Inexpensive Vacation Ideas
Summer in the US is typically the time for vacations, especially if you have kids (unless you homeschool but that’s a different topic). So with about a month before school starts up again, many people might be taking a vacation this month.
So, maybe you are still trying to plan a vacation (procrastinator!). Or maybe you’ve just realized you really need a vacation but don’t have one planned or don’t have enough money saved up for a blowout. Here are a few ideas to work in a vacation without blowing the bank.
1. Take a “Stay-cation”
Instead of going somewhere far away for vacation, why not stay close by….like in your house! There has to be numerous activities to do nearby your house. Take a hike, visit some museums, check out local parks or playgrounds (only if you have kids), take in a show, go to the movies, camp out (even if it’s only in your backyard), do stuff that you haven’t gotten a chance to do around your town – just experience your surroundings differently. There has to be a million ideas you can think of for your area!
Do all the stuff you would normally do while on vacation; just don’t pay tons of money for travel, lodging, and food. And if you live in or near a touristy place, even better! Heck, you can still go out to eat like you would on vacation. Your bed and pillow will be more comfortable than what you’d get in a hotel (but you will have to clean up after yourself). Just make sure that you make it like a real vacation and don’t spend the entire time cleaning, working, or doing non-vacation things.
2. Visit (and stay with) family or friends
As sort of a hybrid vacation/stay-cation, take off to a friend’s house or stay with family for your vacation (get their permission first, of course). While there, you’ll get to do all the normal vacation stuff and, different from the stay-cation, you’ll get to experience a new place. By staying with friends or family though, you’ll save a bunch on lodging costs and reduce your food bill (you won’t eliminate it since it will be really rude to stay at someone’s house and eat all their food without chipping in – unless maybe if it’s your parents house!). Throw on top of all this the fun of sharing your vacation with others and this could be a real winner.
It does help to know people that live in interesting places though. We actually did this twice in the past few years. Last summer we visited West Palm Beach, Florida for a vacation with my wife’s family (staying at her sister’s house) and currently we’re in Hershey, Pennsylvania staying with my parents. Just remember that you are not staying in a hotel so pitch in for food and other miscellany and, again, you’ll have to pick up after yourself. But you will still save money and eat better than being at a hotel and eating at restaurants every day (ok, can we at least say you’ll eat healthier?).
3. The Last Resort: The No-Vacation
If you really can’t afford it, this is your best bet (that’s what Dave Ramsey would say too). I don’t particularly recommend this option unless you really would have trouble doing even a stay-cation. I’ve said it before: you need to live life, have some fun, and make some memories. Before throwing in the proverbial towel on your vacation plans, explore the first two options and any others you can think of.
But be realistic and if you can’t afford a vacation without depleting your savings or going into debt, then skip it. If you do miss a vacation this year, then definitely sit down and make plans for a vacation and immediately start saving up for that (hopefully not-so-distant) future vacation.
Why Should I Care about Spending Less/Saving/Investing?
A while ago, my wife and I were sitting around the table chatting and working and, as often happens with me, I must have made some comment about saving money or avoiding debt. She asked me what the big deal was about not having debt? Why should we sacrifice to spend less so we can get out of debt and save and invest? If so many people are using credit cards and home equity loans to buy the stuff that they want, do we really need to care about this stuff so much? Are all of those people going to end up destitute or are they all going to be fine even if they used credit throughout their life?
Aside: I’m not sure why she asks me questions like this. Sometimes, I think she just says this stuff to see how I’ll react ("I wonder if his head will explode if I ask him this?"). Maybe she is truly curious. Possibly, she is trying to engage in an honest, albeit slightly controversial, conversation. You know, like she pushes some buttons to try to get me thinking about things from a different perspective. Yeah, let’s go with that one.
Anyway, given the current economic conditions in the US, this is a good time to discuss this topic (Ok, actually, it’s about a year too late to do anything positive about your situation, but humor me here). First of all, a good deal of the economic turmoil we are currently experiencing is related to debt in one way or another…but that’s a topic for another post.
Fewer monthly expenses and more savings
So, let’s look briefly at some of the benefits of not having large amounts of debt in a time like this. Obviously, if you don’t have a lot of debt payments to make, you therefore have less fixed expenses each month. And if you have been paying yourself instead of paying debtors, then you probably have more money in savings and investments (well, in savings at least). And put those two things together in a box and wrap it up and you’ve some protection and flexibility.
You have protection that enables you to pay big expenses that might arise (like if your water pipes froze and burst ) or help you through situations such as losing your job or encountering some other major problem. You also have flexibility in your life. While most people are just very happy to have a job in times like this, your reduced expenses and increased money in the bank allow you to retain your flexibility – if you really hate your job and/or (somehow) see a better opportunity, you can actually consider taking that risk.
Not only surviving but also thriving
Most people focus on survival in these economic conditions, but there is another aspect that should be considered. If you have done a good job of staying out of debt and saving some money, you are in a relatively unique position right now. You have money at a time when things are on sale. Think about it – houses can be purchased for much, much less than a year or so ago. The same is true of stocks. You are not in a position, like so many appear to be, of hoping to survive, you are surviving and looking to thrive.
I can’t remember who said it (I think it was someone with a large net worth) so I can’t look it up, but I always found this (paraphrased – since I can’t look it up) quote interesting:
You make most of your money during a recession, you just don’t know it at the time.
If your job is secure and your debt load is low and you have money on hand, maybe now is the time to invest in that rental property you’ve been considering for a long time. Been thinking about purchasing a property in foreclosure? There are many available right now. Almost all stocks are much less expensive than a year ago so even dollar cost averaging should pay off in the long-term. These are but a few examples of opportunities that are available if you look around.
Then again, I’m sure the government will take care of us no matter what
On the other hand, to my wife’s point, why worry too much about debt and what-not – we’re in a bad place right now but our wise leaders in Washington are hurrying an economic stimulus package that I’m sure will help everyone out and immediately get us out of this funk. Pork? nah, surely they have the people’s best interest in mind and not only their own…(and if that doesn’t scare you into wanting to get out of debt, I don’t know what will).
Money Saving Tip: Check out your Auto Insurance for Roadside Assistance
Hopefully you have not, but I’m sure we have all experienced the dreaded breakdown on the side of the road. It could be from your battery dying or something more sinister (and pricey), but there occasionally comes a time when your trusted (or maybe your not-so-trustworthy) automobile leaves you stranded and you need some help. At times like that, it is certainly a relief to be able to pick up your cell phone and get someone routed out to come give you a hand (or a lift).
For years we’ve been members of AAA and have used the service quite a few times (unfortunately). Luckily, it has not been happening as much lately since we’ve been able to afford, shall we say, more "contemporary" cars! Even so, I have had the batteries die on both of my cars within the past few years and have called them up for a jump-start.
So, a few weeks back when I got a letter from AAA informing me the credit card they used to renew my yearly membership had expired, I almost immediately picked up the phone to call and pay up for another year. As I started to dial the phone, however, a thought crossed my mind of a vague memory from a long time ago…"Didn’t my auto insurance provide roadside assistance?"
I remember declining the roadside assistance when I first got my insurance coverage a few years back. I didn’t need it, of course, since I had a AAA membership. I thought to myself, maybe, just for fun, I should call up my insurance agent and ask him about their coverage (doesn’t everyone think calling insurance agents is jolly good fun?). Besides, my AAA membership costs $99.25 a year and I was secretly hoping that I could save a few bucks.
Well, I did call and asked about the coverage. He told me I didn’t need it if I had AAA because it’s basically the same thing. "But what if I didn’t have AAA?" I asked. Well, he informed me that they basically provided the same roadside services as AAA. In fact, the coverage is slightly better because there is no mileage limit to how much they will tow you if you go to an "approved" location (whatever that is). Even if you go to an "non-approved" location, there is no towing limit and the maximum they will charge for the tow is $50. Plus, like AAA, the coverage goes with you even if you are not in your own car.
This all sounded pretty good, so I waited breathlessly while he went and checked the price…."It will be $5 per car." Just to confirm, "so, you’re saying it’s $10 per year?" It seemed to take him a lot longer to figure this out than I thought it should take an adult to multiple 5 times 2, but after a brief pause came the affirmative response (just to be fair, maybe he had to look up how many cars I had covered or something). "Ok, yeah, let’s do that!" I shot back.
Sure, you don’t get AAA maps or travel agency services (do they still do that? I haven’t used a travel agent in at least a decade), free passport photos, or AAA discounts. But with Google maps and Mapquest (and probably most of you reading this have GPS systems anyway) and digital cameras and such, I think I’ll pocket the $90 savings!
Of course, the wisdom of this decision will not be determined until I have a break down and see if I have any problems with my insurance’s roadside assistance. Depending on how that works out, I may have to rethink the plan. For now, however, I definitely think it’s worth a try.
Photo Credits: freeparking and peasapSome Cost-Savings Tips for Christmas Gifts
Everybody likes getting gifts, and most people like giving them as well (c’mon, admit it, don’t you love it when you have that perfect gift for someone…for me, it doesn’t happen too often but when I have that awesome gift, I’m practically more excited for them to open it then they are!) Of course, buying gifts for the people you care about takes time and money, both of which are finite resources. The best way to allocate your time is to get started Christmas shopping early. Funny, starting early the best way to get good gifts without spending a ton of money as well…but it’s way too late for that now! A good way to have the money for your Christmas gifts is to set a budget and save up for it throughout the year (but it’s way too late for that now too!) Ok, so maybe you didn’t do that this year (we did…sorta – we started saving in September after paying off my wife’s student loans). If you did not, make sure you set it up for next year (heck, go ahead and do it now even if you don’t schedule your automatic transfers to start until January or February).
Now, if you don’t have a big stash of cash saved up for gifts, I’d like to suggest some ways to show you care for your friends and family without going into debt.
1. Do a Gift Exchange
Instead of everyone in your family buying for everyone else, pick names and have each person buy gift(s) for only one other person. We’ve done this on my wife’s side of the family for a few years and I think it really works out well. Instead of having to stress over the time, effort, and money to buy everyone gifts, you can focus your time and money on getting a really good gift for one person. As a result, each person gets some good gifts and everyone saves money.
2. Make a game out of it
On my side of the family, we’ve done a "gift game" for a number of years. The basic idea is that each person brings a gift to put into the game (when we do it, each family contributes three gifts). There are variations to how it is played, of course. My mom usually hands out a number of little slips of paper with different numbers on them and then draws numbers from a hat (bingo style!). When your number is called, you can pick a gift from the pile or take one from someone else. When you are out of numbers, the gift you have is the one you keep. It is not as personal as doing a gift exchange, but it is a way to save money and have a little fun.
3. Do an ornament exchange or card exchange or <insert item here> exchange
Instead of gifts, decide beforehand that everyone will be exchanging some item like ornaments. You can then try to find some meaningful ornaments for each other. Everyone saves some money while at the same time getting a gift that adds to their Christmas decorations. Maybe the ornament idea wouldn’t work very well if you have a uniformly decorated like my parents. (My parents literally took home the display model tree with the lights and ornaments already on it – man, talk about convenience setting it up each year!). If not, try to get each other some really cool Christmas cards. You should be able to get some really fancy cards without spending as much money as on small gifts.
3b. A Photo-Exchange
My wife’s family also does a photo exchange with their extended family (My wife’s maternal aunts, uncles, and cousins). Someone agrees to be the point-person and buys (and maybe decorates) small albums that are provided to each family. We typically get the really inexpensive albums where you just slide the pictures into the plastic sleeves. Everyone then sends out a picture of each person in his/her immediate family to everyone else in the family. I think this is a really neat and inexpensive way to keep up to date with the extended family. We’ve done it for a few years now and it is fun to look back at some of the earliest pictures. (As a side note, my 19-month old loves grabbing the albums and sitting down on her little chair and paging through them. It is hilarious to see even though, as you might imagine, she has destroyed most of the albums).
4. Create Homemade gifts
A great way to give unique, useful and/or enjoyable gifts that show people you care about them without spending a ton of money is to create your gifts. Food is always a good bet: create a pancake mix kit, roast up some almonds, bake some cookies (always a big hit), cupcakes, or brownies, make some buckeyes (yummy – if you don’t know what a buckeye is, you gotta find out – I was turned on to them by my wife when we first started dating. She’s from Ohio, so I’m sure they’re called something else in other parts of the country/world).
You’re only limited by your imagination here. Be creative and make it fun – you’ll save money while simultaneously creating an out-of-the-ordinary gift. This can be extend to all kinds of areas beyond just food. Create small gift baskets of lotions, bath salts (not sure what that is…my wife gave me the suggestion), etc. Create a small personalized picture album. Buy a plain photo frame and paint it or decorate it. Again, the options are endless!
5. Save on shipping
I like buying gifts even though I don’t like spending lots and lots of money. I do, however, get really annoyed at having to pay exorbitant shipping fees to get the gifts to out of town friends/relatives. (I’m spending almost as much on shipping as I did on the gift – what a waste!) So, if you do end up buying gifts for people out of town, here are some tips for saving money on shipping.
Take advantage of free shipping offers
Obviously, there are numerous retailers that will provide free shipping on certain orders. This is a great place to start…but don’t get carried away. Remember that the point of this exercise is to save money…it doesn’t help to get free shipping if you have to buy more than you wanted to or if the cost of the item is more expensive than getting it somewhere else even if you do have to pay shipping. Check out sites like FreeShipping.org to see the different retailers that offer free shipping deals. ChristianPF provides some other tips on saving money while doing your Christmas shopping .
Shop and ship early to avoid crazy shipping costs
Another obvious way to save money is to shop early and use lower cost shipping options. So, that means, get out there and get your shopping done…today! It is getting late, but you still have some time, depending on where you are shipping, to ship your packages at lower rates. If you wait too long, you will be shocked by how expensive it will be to ship your packages 2-day air of (gasp!) overnight!
How about a gift-buying exchange
Instead of buying presents and shipping them to a friend while he/she buys gifts and ships them to your family, try a gift-buying exchange. Decide what you want to get for your friend’s family while he/she (he/she is so onerous….let’s just pick "she" for this section) decides what to get for yours. Then exchange lists and you do her shopping and wrapping while she does yours. My wife has done this a bit in her family and it certainly saves on shipping. If you choose to do this, be considerate. Don’t just tell them to "buy something nice." Instead, tell them exactly what you want to buy and where to find it. Of course, it isn’t much fun to say, "go buy yourself a new sweater." So, still shop and ship your friend’s gift but exchanging the purchasing for everyone else in your respective families should save a bunch of money in shipping costs.
6. Skip the gifts and apply the money to a reunion later in the year
For those families that can’t be together but would like to be together, you could try skipping the gifts (or cutting down on them) and agreeing to save that money to create a vacation where you can get together later in the year. Maybe not as fun at Christmas time…but I’m sure that a vacation together would be even more fun that opening some gifts from far-off friends at Christmas. Memories make really good gifts.
Hopefully this post has provided some good ideas or inspired you to create your own. If you have some great ideas, please share with us!
Here are some more tips on this topic from ChristianPF and BibleMoneyMatters and some tips for being prepared for next year from Gather Little By Little .
Photo Credits: futureshape and Pink Sherbet Photographyand jlz
Intelligently Frugal: Sweat the (Right) Small Stuff
I would venture to guess that most of the people reading this post are interested in being responsible with their money and planning intelligently for their future. And I’m sure we all understand the basics of how to save and plan for the future. The best way to increase the amount of money you have to save, of course, (real basic stuff here) is to either increase the amount of money you have coming in or decrease the amount you spend every month. Let’s focus on the latter for this post – what can we do to decrease the amount of money that is unnecessarily spent each month.
Keep more of your money…
So, you’ve decided to undertake the exercise of decreasing your monthly expenses. The first step is to keep track of all your expenses for a month or two or three and then analyze them to determine where to trim the fat. The entire budget (or as it must be named in our house: the spending plan) conversation is the topic of another post.
In this post, I want to focus on a single important facet of the overall strategy. After you have a listing of all your expenses, the most natural next step would be to find the ones that are the largest expense that can be eliminated or reduced. I mean, why bother eliminating a $2 expense when you can focus on a larger expense and make a much bigger dent in your spending plan? This matches up with the proverbial saying, “don’t sweat the small stuff.”
Do sweat the small stuff…
The problem here is that I am actually going to tell you to sweat the small stuff – well, with a caveat. I am going to suggest that you sweat the “right” small stuff. Sure, a $2 savings is not significant and won’t make a big difference….well, it won’t make a big difference, that is, unless you can cut out that $2 expense every day or even twice a day for most of the month. Making a large sacrifice to trim $20 from your monthly expenses is a good step, but if you can make a tiny sacrifice of $2 and repeat that sacrifice everyday, you’ve actually saved three times as much as the large sacrifice.
There are many, many ways that this can be accomplished and obviously the exact steps to take depend on your personal situation. Some examples include installing a programmable thermostat (and setting it!), installing CFLs, taking your lunch to work, eliminating your daily gourmet coffee, and so on and so forth.
Optimize your frugality…
My goal in this post is not to tell you exactly how to save the money. Instead it is to inspire you to think about your frugal choices in a different light. Maybe eliminating small, repeated expenses will create a bigger savings at the end of the month compared to focusing on one large expense that might be harder to completely eliminate.
Warning: I’m wandering off-topic again…
I would suggest that this technique also works for time efficiency as well. If you want to become more efficient with your time, don’t necessarily focus first on the biggest consumers of time, but rather on the repeated activities. Again, reducing only 2 minutes from an activity that is repeated 20 times a day will save you 40 minutes!
My lovely wife and I talk about this concept often. She is a physician who sometimes sees 25 or more patients in a day. If she can cut out even a few minutes of non-productive work from each encounter, she can spend more time actually interacting with patients and still complete her day sooner.
Life Lessons from Software Engineering…
This is a basic software development concept, actually. When you are tasked with writing or optimizing some software, you are careful to consider what you put into the loops that are repeated over and over again. You’ll want to move all non-essential steps out of those loops. In that way, you’ll do certain steps only once instead of over and over again and you’ll increase the efficiency of your program.
For those of you who do tasks repeatedly during your day, optimizing the time it takes to complete the task could end up saving you a bundle of time!
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