Ways to Save Money on Vacation: Part I

Obviously the first step in planning a vacation is deciding where to go.  That decision is one that can be made by only you and your family.  Since having kids, our vacations have been reasonably close to home (less than five hours away) because that is what works for us. 

Once you have settled on a location, the next step is lodging.  There are many ways to circumvent the traditional pricey hotel option.  Here a few ideas:

• Rent a house instead.  Potential for savings is great, plus access to a kitchen is a great way to cut food costs (more on that later).  Try craigslist.com, vrbo.com, or homeaway.com, Parents magazine recommends all of these.  You can also try good old fashioned Google.  The downside of this method is that there is not usually a pool, clean sheets daily or tiny little bottles of shampoo or soap.  Also, you often have to have a week commitment.
• Use a discount website.  We wanted a pool and we only wanted to stay a few nights.  (I could only take so many nights of fighting the baby to stay in the pack and play!)  We used hotwire.com to book our hotels.  There are others:  priceline.com, travelocity.com, kayak.com, the list goes on.  I found hotwire.com's website the easiest to use.  We found a three and a half star hotel (Sheraton Suites) that was $47 per night near Chicago!  It was a wonderful experience at the hotel.  The customer service of hotwire.com left something to be desired, however. 
• A few other ways that might save money are going camping, staying with friends or family or looking into attending time share presentations in exchange for free lodging.   
• Do you have other suggestions on frugal lodging?  We would love to hear them!  Email us or leave a comment!

No matter where you stay, it is important to think about how you will feed yourselves.  I always call ahead to make sure we will be placed in a room that has a fridge and microwave.  In the next installment, I will talk about how you can save BIG on food while you are away from home.