Everyone wants to go on a tropical vacation, and everyone dreams about being on a beach with a drink in their hand. But, everyone would also rather not spend a fortune to enjoy themselves. Vacationing can be expensive, once you look at plane tickets, hotel stays, food, drinks and other activities while you’re there. Here are some things that we do to make it less expensive and way more enjoyable, because who wants to worry about finances when you’re sitting on a beach?

Flights

There are a couple of things that we take into consideration when we’re booking our flights. First off, we never book our tickets out of our local airport, we also book out of O’hare in Chicago, it’s a much bigger airport so the flights are a lot cheaper. Now, we normally book out of Spirit Airlines. Last time that we flew to Tampa, Florida we through Spirit and our tickets were $83 round trip!!! That’s pretty amazing for a plane ticket. So, check out their airline if you know where you want to go! The only downfall is that they don’t go everywhere and they only go to certain airports.

That brings us to the next option. Sometimes planning where you want to go can be hard. So, there’s a site called SkyScanner, it allows you to put in where you want to leave from and you can pick a month if you want to, but you don’t have to, leave the destination area blank and it will give you the cheapest flights to everywhere in the world. It breaks it down by Country. For example: it will pull up all the different Countries, you will see United States from $67, you click on it and it will start with the cheapest. Which last time I checked was to Atlanta, Georgia for $67 round trip. But this will literally give you the cheapest flights to anywhere in the world!

The third option would be find a bundle. Such as all inclusive’s, or just a flight and hotel package deal. Sometimes those deals will give you your flight free.

aircraft_flying_01_hd_picture_168626

Hotels

Another amazing thing about SkyScanner is that you can also search for the cheapest hotels, too. However, you do have to know your destination for this process to work.

The cheapest option is always to stay with someone. When we go to Florida we always have a place to stay. So, if you can find a friend or a family member, or if they have a seasonal place that they aren’t at you should take advantage of that. However, we don’t really want to stay with people so if you’re not into that, we completely get it.

In that case, check out AirBnb, they always have great deals, and cute little places to stay. We also like to use VRBO to find houses or condos to rent for a decent price. If you aren’t set on a certain time to go, you can always check out hotel prices. When we looked at hotel prices, one place was $79 in February, but during Spring Break it went up to $400 a night! If you plan around the popular times of the year, hotels really aren’t that bad.

Food/Drinks

This is always the easiest part for us. If we don’t already have a place to stay, or we’re not going to an all inclusive, we look for a place with a kitchen. Then, the first thing that we do when we get to our destination, is hit the grocery store! It’s a heck of a lot cheaper to go grab groceries and alcohol for the week, than to depend on eating out and buying drinks all of the time. Honestly, we have more fun doing this too. We get make dinner together, and make our drinks however we want them.

However, we do always treat ourselves to one or two dates while we’re on vacation. But, since we eat in every other time, we aren’t as worried about money, and it’s more special since it’s not every meal.

d1fcdba9e4c31f54c10b0fbca462c88c--beach-cocktails-fruity-cocktails

Activities

Obviously the best thing for activities is to be at an all inclusive that also includes your activities. How can you beat a deal that includes your flight, food, drinks, and the activities that you want to do? We don’t think you can.

But, you can come close. When you’re on vacation, check out the local grocery stores, if there are amusement parks, or something like aquariums, often times local places will have cheaper tickets. Along with hotels, if you’re staying in a hotel, they may be able to get you into the surrounding attractions, cheaper!

Also, do not forget to check out Groupon! There always two for one deals, or $20 off, and many extra things as well.





The biggest thing that we can tell you about planning a vacation and wanting to make it cheap, is to be open to all possibilities. Don’t go around the busiest times of the year, check out different places to stay, cook your own food, make your own drinks, and check out SkyScanner, who knows where you could end up!

Sam and Victoria

We hope that you enjoyed this post, please check us out at:

Share: