Vacay Time

So it is summer and that means…..Vacation time!! Vacations can get very expensive. If you cannot afford to go on a long vacation, here might be a solution. Day trips. Day trips may not be far, but they are fun. You may even be able to just spend the night in a hotel. Let me tell you what I did. So for two college students working part time, it was an easy decision to go on a short trip, stay the night, and leave early. This was hard for us as the nicer hotels near the beach had a 21 age check in policy. The 18 age check in policy at the very few at the beach either had awful reviews and/or were far away. We were stuck with what to do. Then I thought about a vacation home. I looked up places through airbnb and we found a great condo with 2 bedrooms for $200 a night. The condo was 1 block from the beach and was in a great location. The condo was very clean and we had no trouble with the owner. For us, airbnb is worth checking out and you might be able to find a better deal than we did. So we booked the airbnb and picked the dates. Then we had to figure out what we wanted to do. We had spent about $100 each for the condo and wanted to keep the rest fairly cheap. A lot of the activities would have been great for a long trip and were more expensive than we wanted to spend. We easily found  great, cheap things to do. We went to a mini golf place, we went to the beach obviously, and we went to a carnival/amusement park at night. The amusement park was the most expensive because we paid for unlimited but still wasn’t more than $35 each. They had $1 ticket options but most rides were $5. So we could have just bought a few tickets instead of unlimited if we wanted it to be cheaper, but we did not mind paying a little more. The next day, we cooked breakfast in the kitchen, cleaned up the condo, and checked out. At this point we were tired and almost ready to go home. We knew that we needed to hit some of the shops up. For my friend, she needed to get something for her boyfriend and her step-dad for a belated father’s day present. For me, I just bought taffy and popcorn for my whole family. We headed back after this and only stopped to eat lunch. We tried to keep the food budget to a minimum and I think we did well. We tried to mainly eat at fast food places while on the way and while at the beach. We bought some groceries for snacks and breakfast. Overall, we didn’t spend a ton and could have even spent less if we wanted to. It is possible to go on a small vacation, have fun, and not spend a ton. Time to get your vacay on!!