. A good way to save on dinner is to split meals and check the menus ahead of time to make sure they meet your budget. Also, most of the time you can find coupons and specials at the local visitor center or hotel lobby.
All-Inclusive
- We are suckers for the all-inclusive resorts. To get to Mexico from Dallas is a 2.5 hour flight. It’s cheap, easy, close and fun! For our last trip back in May, once I found the hotel we wanted, I went to Kayak, Orbitz, Cheap Caribbean and the hotel website to price it out. Turns out the cheapest was on orbitz (not always the case). From there I googled orbitz + coupon code and sure enough, a coupon code came up where we got an additional $100. Always price match between websites, because they all offer different prices.
Rental Car
- Rarely do we go somewhere where we need a rental car. The last time we got one was when we were in New Zealand, so that’s a bit of a different circumstance. Many airlines and hotels offer additional miles/points by booking through their sites. Also, price match across websites as well.
Excursions/Shopping/Others
- Negotiate! Ask for discounts. What is there to lose? Remember our expensive whale excursion? When we were signing up to do it, I asked if they offered any discounts, and just by asking they gave us 10% off. When we went biking, I asked if they offered any discounts, and they said, no. That’s fine. It doesn’t always work. But, what is there to lose?
These are just a few ideas, I’m sure I could go on and on all day. By saving in the ways that we do, we are able to travel more. Our last trip to the Pacific West our only expenses were 3 nights of hotels (out of 12), dinners, activities, and gas. There are plenty of travel forums that can help with this and a great way to avoid hotel expenses is to travel places where you know people who live there! I have a passion about traveling and finding good deals so if you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me!
Megan Davis
Posted at 05:07h, 04 OctoberI loved this post!! Avery and I don’t travel much right now but both really want to start once he is out of school! I actually didn’t know a lot of this about the hotels-is it free to sign up? I love that you mentioned cutting cost with food…I am the same way! I don’t like eating out either…i usually get a salad or something so it’s not worth it. We are all about bringing food or grocery shopping there. What has been your favorite trip? We would both love to go to New Zealand!
Emily (eatloveprocreate.blogspot.com)
Posted at 05:52h, 04 OctoberYou never told me you are Marriott freaks. Us too! Platinum Premier reward members right here baby! We must swap stories sometime. We’ve managed to go to Kauai, Maui, and Cancun all for practically FREE through Marriott. Isn’t is the absolute best?! That pic of New Zealand is absolutely spectacular!
Allison
Posted at 06:32h, 04 OctoberWe have a Marriott account, too.. and absolutely love it! We get so many free nights by doing the same things!
Erika B.
Posted at 07:34h, 04 OctoberThis is so awesome!! I had no idea about that Marriot thing- SO cool! We rarely stay in hotels so it wouldn’t do much for us, but that is super awesome how you capitalized on your trips to Georgia like that!! Unfortunately, I LOOOOOVE eating out (and eating, in general) way too much. I would cry if I had to rely on fruit and granola for a lunch on vacation. 🙂 But you have so many other great tips here– love it!!! Share more whenever you think of it!!
Amanda
Posted at 07:45h, 04 OctoberThis is great Caroline! Kudos to you and Colby! I love when living on a budget rewards you in a big way! That’s AMAZING about the flights… we honestly don’t travel because of flights. It always seems that we could swing everything else, but the flight kills it! Boo. : (
Shay
Posted at 08:48h, 04 OctoberThese are AWESOME tips!! Thank you so much for sharing! My hubby and I TOTALLY need a vacay!
Suzanne
Posted at 08:49h, 04 OctoberI love this!! Thank you so much for sharing. We love to travel and since our IF, it’s definitely changed our ability to do that as much as we used to. We just have to be a little more inventive these days, don’t we?! 🙂
dspence
Posted at 09:04h, 04 OctoberLove this post! I travel to FL several times a year and am always looking for deals on flights! I’m totally going to check out the BA/AA site!
Melissa
Posted at 09:48h, 04 OctoberI’ve nominated you for the Sunshine award! If you’re interested, stop by http://askaninfertile.blogspot.com/2013/10/sunshine-award.html for details! 🙂
Susannah
Posted at 12:44h, 04 OctoberWhat great tips!!! Nate and I are travelling to the East Coast this spring and we’re getting free plane tickets with his credit card rewards. I’ll look into your other tips too. 🙂
Becky
Posted at 14:29h, 04 OctoberI had NO idea about those Marriott rewards, holy cow! That’s so awesome! I’m definitely signing up for that for sure! Traveling is super duper important to us, we save year round just so we can take awesome trips, I think it’s been one of the biggest blessings in our marriage!
Aubrey
Posted at 18:07h, 04 OctoberThanks for the Look No Further tip! I didn’t know that!!
Jessah
Posted at 19:48h, 04 OctoberApparently, I need to get on the Marriott bus. Thanks for the tips, lady.
Angela
Posted at 20:02h, 04 OctoberSuch great tips! I wish we were that close to Mexico, I would be all over those all inclusives! Unfortunately for us to go to Mexico it would have to be a bigger trip.
Kasey
Posted at 16:14h, 05 OctoberLove your eating idea to make granola ahead of time! We travel a lot to Disney and I always stop at the guest store to get some bars and stuff so we don’t have to stop for lunch, but I like the idea of having granola from home for during the day!
Sara
Posted at 14:12h, 10 OctoberI love, love, love this post! I am so with you on the travel thing. We went to Australia and Fiji for our honeymoon and are dying to go back and check out New Zealand. All of our travel is just like yours, pretty much as inexpensive as you can get. I am a firm believer in miles and hotel points. I was excited to hear about the BA program though, I’ve always been an AA girl but that program sounds so much better! I can’t wait to pick your brain about this some more.
Oh, not sure if you know this, but AA has an online shopping mall where you get tons of miles just by doing regular shopping. I found a world travel map for my parents for Christmas and they were offering 21 miles for every dollar you spent. Their $150 gift got me 3,150 miles! (I was going to buy it anyway, I didn’t just buy it to get the miles, lol.)
Anyway, I love hearing about your travel tricks, keep em’ coming! )