海角大神

During the last few years of my previous job, whenever Sarah and I began to plan a vacation, I would request time off in a block that was significantly larger than the length of the vacation we were planning.

Sometimes, I鈥檇 wind up with several days off before the vacation. Other times, I鈥檇 wind up with several days off after the vacation.

Why would I do this? I had to take time off pretty far in advance in order to get it off, but I didn鈥檛 want to lose the flexibility of vacation planning opportunities, so I鈥檇 schedule more than enough time off so that I could be flexible within that larger time frame.

This isn鈥檛 just a principle to apply to time off.聽The fewer things you lock into stone with regards to your vacation, the more opportunity you have to dig into better values when they come up.

For example, let鈥檚 look at flights. If you absolutely聽have聽to fly out on a Friday evening and then absolutely聽丑补惫别听to fly back nine days later on Sunday evening, you鈥檙e going to pay out the nose for those flights. Now, let鈥檚 say you have some more flexibility there and decide instead to have one of your flights on Wednesday instead of Friday or Sunday, you鈥檙e going to save a lot of money on your flight.

The same thing happens when you look at activities during your vacation.聽The more flexible you are with those activities, the less your trip is going to cost you.

Our usual plan is to come up with a large list of potential activities that we might want to engage in on our trip. We make a list that鈥檚聽far longer聽than what we could possibly fit into a vacation.

From that list,聽we seek out bargains for each item on that list.聽Which ones are cheap on particular days? On which day does that baseball team have a 鈥渂obblehead night鈥�? On which day does the museum have a 鈥渒ids are free鈥� day?

We鈥檒l slot in activities on particular days, but we still don鈥檛 jump on tickets unless (a) there鈥檚 a genuine danger of a sellout or (b) we find an exceptional deal (50% off or more) that comes from buying right now.

翱蹿迟别苍,听we鈥檒l start our vacation with very few things firmly slotted in place.

Then, when we arrive, we鈥檒l ask around for discounts. We鈥檒l ask the hotel concierge if they have any extra discounts on the things we鈥檙e thinking about doing. We鈥檒l read some local newspapers and local brochures.

Because so much of our vacation is flexible, if we find an activity is cheaper on a particular day, we can easily do it on that particular 鈥渃heap鈥� day.

In the end, we find ourselves with a pretty low-cost vacation that ends up filled with things we enjoyed as a family. That鈥檚 a winning trip.

This post is part of a yearlong series called 鈥�365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),鈥� in which I鈥檓 revisiting the entries from my book 鈥�365 Ways to Live Cheap,鈥� which is available聽at Amazon聽and at bookstores everywhere.聽