6 Tips for Saving Money on Vacations

May 29, 2012 at 12:46 pm , by Lydia Beiler

With summer coming right up, for many of us vacation time is just around the corner.  And while vacations are in many ways a time to splurge a little, you definitely can still save on them too!

Here are 6 ways that you can cut expenses on your vacation.

1.  Utilize Living Social and Groupon

The absolute first thing I’d recommend is to sign up for Living Social and Groupon’s daily deals as soon as you know where you are going.  Subscribe to the city of your trip’s destination, then watch for restaurant, motel and local attraction deals.  Typically you can find deals that are at least 50% off the regular price.  And if you are interested in more of a vacation package, sign up for Groupon Getaways.

While Groupon just offers deals for the United State and Canada, Living Social offers deals in 6 countries: Australia, Canada, Greece, Ireland, United Kingdom, United States.

When you purchase a deal for your vacation, be sure to remember to take your vouchers with you!  Otherwise you obviously won’t be able to save a thing.

2.  Take Your Own Food

As much as I enjoy cooking and baking, I’ll admit, for me half the fun of vacation is being able to get a break from food prep.  Still, I cringe at the cost of eating out for every meal.  And my husband, the minimalist who only eats to survive, cringes even more.  So we usually do the following things:

• Take our own snacks
  - Snacks at attractions and even gas stations are terribly overpriced.  Buy some of your favorite things ahead of time and take them along so that when the munchies hit you don’t need to shell out a lot of money.  You could even repackage them into individual snack bags if that would make it easier for you.
• Pack some basic meals
  - We often take along things like cereal (can buy milk there), peanut butter and jelly, lunch meat & cheese, bread, wraps, fruit and yogurt.  These can easily give us a good meal when we want it.

3.  Take Your Own Reusable Water Bottles

It doesn’t take long to blow $20 on water for just two people in only a couple of days time.  We’ve found that taking our own reusable water bottles along is a huge money saver.  If there is a fridge in our room we will fill them the night before and put them in the freezer allowing us to have a nice cold drink the next day.  Then throughout the day we watch for water fountains and refill our bottles as needed.

When we went to Boston for a week last August, our water bottles were in constant use.  There were a few times that we couldn’t find a spot to refill them and had to purchase bottled water but even so we saved ourselves a lot by using them!

4.  Use Coupons / Gift Cards

Okay, so you knew I’d have to bring this one in somewhere, right?  Seriously though, coupons (and gift cards) can be one of your best friends on vacation.  You can use them to save you money at restaurants, attractions, and motels.

Here are a couple of places to watch for them:

• Living Social and Groupon
  - I already mentioned them above so I won’t go into a lot of detail here, but I do just want to reinforce the fact that you can often find great savings there including offers for gift cards.
• Chamber of Commerce/Visitor’s Bureau
  -Typically these places are stocked with often better-than-usual coupons for local places.  It doesn’t take long to stop and just do a quick look to see what you can find.
• Motels/Bed and Breakfasts
  - Ask them if they have any coupons for local restaurants or attractions-often they will.  And if they have a local paper, check that out too.  You just might be able to find some coupon offers in it as well.
• PlasticJungle.com
  - You can buy discounted gift cards for places like Outback, Olive Garden, and Applebees at about 10% savings.
• Restaurant Websites
  - Subscribe to restaurants email savings clubs.  They will frequently send you out coupons and special offers.  Keep them all in one spot and grab them when you head out the door for your vacation, then use as you can.

5. Ask for specials when booking with airlines or motels

Often you can get a discount if you simply ask.  And really, what do you have to lose?  The worst thing they can do is say no!

6. Skip the souvenirs

Typically overpriced and useless, souvenirs are an easy way to blow money.  If you do really want a little something to remember your trip by stick with useful things like shirts, mugs and such; at least they won’t just sit around collecting dust!  Instead of purchasing souvenirs we typically just try to take a few good pictures that we can later frame or put in an album to look at later. 

How do you save money on vacation?  I’m sure some of you more seasoned travelers have more great tips to share!