
How We Budget Travel – Part 1
The four of us love to travel but like many other families, we don’t have an extensive travel budget. More commonly we have no travel budget. We are asked all the time how we are able to make time for and afford the trips we take.
How Do We Make Time?
There is no magical secret to what we do. In 2008 I chose to become a teacher so I could have the same schedule as our girls and lots of free time to travel. Josh has worked for a wonderful company for the past 12 years that has unlimited time off as long as a manager approves. He does ask for a good chunk of time off, but counters it by volunteering to work holiday shutdowns and works from home even when he is sick. Our main hindrance is abiding by our girl’s schedules.
How Do We Afford Activities?
Our girls are old enough to remember and enjoy traveling. Because of this, they would much rather have an experience over an object. It sure makes birthday and holiday shopping easier. Prior to the holiday season we usually have our next trip locations selected. When family members ask what the kid’s want for Christmas and their birthday’s (all in December) we are able to tell them where we will be going and what activities the girls would like to do. Often times the gift giver has been to that city already and gives wonderful suggestions. A $10 ticket to a museum in Chicago or $25 gift card for a unique exhibit in NOLA is more exciting to our kids than an outfit that may or may not fit or toy they may or may not use. The best gift so far was last year when my parents bought our tickets to see Wicked on Broadway. It was wonderful to see how excited the girls were on Christmas morning and again several months later when we were sitting in the Gershwin theater waiting for the show to begin. They started following everything Wicked on social media and would give us all kinds of background information. Over a year later and we are still listening to the soundtrack.
In recent years our holiday gifts to the girls usually consist of our trips and accessories needed for them. I have always been a planner and when they were little I planned ahead for December to be a very expensive month (2 birthdays and Christmas). To combat this I would start purchasing gifts as early as June and set them aside. For more years than I care to admit I look back and can estimate that I was spending around $3,000 a year on gifts. That’s likely on the low end too. Finally after Christmas morning 2015, Josh and I sat in the middle of wrapping paper tornado aftermath and talked about how thankful we were that our girls were always genuinely appreciative; but they really did not need all of this stuff. It was on that day we decided things needed to change.
We did a trial road trip the summer of 2016. Josh and I drove from FL>LA>TN>MO>IL>WI>FL. My mother flew to WI with our girls so we could still make it a family vacation.
In November 2016 Josh and I were finally married and chose to take the girls on a cruise with us the day after. The cruise cost far more than what we had ever paid for any vacation, but we wanted something new to experience. While we likely will not be going on another (that’s a story for another time). It was the perfect segue into travel gifts; as the timing was near December. We talked to the girls after returning home about how much fun it was visiting new places and how they felt about trading things for experiences. They were completely on board.
Our first real family road trip together was in June of 2017. FL>DC>PA>NJ>NY>IL>WI>TN>FL. The girls drove in the car with us to WI. We didn’t know how they would handle being in the car so long and we didn’t want to push it so they flew home with my mom and skipped the day in TN.
In 2017 we managed to pull off a Christmas/birthday surprise that will be very hard for us to top. Our oldest’s birthday is 2 weeks before Christmas and our youngest is 2 days after. We gave them joint birthday gifts in the form of the flyer below.
What is conveniently left off, is the date. The girls assumed they would be seeing the play on our 2018 road trip. I’m a notoriously bad keeper of my own surprises. We planned and purchased the tickets several months before and it was so hard not to spill everything.
On Christmas morning the girls opened a few small gifts from other family before we brought out the two final gifts. Video below to see their reactions. Making our kids happy cry is one of my favorite things. Inside the new suitcases were all of the clothing and accessories they would need for snow and the letter you can hear Charlotte reading in the video.
Josh’s family lives 30 minutes outside of NYC. We took this trip before we had a camper and were very fortunate to be able to stay with family and not have to pay for a hotel. We also opted to not eat out often and stick to mostly free activities. I know many people who will not travel without trying every activity a city has to offer. While we would love to visit every museum, participate in every activity, and eat all the food available; we can’t afford to. We would rather get a limited taste of what many different cities have to offer than over indulge in a few. After all, you can always visit again.
Sample Cost Breakdown
I create a spreadsheet for every trip. It always begins with calculating mileage. Below are our surprise 2017 NYC trip locations plugged into Google Maps. Our SUV averages about 15 mpg when it’s not towing the camper. At the time of this trip the national average for gas was $2.60. I used the formula Miles / 15 MPG x $2.60 to estimate our gas cost. The estimate for this trip was $432. Our goal was to stay under $900.
This was going to be a quick trip so I didn’t put together a full spreadsheet like I normally do but instead created this:
I may seem like the crazy lady with a schedule everyone has to stick to, but I’m not. The sheet is just a guideline. Much like planning a child’s party. It’s always better to plan too much and not get to everything than it is to plan too little and be left with nothing to do. We skipped Top of the Rock due to how cold it was in the city the day we went and passed on the Sugar Factory since there is one in Orlando we could visit. The $100 was better spent ice skating in Central Park and the next day when we went snow tubing in the Poconos.
Sometimes we travel and things go exactly as planned but other times the better trip is a spontaneous one.
In the end, our receipts added up to just under $900 for our whirlwind four day trip. I did not need to use my regular search resources for this trip since Josh and I have both been to NYC often enough to know what we want out to see and do.
I’ll leave you with a picture of a very cold but happy Maddy opening a gift on her 10th birthday in front of the Rockefeller Christmas Tree.