Save-cation: How To Save On Your Summer Vacation

Are you planning to head to the beach or somewhere else fun, festive and enjoyable during the summer months? Is that vacation planning starting to signal the end of your financial freedom and the beginning of crunch time to start saving?

Vacations are relaxing and a much-needed respite from the day to day activities of life, including taking care of the kids, the 40 plus hour work week or anything else that causes you stress. Ironically, the planning of a vacation can be stressful if money, or lack of it, plays into the decision making or if you can even afford to go in the first place.

What’s the best way to start saving for a vacation, so you don’t have to skip out on a few days or weeks away?

The real key to saving for vacation doesn’t waiver too much from what you’d do to save in general. If you’re short on cash, you can’t keep the same thoughts about vacation you had in the past as far as the type of trip you want to take.

Sometimes the beach trip works wonders if you learn how to book a room well ahead of time, but the better bet is to go in the offseason, the non-peak season, where you can find a warmer climate but maybe not in the peak of the summertime months.

You can always modify the accommodations as well to the tune of those grandparents who live in Florida or aunt who just moved with her new husband to North Carolina. Don’t be afraid to book a trip that includes shacking up with your loved ones who live within driving distance to the friendly, blue water.

If you’re looking for instant gratification in the form actual cash in hand, what about some other spring or summertime ways to generate money, such as holding a garage sale and making a few hundred dollars in the process.

Everyone is always talking about spring cleaning, why not make all that cleaning up work in your favor by setting aside items you want to sell above and beyond just a garage sale? Why not list them online in the marketplaces we all know and love (eBay and Craigslist come to mind), and make extra money that way. Your garage fridge, that extra patio furniture that is still in good shape, or anything you aren’t using at the moment.

Vacation doesn’t have to be a pipe dream if you genuinely want to get away, but that dream vacation only is going to come true if you don’t relax your thinking about how to save any way you can.