Every year, sometime between January and March, we like to plan out and finalize our summer travel plans. Summer is definably a big travel time for most families and since so many people want to travel during a relatively short amount of time, planning ahead can really make your summer work for you. In today’s post I’m going over 5 tips we have learned from planning our summer travels.
1. Decide What Kind of Travel
Before the summer starts, you need to decide what kind of traveling are you going to do. Are you going to camp? Road trip? Fly? Stay in the states? Fly internationally? Deciding as a family what types of traveling you would like to do can really help narrow down where you could possibly go and what types of activities you would like to do.
2. Decide How Often
Are you going to do one big trip in the summer? Or are you going to go on a lot of smaller, weekend trips throughout the summer? Once you decide how often you would like to travel, it makes it so much easier to fill in your travel dates and plan other summer activities and fun around your trips.
3. Plan Ahead
As much as you can, try to plan ahead. In the current pandemic, planning ahead can be annoying because things can change so quickly. Just make sure that what you are planning has good refund policies. After you’ve planned on what you’re doing for your travels and how often you are going to travel, start booking reservations for flights, hotels, campsites, etc. Usually the earlier you know your travel dates, the better off you’ll be getting reservations.
4. Have a List
We like to have a list constantly going of places we would like to travel to someday. We have everything from day trips from our home to more extensive multi-day international trip ideas. When we start planning our summer trips, we refer to our list and see if it is feasible to go to any of the places on our list. Often we try to check off a few new places or new activities each summer. This makes planning much easier if you’ve already been brainstorming ideas throughout the rest of the year. It is also nice to have a list because as you come across deals for a place you want to go, it is easier to make the decision to act on the great deal!
5. Have a Travel Fund
We talked about this when we did our budgeting series, but we like to have a travel fund that we add to each month. That way we have money set aside as we are planning travel to make deposits and reservations as well as pay for our trips when we are on them. When we know a trip is coming, we make sure to budget for all of our expenses and we set aside money for that specific trip if we need more than what is in our travel fund. It isn’t worth going into debt to travel! There are other ways to travel for not very much money. Take advantage of those inexpensive trips and then save up for the big ones!
