The fabulous hosts of the Choose FI podcast advocate and can teach you how to travelhack with credit card trave reward points, but for those of us getting out of debt that still have places to go, what can we do? The answer is another of the Choose FI mantras, do it just a little bit smarter.
I have 5 kids, 2 of which are teenagers. This comes with several crazy scenarios, just one of which is that each of them have the opportunity to go to Washington D.C. with their 8th grade classes. Now each of these trips is about $900 each without spending money. Personally, I think all kids should see D.C. and I wouldn’t begrudge them the education it can offer. However, 5 trips at $900 plus spending money? As Rick Flair would say, WOOOOOOOO!
Lets think about this a little smarter. Why don’t we take a family vacation to D.C. instead and skip sending them individually with a bunch of classmates and teachers that they don’t enjoy being around 80% of anyway? We may have to do 2 trips, one in about 8 to 10 years, so that the younger 2 get the same benefit. Can we do this at a cost savings, or does it make more sense to send them with their school?
We started looking at hotels in the D.C. area, and found that each room would be around $250-$300 per night. We would need 2 rooms. We want to go for 4 days/3 nights. 2 rooms, $600 per night, 3 nights, $1800… So we’re already at the cost of two trips with the school and we haven’t even looked at Gas and food yet!
I then decided to look at AirBnB properties in the area. BOOM! Found some really nice options where the whole stay for all of us under one roof would be less than $900. We went with what looked like the best option for our family, and we’ll be renting a large townhouse within 10 mins drive of the Mall. Beautiful pics, 5 star reviews, etc. We’ll have a kitchen we can go make our own meals, and parking spot that’s just ours.
Because we both took the week off of work we are able to take the younger two kids out of daycare for a week of “vacation” and not have to pay for that week, $340 saved. We’ll only be driving one car for the week, saving $40 gas on the other. We’ll be able to use our normal grocery budget since we’ll have a kitchen, and probably add on a couple of meals out, but still a huge savings over eating out for every meal. Now that we’re saving on lodging, daycare, food, gas, etc.., we’ll be able to take everyone on this trip for about the same cost as if we had sent just one of the teenagers on their school trip. Amazing! Just by traveling a little bit smarter.