The boy on our vacation from last year
Happy Valentine’s Day!
I posted the other day about things I want to do on vacation, and I thought I’d try adding up the costs of my whole vacation. We still haven’t decided if we want to go to Hawaii or the St. Thomas, but I’ve looked and they both generally have the same costs for food, water sports, hotels, and so on.
This vacation continues to keep on creeping up in cost. We’ve done some of the things on my water sports list, but I would really like to go on an all day kayak-hiking-snorkeling trip. We decided that this trip will also be around 5 to 6 days, which also increases the cost of the trip.
We already asked my sister to watch our house and our dogs, and she agreed just to stay at our house while we’re gone. This will definitely save a lot of money and will make me feel better about where the dogs go and if our house is safe. We’ve separated the dogs before and had separate people watch them, but I always feel horrible for doing this. It’s just too much for us to bring both dogs over to someone’s house because then the dog sitter’s would most likely have way too many pets.
What do you usually do with pets on vacation?
Boarding, house sitter, drop them off somewhere?
I’ve been pricing a bunch of hotels and I’ve really taken into account what all of you said in my past hotel post. A lot of you said that you would never pay more than $200 for a hotel, and that you generally pay around $100. I’ve been looking at hotels and if I use Priceline (or if I call the hotel directly), then I can probably get a decent hotel for around $100. So this will most likely be $500 altogether because I’m definitely going to shoot for under $100 a night.
Food: I’m not sure how much we’ll spend on food. If we find a hotel with a full kitchen, then I’m guessing that we will probably cook some and make some food in the room. I’m hoping to spend no more then $400 on food and alcohol over the 5 days, this includes while stuck at the airport and while also actually on vacation. I’m guessing that $400 might be a lot for 2 people, but I’d rather overestimate than underestimate. How much do you usually spend on food while on vacation?
Water sports and other activities we want to do:
Kayak-Hike-Snorkel all day trip – $160 person (includes food)
Kiteboarding – $200
Stand up paddleboard – $100
Jet Skiing – $50
I know some might think this is a little wasteful, but we usually don’t spend a ton on vacations and I really want to enjoy this vacation. We most likely won’t be doing all of the activities on the list above because of course I want to spend most of my time relaxing on the beach.
We’ve also thought about just buying a book and doing all of the wandering ourselves and renting the things that we need, so that we could save a ton of money. I’ve looked and we can rent a kayak for around $50 all day long and most hotels rent snorkeling things for free. And a paddle board costs around $40 to rent (without a tour guide). All of this would save a ton of money. We’re hoping to spend no more than $400 on activities.
So far I have around $900 saved up from the extra income that I’ve been making. I also have a vacation fund and that will pay for the rest. Since I have all of it saved, I’m not too too worried about paying for the vacation. Also, I should remind everyone (just in case I have anyone who missed my other posts), but I get airfare for almost free through retirement benefits from my dad, and we also usually don’t rent a car. We usually just walk everywhere or take a taxi. So that also saves money.
The estimated grand total of the vacation that we will be taking (with a little buffer):
$1,500
I would say that’s not too bad for a 5-6 day vacation on the beach. Of course I’ll do whatever else I can to lower my cost. And if we limited our activities then we would probably only be spending around $1,000 for the vacation. I think it really just depends on how much more extra income I’ll make until the end of March. And there will most likely be other costs that come up also, but I haven’t really thought about everything too too much.
And yes I have thought about how we will be buying a car for the BF within the next couple of weeks. This has all been factored in and he’s just going to use his tax return refund for most of this, so we won’t be seeing a huge dent in our goals because of this.
Of course we could spend this money on other things, and I know some people will probably not like my decision of going on a vacation when we I have student loan debt and a mortgage, but I do need to have fun. I have a set plan to pay off my debt and I save for my vacations separately, so it’s not like I’m missing any payments. I’m paying extra on my debt every month and I need to have fun! This is a lot of money though, so of course I want to lower it as much as possible, but still have a good time.
What else would you recommend while we’re on vacation? And how much do you usually spend on your vacations?
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