Experiences, Not Things: The WHY and HOW Behind my Vacation Hobby

So, it may seem like I like to vacation a little....or maybe a lot. Well, I do.  Not only do I enjoy it, I also feel like it is important for a lot of reasons. Here are a few:

I LOVE to see God's creations. Wyoming is an amazing place, and I am constantly in awe of the beauty that is here. But it is only one version of the beauty of this earth. I want to see it all!! I love seeing the different types of landscapes, bodies of water, plant life, and animals that exist in this world

I think it is fun and educational to get a taste of other cultures. You don't even have to leave the good ol' USA to do this. It seems that people live a little bit differently than I do anywhere I travel. I also like my kids to see these things, as I feel it gives them such a great variety of experiences to draw from.

I just love the experiences and the memories that result. I saw this little quote on FB the other day, and thought it summed up my feelings about vacationing so well.

And while I know that most of those experiences that give us great stories to tell can and will come in simple, day-to-day adventures, I also feel like vacationing is a great way to add rich experiences to life.

I like to do both family vacations and couple vacations. We have had some great vacations with kids in tow, but there is something special about a couple vacation.  I feel like every time we go on vacation together, we reconnect with each other and put a spark back in our relationship. We are able to just focus on each other and enjoying being together without any of the clutter or stresses of everyday life getting in the way. If you haven't been on a vacation with your spouse in the past few years, I would strongly encourage you to do it!

Finally, it is so nice to just relax, get away, and just have FUN once in awhile. And it's even better to share that care-free type of fun with your spouse or entire family. I always (well...maybe not during the first trimester of pregnancy) come home from vacation feeling like I've re-charged my batteries. I usually jump into a project I've been putting off, simply because I have renewed my energy and zest for life.

So, many of you may be nodding your heads, agreeing that a vacation really would be nice. But I know, because several of my friends and family members have expressed this to me, that the HOW behind vacationing often gets confusing and overwhelming to the point that they just try to forget about it all together. While I understand that there are some life circumstances that make vacationing very difficult, or completely impossibly, I do believe that most people can enjoy a vacation now and then if they want to. And you don't have to be RICH to do it!  Here are a few tips/strategies we have used to make vacations happen for us.

Since we have been married, we have been to Texas, Nauvoo (twice), Des Moines (twice), Alaska (twice), three cruises (Baja Mexico twice, Bahamas, and Mexican Riviera--just me with my mom's family), a resort in Cancun, Washington, D.C., Northern Arizona, Southern Utah, Las Vegas (twice), Disneyland/Sea World, NYC (me anyway), and several other short trips within WY/UT/CO.  I'm sure there are people out there that figure a teacher and a stay-at-home mom with a bunch of kids must be in debt up to our eyeballs vacationing like we do!  But that's my first tip: STAY OUT OF DEBT! I don't think I could possibly feel as wonderful about all our vacations if we were in debt. If you want to go on vacation and truly enjoy it, get out of debt first and have some money put away. Without giving all the details of our financial situation, let me just say this. We are not rich, but our only debt is our mortgage, we have enough money saved to pay cash for our next vehicle, and we also have a rainy-day fund that would last us for 6 months or more if we were to be out of a job. With that security, I feel okay putting a little money aside for vacations here and there.

That leads me to my next tip: Plan and budget for vacations. What can you do? Could you put away $25 dollars a month? $50? Maybe pick up a little side job, just to earn money for a vacation. When Connor was a baby, I started selling Discovery Toys. My first year, this helped pay the bills since we were in college and certainly in no place to go on a great vacation. But once Tony got his teaching job, I kept selling toys and saved all the money I earned for a vacation. This is how we paid for our first cruise.

Sometimes it's difficult to find that money to set aside and save. Tip #3: Don't spend money on things that aren't important to you.  Maybe vacationing just isn't important to you. That's fine. You could probably save yourself some time and quit reading about now. But if you think you really would like to vacation, think about things that would be less important to you than vacationing, and ask yourself if you could reduce the amount of money you spend on those things.  Probably the biggest place where Tony and I have decided that we don't care to spend money is on media. We don't have TV anymore, which was costing us over $70/month. We don't do video games (other than the old hand-me-down PS3 somebody gave to Connor). We've never rented a redbox movie, and we go to the theater maybe once a year to watch a flick. When we really feel the itch to watch a movie, we borrow one from the library...for FREE! We don't spend money on itunes. We listen to the radio a lot. We don't have smartphones--Tony can talk and text just fine on the old flip phone.  Imagine the money we save by cutting these expenses. It can add up to a vacation in a hurry! But maybe you can't give up media. It means more to you than a vacation once in awhile. Think of something else. Could you do without a pair of shoes every month? Could you maybe quit getting your nails done?  Eat out less?  The idea is, look at where your money is going and decide if some of it could be re-directed into a vacation fund. I think you'd be surprised at how fast you could save for a vacation this way.

Once you've started to build your savings, start planning that vacation! For many people, this is the scary part.  For me, this is the fun part! In fact, I sometimes spend (or waste?) time planning vacations or looking at deals for places that I am likely never going to go, and for sure not in the immediate future.  But there's just so much info and help out there for planning a vacation. So, here's Tip #4: Use the Internet to plan your trip.  There are hundreds, if not thousands, of websites out there to help you find a great deal. Here are a few of my faves. For cruises, I like vacationstogo.com. You can look at last-minute deals or look way ahead to compare prices, view itineraries, and learn more about the different cruise lines and ships. I also like cruises.com and cruiseonly.com.  For hotels, I like to use priceline. If I don't care what the amenities are, or exactly which hotel I need to stay in, I like to use the Name Your Own Price feature. I have gotten rooms for $30/night doing this.  But if I do care about the amenities (like we're taking our kids for an overnighter, and the pool is pretty darn important), then you can just do a deal search on their site and click "pool" under amenities to only view hotels that you would want to stay in.  For flights, I have used expedia.com and orbitz.com.  Now these are just a few of my favorites, but I'm telling you--there are so many sites out there. You can do it!!

Tip #5: Don't pay full price for ANYTHING. Call me a cheapskate, but I kinda like to get stuff for free, or at least cheap. One way to do this is don't pay for your flights. We have never paid for a flight for any of our cruises, or our Cancun trip. We let our credit card points do this. Because we don't do debt, we are safe to use a credit card for as many purchases as possible each month. We pay the bill in full and smile at the points we rack up just for spending the money we would spend anyway. There are lots of different options out there for rewards cards, but we use the Capital One Venture card. The reason we've stuck with them for so long is that we also have our accessible savings in a Capital One Money Market Rewards account, where it doesn't earn much interest (well, the same no interest it would be earning just about anywhere), but we do get a point for every $20 in the account each month. These add up pretty quickly, and we can combine them with the points from our credit card.  When planning when to take a vacation that will have flights involved, I figure out about how long it will take us to have enough points to fly free, then shoot for that time frame.  As far as finding other deals, I like to sign up for emails from vacation deal sites. When I'm not looking for a vacation (like now), I just delete them as they come in, but when I am looking, it's just a click in my email inbox, and I'm instantly viewing deals.

Tip #6: Prioritize and budget accordingly.  What I mean by this, is that every vacation has different priorities. For example, on my recent trip to NYC, we knew that we wanted to see a LOT of the sights, but weren't as concerned about the quality of our hotel, since we wouldn't be spending much time there. So we still looked at hotels in the basic area we wanted to stay (to save time so we could see lots of stuff), but then took the cheapest thing available. It did have electricity and running water, so that's good, right? Basically, we decided to spend less on the hotel so we felt like we could spend the money necessary to see what we wanted to see. (And we got a deal on the sight-seeing too. Score!)   However, other vacations may be more about relaxing, and you are going to spend more time in the hotel. In that case, budget more money for the nice hotel, but decide what you can skimp a little on to make up for it.

Tip #7: Take advantage of opportunities when they come.  Do you or your husband have a business trip coming up? I see this as a trip already half paid for! What a great chance to get away for half the cost. Actually, if the hotel is paid for, you're really paying less than half of what you would pay normally.

Finally, if you're wanting to do a couple vacation, what about the kids?  This is often one of the biggest dilemmas. Maybe you don't have parents that live close or that are willing or able to take the kiddos for a few days. What now?  Tip #8: Kid Swap.  Find a sibling/cousin/close friend that you trust and that also has kids. Chances are, they might want to go on a vacation too. Although it would be fun to go together, maybe you could help each other out instead. We have done this a few times with one of Tony's sisters. It's really not too bad taking care of a few extra kids for a few days and nights. ESPECIALLY when you know your turn to get away is coming!

These are just a few of the WHYs and HOWs behind my vacationing hobby. If you have more questions, you can always ask! Just call, text, send me a FB message--however you want to get a hold of me. I really enjoy talking about vacationing. In fact, in another life, I would be a travel agent. Anyway, I hope some of you will start planning your next vacation--and when you do, let me know all about it. I need ideas for our next trip! :)