Doing vacation frugally

I know…for most people, “vacation” and “frugal” have nothing to do with each other! But, I am Frugal Girl even when it comes to vacation. And I know this is an odd time of year to post something like this, but we got back from vacation recently, and so vacation is still sort of on my brain!

Really, frugality is one of the reasons we’re able to go on vacation in the first place. We’re not living on a particularly high income, and if we weren’t careful with our spending, I doubt we’d be able to afford a trip to the beach each year.

Also, if we weren’t frugal in the way we do vacations, we probably wouldn’t be able to afford a trip to the beach. If we went at peak season, did oodles of touristy stuff, and ate out at every meal, we’d rack up an enormous bill that we wouldn’t be able to pay.

Basically, our options are A)live frugally year round and do vacation frugally or B)have no vacation at all. So, we’re happy to choose option A. 😉 And can confidently say that even though we don’t have a high-on-the-hog vacation, we still have tons of fun.

Here are a few things that we do to make vacationing more affordable.

We go off-season. We stay in a three bedroom beach-front condo every year. This condo costs $1100 in the summertime, but in mid-September the rates suddenly drop 50%, and so a week only costs us $545. Since we homeschool, we’re able to go on vacation any time we want, so we always book our vacation for the very first week that the rates drop. It’s still nice and warm on the beach, and it’s not nearly as crowded as it is in the summertime, so it’s a win-win-win kind of situation.

We eat a lot of our meals in the condo. One of the advantages of staying in a condo is the fact that most of them have a full kitchen. This means that we can avoid a lot of eating out. I shudder to think what sort of bill we could rack up if the six of us ate out for most of our meals…even breakfast out adds up really quickly.

We do usually eat out two or three nights, but the rest of the nights we eat in, and almost all of our breakfast and lunch meals are eaten in the condo.

Because this is a vacation and I prefer not to spend my whole vacation cooking, we eat really simply. Breakfast is cereal and milk, lunches are simple sandwiches, and dinners are quick and easy things like steak subs, frozen pizza, breakfast for dinner, or tacos.

We do a lot of “free” things. Playing on the beach and in the ocean, walking on the beach, and swimming in the condo pools isn’t technically free, but since those things are included in the price of the condo, they don’t add any additional expense to our trip. The kids seem to enjoy these kinds of activities at least as much as the ones that cost money, and so we try to spend as much time doing this kind of thing as the weather permits.

We bring our own linens. Not every condo rental agency operates this way, but ours gives us the option of bringing our own linens or renting a set for something like $80. The idea of spending $80 on towels and sheets I don’t even get to keep is pretty repulsive to me, as you might imagine, so we pack our own. It’s hardly any work, and to me it’s very worth it to keep my $80, thank you very much!

We look for coupon books. Most of the places I’ve been to have a bunch of coupon books for local attractions(mini golf, restaurants, movie theaters, etc). We always pick up a bunch of these and we usually find several coupons to use for activities we’d have paid for anyways.

We get gift cards for eating out. I’m a big fan of the rewards programs that come with credit cards(which, of course, are only advantageous if you use credit wisely). Every year I save up some points to redeem for restaurant gift cards. This allows us to eat out for free or nearly free, and naturally that makes me happy. 🙂

We’re hoping that maybe we can save up enough money to rent a condo for two weeks next year, which is definitely not something that we could do without implementing these ideas. But, I happen to think that things like eating in, bringing my towels and sheets, and going off-season are totally worth it for two weeks at the beach!