Vacations on a Budget

You can still travel and take vacations when you are on a budget, just remember to cut expenses where you can. We go to visit Fred's family every once in a while and we drive to save money. Of course, with gas so expensive, I had to wonder, but it's still cheaper for us to drive. We were able to take our two dogs with us, so that's less for me to worry about with them at home and us not there. We have wonderful neighbors who took care of our cats and kept us updated on things in Tennessee.

  
 




























We go to low-cost motels which are still nice. Most motels offer a free continental breakfast so take advantage of that if you aren't having to watch your diet. Sometimes they will have fruit available but it's mostly high-carb food.


We stayed at a motel that has a kitchenette and we cooked some meals at the motel and ate in. Restaurant food is expensive, and while we still ate out a few times, this really helped us out.


We packed snack and sandwich foods in coolers and boxes, so that kept down expenses while traveling. It helped us on our time, too. Our lunch only took as long as it took us to make sandwiches, eat and then clean up. Much healthier than fast food. Not to say that we ate no fast food at all. But we kept that to a minimum so that it was a treat, which is what fast food should be in my opinion.

















We skipped amusement parks, but we did splurge on a train ride into Boston and a trolley tour of the city. How often are kids from Tennessee going to be able to ride a train anywhere? So our kids have that experience now, of reading train schedules and helping to figure out which train we need and how long we have to wait. The trolley tour was wonderful - great lessons in history. Since we home school I counted that for a school day: Field Trip! We learned stuff that not even Fred and I knew - and he's from that area of Massachusetts! It was great. I highly recommend the Old Town Trolley Tours (orange trolleys) in Boston. Not cheap-but worth every penny.

We only charged our hotel stay, everything else was paid for by cash or our debit card which helped us keep our bills to the lowest amount we probably ever charged. We were so fortunate with the timing. Gas stayed reasonable until the afternoon we got home and then the hurricane had everyone scrambling and gas running low at the stations. I was so glad that didn't happen while we were away from home.