海角大神

I鈥檝e gone on one vacation in my life where we had pre-bought tickets for activities on most of the days. I thought I was doing a great job in terms of bargain hunting. Oh, how wrong I was.

For one, we didn鈥檛 even end up doing some of the activities. We鈥檇 go out to eat after a long day with two or three of the activities, be enjoying a beverage out on a patio somewhere, and just decide to skip the evening activity so we wouldn鈥檛 have to rush our wonderful dinner.

For another, I can鈥檛 tell you the number of times we had to rush by things that looked interesting or that we wanted to explore simply because we聽had聽to get to some specific place on time.

If your travel plans for vacation are starting to look like one of the pages in your daily planner,聽throw out those travel plans. You miss out on a lot if you vacation that way 鈥� and it usually winds up being more expensive if you use a detailed itinerary, too.聽

So, what should you do instead?

You should absolutely聽have a handful of things you鈥檇 like to do in mind when you leave. Bring along info for those places, but don鈥檛 specifically buy tickets聽unless聽there鈥檚 a strong chance they鈥檒l be unavailable when you arrive.

Yes, that might mean passing up on some bargains on tickets, but I suggest keeping any discounts or coupons that you can use at the time of admission and bringing those along with you as well.

On a given day,聽pick a few things that you聽might聽do that day.聽Don鈥檛 insist that you鈥檙e going to do all of those things. Just choose a handful that you might do.

I suggest choosing things that are geographically linked, so that you can just go to a certain area to do multiple things you鈥檝e decided to consider doing that day.

After that,聽just explore. Let serendipity strike. If you find an interesting place to wander through, wander through there. Don鈥檛 let yourself be burdened by a tight schedule, and give yourself the freedom to explore the new things you find.

What you鈥檒l find is that聽you end up doing fewer of the planned activities, which is particularly good if those planned activities cost money (which they often do), and you do more unplanned things like wandering through a park or visiting a public art display, which are often free.

If you end up bumping one or two of the things you鈥檙e least interested in doing from your schedule and you do it in a relaxing way, you鈥檒l almost always end up saving money while actually having a聽better听惫补肠补迟颈辞苍.

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.