Travel Tips

A few tips to make your vacation a bit more cost-effective:

Have a long drive ahead of you? Pack a cooler with drinks and sandwich fixings. We spent less than $10 at the Dollar General Store of all places and had more than enough to last us the 7 hour road trip to our resort. It cuts down travel time, too, since you won't need to stop for food.

Eating out every meal on vacation can get expensive. If your accomodations include a fully stocked kitchen, make use of it! The first thing we did after checking in and unloading in our condo was to take a trip to WalMart. We spent less than $100 and had enough to eat well all week. Sure, you may not get a thrill out of cooking on vacation, but you can get easy stuff like corn dogs and fries or frozen pizzas.

If it will fit in the car and you think there might be even a sliver of a chance you could need it, pack it. Better to have more than you need than to show up at your destination short of necessities. This will save money that you will later be able to spend on chintzy souveniers. Trust me. I went so far as to pack my crock pot and iced tea maker. We saved a fortune just on drinks alone, and having the crock pot made cooking much less of a chore.

Vacationing on the beach? Sunscreen! Sunscreen! Sunscreen! Reapply frequently, even if you don't think you need to. There's nothing worse than missing a green flag day on the beach because you forgot to reapply sunscreen the day before. Trust me.