Save on Mandatory Fun Trips
Last Friday, I read Ben’s great post about saving money by taking a staycation. Ironically, I was on vacation attending a wedding in Iowa at the time. But it really got my thinking about ways to save on mandatory wedding vacations, like the trip I found myself on (there are just some weddings you cannot miss.) Weddings are great, but expensive. You have to buy gifts, hotel rooms, pay for travel and more. Here are some of the ways we saved money on our trip.
Driving vs. Flying
We decided to drive instead of fly, depending on your patients, this can really pay off. My wife and I live near Washington DC and the wedding was in Ames, IA. Yes, we really did drive 2,000 miles this week, but the savings were incredible. Plane tickets were going to cost us about $500/piece! So we packed up our little Dodge Neon and headed to the Midwest. Each gas stop I took the number of miles we traveled divided by the total gallons we put in our car to get our MPG. Surprisingly, our car averaged between 37-42 MPG. You did hear that correctly, a twelve year old car, which was made when gas prices were not an issue, came close to rivaling hybrids at highway travel. The total gas for our trip was about $220 plus $100 for 2 hotel rooms on our way, which brought our traveling total to $320 or $680 less than flying.
Bring a Cooler
We packed a cooler full of drinks, sandwich meat, snacks etc. This saved us from spending $5-$10 at every gas stop, which really can add up. This also allowed us to make our own lunches not only on the trip, but while we were there as well.
Staying With Friends
Although we split our drive in half and stayed in a hotel, once we arrived, we stayed with friends. Obviously, this saved us a substantial amount and got us a few free meals : ) $
Related articles you might be interested in:
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader or email.
I just had a similar experience.. we had to go to my grandma’s funeral.. we drove instead of flying, and stayed with relatives. We could have spent a lot more money on food and lodging, but we were able to make it a relatively frugal trip.