Practical Ways to Make Planning a Family Vacation Easy and Budget Friendly

Planning a family vacation can be overwhelming. Lucky for you, this week we are joined by Rob Dulgarian, who is an expert at how to easily plan budget-friendly family vacations! 

Here are some great tips from Rob about planning a budget-friendly family vacation:

1. Start planning, budgeting, and saving well in advance

  • It’s no secret that vacations are expensive. For this reason, it can be helpful to decide where you want to go and how much you are willing to spend before you start planning the details of your vacation. 

  • Once you have a budget in place, you can start saving increments at a time until you have enough money set aside to afford the vacation you want to go on. You can even set up automatic transfers to move a certain about of money from your checking account to savings each week or month to help you stay on track.

  • Even if you don’t have a destination in mind, you can start a travel savings fund so that you’re ready to go when a travel opportunity presents itself! 

  • Also, if you have a destination and budget in mind well in advance, you will be able to keep an eye out for the best deals on flights, hotels, and excursions.

  • Rob suggests using credit card points to help fund vacations. You can head over to his page @travelpointsrob on Instagram for lots of great tips!

2. Be flexible with your dates and destinations

  • Once you have a general idea of the area you want to see and a rough idea of when you’re available, then you can start looking for the best deals!

  • For example, if you want to go to Europe, you don’t have to buy roundtrip tickets in and out of the same city! Be flexible with your cities! It might be cheaper to fly into Munich but then go home from Paris. As for dates, maybe you’re hoping to leave on a Friday morning, but if you look one day sooner, the Thursday night flight could be cheaper.

  • Google Flights is a great resource for finding the best flight deals in and out of different cities. You can also set up notifications to get alerts when flight prices drop.

3. Favorite sites/tools (Google flights, Flight deal newsletters, Viator, Hotels.com, Rail Europe, shopping portals)

  • Google Flights: As mentioned earlier, GoogleFlights is a great tool to help you find the best deals on flights. Simply put in your home airport and the general area you want to travel to, and it will show you the best dates and times to travel for the best deal!

  • Viator: Even if you don’t want to take an organized tour, checking out tourist sites can give you so many great ideas of fun things to do on your own. 

  • Hotels.com: They have a deal where if you book 10 nights on their site (they can be spread out across different hotels) then they’ll give you one free night! This website also gives you the opportunity to read other people’s reviews before choosing a place to stay.

  • Rail Europe: (If you are in Europe) This is essentially the Expedia of trail travel. Although there is a small fee to book tickets through their site, it’s super helpful because it compiles all of the trains into one spot.

4. Get the kids involved in the planning 

  • Something that Rob likes to do with his kids is having them choose something that they want to do on their trip. Then he has them learn all about the place they chose so that they can teach the family about it when they get there!

If you want to follow along with Rob and his family’s adventures, check out his Instagram @travelpointsrob

I hope that these tips help you to plan your next family vacation with ease! Happy traveling!

Budget Friendly, International TravelLisa AndrewsComment