TRAVELING ON A BUDGET

I'm very surprised by how many people that don't travel. It's our very favorite thing to do. We don't spend a lot of money on ourselves or our house simply because we'd rather use our time and funds to explore.

We've been to a lot of places over the 9 years we've been dating.

- Los Angeles
- San Diego
- Chicago
- San Antonio
- St Louis
- North Dakota
- Oregon (before we moved here)
- Detroit
- Las Vegas
- Seattle

( I also went to Hawaii with a family I babysat for)

We also visited many, many states on two huge road trips. One going from California to Michigan ( for business) and one going from California to North Dakota for a wedding. I don't really count driving through states as "traveling" there because we didn't stop in most of them.

We've obviously been to quite a few places and a lot of those places we've been multiple times ie ( Los Angeles hellllo Disneyland! and Las Vegas)

We're not rich. And we don't have any credit card debt. We never go anywhere unless we can pay cash, and it's in our budget. So here's how we budget our trips every year.

First of all, when we start throwing idea's about places we want to go, the first thing I do is look at numbers. I want to know what airfare ( or gas) is going to cost, how cheap we can get a hotel, and what our food/activity budget will be.

Once I have a game plan I present to Carlos.
side note Carlos does NOT plan. He absolutely hates the process and would rather leave that all to me. Sometimes it's a pain in the ass,  but we get through. I give him a few different options, tell him how much they cost and that's it.

We frequently use sights like Sidestep.com  Priceline.com and Orbitz.com.  We're on SouthWest airlines mailing list, so when they run deals, we know. In general though, I use Priceline for most of our hotels since we can "name our own price" and I use sidestep to narrow down flight choice. It's all about shopping around.
We set aside every year 5K for travel. Sometimes we can make that spread into multiple trips, and sometimes we make it into a bigger trip.
I know not everyone can afford to save that much every year, but even if you can save $ 1000 you can travel.

So I encourage you all to start looking. Start planning. Even a little weekend getaway. It's so good for your soul. For you relationship. It makes life feel a little less chaotic.

On that note 46 more days till Florida. sqeeeeeeeeee.