Plan a Family Vacation on a Budget

My 5 year old son wants a bedtime story every night before he goes to bed. Often we ended up with talking about the places he wants to go or the places I went to when I was a kid. He wants to go to every places he heard on TV or from other kids – Chicago, California, New York City, Jamaica, Mexico or Africa. A family vacation means so much for both kids and parents. That may be the time for a family to spend more with each other for many busy families. Many families took far less vacations than they would like to either because of budget or time. If you’re planning a vacation and are on a tight budget, there’re many ways to cut the vacation cost without sacrificing the comfort and joyfulness of a vacation.Find Cheap Airplane TicketsPlanning the vacation early is the key to save money on airplane tickets. A round-trip tickets that generally costs a thousand dollars may sell for two hundred dollars on a few specific dates in a years. You could even win one free ticket from many contests. Of course, you’ll have to purchase the rest of tickets from a particular airline for the family vacation. If you happen to travel a lot and have accumulated a lot of frequent flier miles with your favorite airline, you could get a few tickets free too.

Save Money on Hotel RoomsBesides the saving on airfares, many hotels and motels offer savings for holders of frequent flier miles too. The rates of hotel rooms generally fluctuate by seasons. You can usually save the most on the weekdays in the off season. This, of course, depends on the types of hotels. For hotels and motels catering towards a business clientele, they are usually under booked on the weekends. The Internet is another useful tool to shop around – for instance, search for forget calling hotels. You could get a better rate if you place the order online as many hotels and motels are starting encouraging people to use the Internet to book the rooms. If you plan a International vacation, search for local Hotel guides, you may be able to get a better deal if you reserve the rooms directly from local hotels than from US travel agencies. For instance, when planning a family Jamaica Vacation, you could easily locate a Jamaica hotel guide on the web that lists dozens of Jamaica Hotels and Resorts.Spend less on Travel Phone BillsPhone bills are another major source of vacation cost. This is especially true for International vacation. In a new country, the chances are you can’t use the cell phone you carry every day. Phone cards are a great help when traveling in the United States or oversea. The cost per minute of using calling cards is much less than calling from a hotel, an airport or a conventional pay phone. If you really like to stick with your cell phone and you happen to have a GSM type of mobile phone, you could actually unlock your cell phone to use a mobile phone service in a new country. There are many different ways for cell phone unlock. Many GSM cell phone can be easily unlocked with cell phone unlock codes. There are dozens of websites which offer cell phone unlock codes for $5-$10 each, and the website will help you unlock your mobile phone and switch services.