I know, I know, I’ve been talking about our vacation to St. Thomas/St. John a lot! I’m just too excited and it’ll be nice to get away to somewhere nice where the weather will be awesome. And we all know that I like to talk about vacations and traveling so much that I like to annoy everyone to death.
We don’t have a lot planned. Some parasailing (hopefully), a kayak + snorkeling trip, and lots of relaxing by the beach. The trip will be pretty cheap (relative to most vacations).
No more than $1,500 altogether (which includes everything). We are staying at an all-inclusive resort which I found a great rate for.
We’ve never done an all-inclusive, so I’m looking forward to this. Have you ever done all-inclusive? How was it for you?
I do have to think of ways to save on this vacation though.
I already have a bachelorette party in Memphis (Beale Street woohoo!) to plan, a couple’s vacation to either New Orleans or Colorado (still undecided) with two of our close friends, and another girls’ trip planned for next year (most likely Miami). And since we are talking about possibly getting married next year, we also have our respective bachelor/bachelorette parties as well. W also wants a guys’ vacation to Las Vegas (oh boy am I worried about that). Plus, W and I will most likely go on a vacation together by ourselves next year also.
So let’s recap that:
1. St. Thomas – Relatively cheap, $1,500 2. Memphis Bachelorette Party – This will be cheap, no more than $300 3. Couple’s vacation to New Orleans or Colorado – Relatively cheap, $1,000 4. Miami girl’s trip – Not too bad, $1,000 5. W’s Las Vegas trip – Expensive, Expensive, Expensive, don’t even want to know 6. Our vacation by ourselves – Expensive.
Now that’s a lot of trips that we have planned! Not as many as Michelle from Filling in the Dots (PS she is living my dream currently, check out her blog if you haven’t). I am super excited for them all but they will definitely hurt our wallets. It does help that because a lot of the trips will be with other couples, that there will be a bunch of us splitting the costs.
So besides of trying to think of ways that I can come up with enough vacations days for all of these trips, I also need to start saving enough money. We DO have a travel fund, but it is not large enough for all of these trips planned for next year. I will be working on building it up for these trips. I won’t be working on building it back up until AFTER my student loans are paid off though (read my $38,000 student loan payoff plan).
There are a lot of things that we thought about and factored in for this vacation.
Hotels.
Hotels are the number one way that we try to save when we go on a vacation. However, we aren’t trying to risk how comfortable we are in order to save a couple of dollars. We want a cheap hotel, but also something that is a good value. I’m the type of person who needs a very clean room or I cannot sleep at all.
For all of the trips next year (and the one next week), we will be staying in a hotel. And, for the girl’s trip and the couples’ vacation, we either want to get a 2 bedroom (or bigger) villas or rooms. This way we can save money and have more space.
Flights.
I can fly for super cheap (I hate bringing it up, but it’s because I inherited my dad’s retirement benefits) but when I go on trips with my friends, I leave it up to them and whether they want to fly or not. And of course I don’t want to fly by myself (in order for me to fly, I am on standby and wouldn’t want to risk not being able to show up because of a sold-out flight) so I leave it up to my friends.
It’s either we take a cheap flight to a place such as Miami (this is where we want to go for our girls’ vacation) or we drive. For a place like Miami, we will of course fly (that would be a horrific drive with 6 girls if we did that), but for the Memphis bachelorette party we will most likely drive as it is only around 5 hours away.
The New Orleans or Colorado trip will be a driving trip as well, as the guys like to drive (which is fine by me because I’ll just sleep!). And then W’s Vegas trip will be flying, since that would be a scary hungover drive home for them if they drove.
What are your vacation plans? What is your dream vacation?
Promotional consideration was received for this post.
Comments