Someone on here showed me a deal for $599 flights + hotel to Ireland for 5 nights I think it was.
Most of our vacations are within driving distance or short flights serviced by Southwest, so travel costs weren’t a big concern. We are planning a big trip to Hong Kong next year though, and the airfare is a whopper! We knew this going on, and have been saving for 2+ years in a money market account to save up airfare and traveling expenses for that trip. With out income, budget and lifestyle, it’s the only way possible without dumping it all on a credit card, which we absolutely will not do.
Also, I have never seen a train fare (in the US) that wasn’t as expensive or more expensive than flying. I’ve always been confused when people suggest traveling by Amtrak as a viable option.
Then it sounds like you are prioritizing right. If your home is your priority, then you’ll be paying for home stuff instead of expanding your travel budget. There’s nothing at all wrong with that. If travel becomes a higher priority then you’ll adjust accordingly.
Somtimes the price is lower, but in the Northeast Corridor, the train is simply resoundingly more convenient and comfortable, and doesn’t necessarily take longer when you factor in the time you spend in Security lines, check-in lines, waiting for luggage, etc.
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Amtrak can be cheap if you have enough luck to get the timing right and you are willing to sleep in coach. I got a cross-country ticket for $100, and the trip was a blast.
I agree. If a person really wants to travel, they will find a way to make it work, but that will almost always mean making some sacrifices. In the end, though, the thing that really determines if someone travels or not is in where their priorities lie, which is a totally personal thing.
As much as it is nice to find a deal, I think you are right in increasing your travel budget.
Don’t think of airfare as an expensive four hours of your vacation but just an element of the overall cost.
Our travel budget is just a line in the budgeting spreadsheet and it just comes out. I don’t even think about it anymore.
I’m a single person who goes on a proper “vacation” maybe once a year and only takes a plane once every other vacation. I’ll usually drive if I’m traveling in the eastern US (GA, NC, NY, PA) but if I don’t have that kind of time, or just don’t want to bother with driving, I pay to fly.
If I flew more I’d be all about bargain hunting. But I don’t, so I’m willing to spend the dough as part of the vacation budget.
Some of these are what other people have said too, just reiterating them.
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Have flexible vacation time. Don’t plan months in advance. You won’t get good deals if you plan way way in advance or go during a peak time. Like MeanOldLady said, you can get killer stuff up to the minute.
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Drive! Take turns driving 2.5-3 hours/person. Driving 8-10 hours this way is easy without little kids (or, is easy if you drive late at night and have them asleep in the car already)
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Megabus or other buses. Your SO needs to get over his fear!
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Stay at hostels and motels. hostels dot com, hotels dot com and so on.
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Pack some meals and snacks or buy them there. NEVER stay anywhere without a fridge. Box of cereal and jug of milk = breakfast. Buy some bagles, toast (most places have toasters in the lobby) and spread with cream cheese. A few hardboiled eggs or pb&j is lunch. Each of you carries a large water bottle (or two throwaway bottles) with them every day. Pack trail mix, dried fruit, granola bars and nuts to snack on throughout the day.
+1 on Travel Zoo top 20. The prices appear too good to be true, but they’re legit.
I don’t like buses myself too much, mainly because the trip multiplies in length by a lot, seems like. And we happily stay in Motel 6s; they are cheap and clean and neat. We just go back there to sleep, anyway. I don’t really see the point of an ultra nice hotel.
[QUOTE=lindsaybluth]
Megabus or other buses. Your SO needs to get over his fear!
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Dislike of buses is perfectly rational. I’ll use them for relatively short hauls if there’s no other option (e.g., to Madison or ORD), but the longer trips get pretty excruciating. (I did Milwaukee to Austin once, for a get-together with some friends, when I was pretty close to broke and got a really good deal on the tickets. Never. Again.) Although you *do *meet some very interesting people on cross-country Greyhound trips.
I very rarely travel by Amtrak. The few times it worked for me was when I was going on a fairly short trip to to a town that was well-served by train, but not by plane. When I needed to get from the Bay Area to Fresno, California was a good example. Airfare is ridiculously high but Amtrak runs several times a day, with reasonable fares.
As for the main thrust of this thread, I think of spending money on vacations in three ways:
If I see a really cheap fare to someplace that seems interesting, and I have the time to spare, then I’ll book the trip. That’s a cheap vacation to anywhere. I’ve seen many places around the world this way.
If there’s someplace definite that I want to go, then I’ll regularly check prices for that destination until I get something that seems reasonable, and if everything works out, I’ll book the trip. That’s not as cheap as the first case, but it gets me somewhere I definitely want to go anyway. I’ve surprised relatives (joyfully) with visits this way.
The most difficult case is when it’s somewhere I want to go and I have definite dates where I need to be there, like for a family event. This is the only case where there’s a chance I’ll go even if I don’t find a cheap fare. In that case I have to weigh the importance of the event, the total time we’re spending on the vacation, against the total cost. As some others have said, it’s not enough to consider just the airfare.
Shot From Guns that was not my post regarding buses that you attributed to me (it was lindsaybluth).
Personally I don’t see airfare as “spending money on something boring,” I see it as “buying back some days of my vacation.” I HATE to drive, I hate using a precious vacation day just to spend it cursing other drivers, looking at dirty pavement, and eating crappy food, only to arrive completely exhausted and unable to enjoy myself. UGH!
Part of it is finding a cheap airport destination. For example, if you want to go to DC, I have found that going to Baltimore is very cost effective.
Anaamika I don’t understand where you are coming from. How is it possible to save for some things (food, accommodation) and not for others (flights)?
Are you saying you need to go on a vacation every year? If so, then I’m saying that that is the problem. Do you REALLY want to travel the country? If so, take a trip every 2 years and do something local in the other years. Simple.
On big vacations, I used to do a LOT of research into plane routes and traffic. In the last couple years, I did a lot of foreign travel from Minneapolis/St Paul to: China, Egypt, Peru, India, Europe, Jamaica, and Mexico.
For China, I booked in advance and did an open jaw ticket. Meaning that I flew into Beijing and flew out of Shanghai (with a stop in Narita) and waited til I was in Beijing for a cheap internal flight to Shanghai.
For Egypt, after checking lots of different routes, I found really cheap flights via Reykjivik to Amsterdam ($375). I booked those tickets and then waited to find a deal from Amsterdam to Cairo. It took another month and a half but got a good deal at a little over $300 (iIrc). So what would normally be an $1100 ticket, I got for almost half. Booking trips in legs like that was done to get to Peru and India too and that saved big money. (Also did it so there was enough of a layover just in case something went wrong and also to get an extra taste of other places too).
If you’re going to fly to some place overseas, start looking at a)who the major carriers that use X as their hub b)where they fly to c)when the best time to go is. Flight prices fluctuate a lot and what is available now might go up or down, sometimes in the matter of hours.
Gak, my apologies! Reported for a mod to fix it. (FYI, you can always report posts with misattributions and mods will fix them.)
No, I don’t need to go on vacation every year. I just have a few destinations in mind that I really want to fly to, so this year it’s D.C. In another two years, maybe, we’ll do Vegas. And I have my heart set on going to London one day, more than anything in the world.
I just couldn’t get my head around the airfare, but this thread has done wonders for me.
And this year we are planning to drive to Montreal again, and maybe next year we’ll do the drive to Toronto again. Mainly I want to fly to places that really are difficult to drive (I’ll get back to you once I can drive to London. :p)
Also, like I said, my SO has a really hard time getting off work, so flying is better because then in our limited time we have a little more time to spend at those destinations.
Everyone else is aware that that travel costs are supposed to be 30% if the cost of a vacation, with hotels being the next 60%, depending on length of stay. 10-20% is the “fun” expenses.
For example, I’m jokingly planning a trip to Belgium for me and my SO when life settles down. It probably wont happen for a while, but the cost will probably be something like 2200kr. for the airfare and 3700kr. for the hotel. With a travel budget of 10.000kr., that means we will have pretty much naught left over after various train tickets, museum costs and food. No shopping for us. (although Belgian beer is classed as “food” in this girls budget.)
(a kr. is a “crown”, which is what we like to call the stuff we use instead of money. Five of them gets me a dollar, most days.)
Plane tickets are supposed to be the expensive bit. People can afford to travel when they’ve saved enough for the airfare. The remaining costs are incidental.
I fixed the attribution.
EC