How We Afford to Travel

We have been asked by numerous individuals how we afford to take monthly trips, so in this episode we are discussing just that! We disclose what we do in our daily lives to insure we spend less. How we find cheaper accommodations and activities that cost next to nothing when traveling. If you want to travel more, but aren't sure how to go about it, this is the episode for you!

TravelEssary - How We Afford to Travel

Transcript

 We're the Essary family and we're exploring America one destination at a time. On this episode of TravelEssary, we are going to share our little tips and tricks of how we travel for less. Let's chat.  

 Welcome and thank you for joining us on this episode. As we talk about how we travel for less now, Misty does a fantastic job. Every single time that we go on vacation, as she is searching the internet and finding the best deals for us, where we want to go, how we want to do things, activities. Sheila is all of it out for us.  And so she's going to be doing a vast majority of the talking on this one, and I'm going to put my little inputs every so often. And I have just a few other things that you could possibly do. , that I will be adding to the end of this. But a lot of people they wonder , they ask,  Hey, how can I travel for less? 

How can I go where I want to go do the things that I want to do.  Without spending an exuberant amount of money and doing things. Now, there are certain things that are going to cost. And that's just the fact of it. If you go to the Maldives, is that where you want to go? Yes, if you go there, you're just going to spend. I mean, it's just one of those things that it's going to happen. But if you're looking for a nice weekend trip or even a week trip somewhere where you just want to go and relax. And just get away from everything that's happening in the world. Then Misty definitely has some tips for you about how you can make that possible.  As most of you know, by now, we are very shortly looking into some extended travel full-time travel, whatever you want to call it. 

We were looking into, you know, touring the entire United States inside of an RV with our children. But until then, um, we have decided that we want to take a monthly trip. , you know, Jeremy still has a full-time job and we still have responsibilities here. And until we are able to do that here in a few months, we still want to be able to travel sometimes that is in the form of a day trip. 

And sometimes it's a week long trip. Like we just got back from a week long trip. , But on average, we spend anywhere from $250 to $400 per trip. Our last trip was a little bit more than that. Not much more, which may surprise you, even though it was a five day trip.   And we've had so many people ask, how can you afford to take a trip every single month? Well, here are some things that we do.  The first thing I want to share with you real quick, before we get into how to save money. When traveling, we're going to share how we have come up with that money in our lives, in the first place. There are things that we have prioritize. 

And I do believe if you prioritize something, you can afford it.  Absolutely. If you want to go on trips. Then you, you've got to find ways in your normal day to day. To save money to do that.  Right. And our biggest, um, saving expense, I guess, that we have not completely cut out because I'm not sure it's possible. Especially when you're on the go a lot, like we are. But one of the things that we have cut out drastically is eating out.  Because it's expensive. 

You guys.  I know we've talked about this on our podcast before, but if we go to a sit down restaurant, And it's our whole family. We're easily going to drop $65. Easy. And that's even on the low end, that's not even going to some of the higher places that you could possibly go. I mean, I've heard of people that have less than us in their family, you know, two or three people that go and they drop like 120. I can't imagine that $120 is like,  Uh, ed day trip for me. 

Yes. And so it's, it's crazy , especially if  you  look at  the amount of money that you spend eating out and it could be anywhere from going to McDonald's and grabbing. They're cheap breakfast at like $3 a day. Over a time that's up. 

Yeah, absolutely. Golden. At a Starbucks and grabbing you know, your $7 latte. Every single day ads. I only cost $4 and 50 cents. Thank you very much. And I don't get it every day, but you get those specialty drinks and you, you enjoy them and you like them. And I'm not saying that you can't have them. 

I'm just saying that you have to learn that there is a way that you can cut back or do it a little less often. And still be able to afford to go on trips right now. If your lattes are more important to you than traveling, then this podcast is probably not for you. Go enjoy your lattes. Enjoy your, you know, your $60 stakes go have a great and wonderful time doing that. But for us, we want to enjoy lattes on vacation. Yes. 

So. As much as possible. We don't eat out when we're at home. There are times when we're running errands in town all day, and we've got to grab something real quick or a special occasion, and we're going to go out to eat for that special occasion. But, um, we like to save our eating out experiences when we're traveling so we can. , support the locals there and try the local cuisine and things like that. 

And you know, that has saved us. Probably two to $300 a month. By not eating out so much easy, easy. Yeah, because I mean, even going to. You know, some of the smaller places that we have here. And just grabbing fast food.  Four or five of us, even if we start sharing meals and breaking it down.  We're still spending $40. Now, if you did that every single day for a week. That's $280. Yeah, that's a vacation. That's a vacation weekend trip. Right there. Like people don't. I mean like, and you would think that that's kind of like a common sense, like, oh, everyone knows that, but until you actually break down, because there was a point in time in our lives where it was super busy. We were go, go, go. 

And we know every minute. And my goodness, the amount of money that we dropped in a month. Kerosene was, was more than our house payment. And it was like, wow, what are we doing? We've got to stop this. Yeah. So , that is our biggest thing that we have adjusted in our life so that we can afford traveling more often. Another large thing. That I don't, I don't think very many people realize is we cut back tremendously on our streaming services. So again, I know I mentioned this a few weeks back, but I took a look. Um, broke down our budget, like dollar by dollar. 

Doesn't like the Dave Ramsey, every dollar budget, you know? And I did that and we were spending $250 a month on streaming services. Well, and it's not just streaming it's subscription.  You can look at your things, you know, either you're getting. Free books from a place because you're, you have a subscription. We had an audio book one or , you got some type of dish that you have, you know, 300 channels to you only watch four of them and then you're paying a YouTube  all these different subscriptions because they all offer something different. But 

are you really getting your money's worth? That's what we really looked at. Are we getting our money's worth by having these subscriptions. And we were like, when was the last time we watched this? , when was the last time we were on this subscription where we got something from, but we don't use it enough. 

And we were able to cut back. Exponentially. Yes. So we only have three streaming services now. Um, One that we all use. And that we also use for homeschooling and things like that. And then two more streaming services. I kept the ones that the majority of the people use. Most of the time, every other one, I cut. I cut them all. 

Even the ones that I was the only one who used them and I used them religiously, but like, um, Spotify. Cut my Spotify account and get commercials. Now it's so sad, but you know what? It's totally worth it. It is. And some of them, some of them hurt, like she was talking about Spotify, where she listens to music while she's cleaning the house or doing X, Y, and Z, or at the millions of podcasts that I listened to. 

And then some of the other ones, you know, I like watching tour de France of theirs football season was going on. And we were like, Hey, we don't need.  I watch it on Sunday, not send enough of what was the only time that we watched it. And it's like, I really, as much as I enjoy football, I really don't need it. Yeah, whenever that's like a $20 monthly subscription, and you're only watching it once a week, you have to really decide what kind of, you know, cutbacks and sacrifices you're going to make to. Be able to do. A bigger picture kind of thing. A bigger activity. 

And so we, um, save quite a bit now. Bye bye. Cutting back our streaming services and our subscriptions. Um, another thing that, , we have started doing, I guess probably once we started.  Our journey towards going full-time travel. Is we no longer buy things? Just for fun.  We only purchased necessities now. And. I'm not going to lie. 

That was a little hard for me. Cause I'm the kind of person, if I see something on cell. Even if we don't necessarily need it. And I'm like, oh, let's grab that.  Like we can use it at some point in time. It's on cell. Um, so that is mostly me that I had to stop doing that. Uh, even our last vacation that we took, we were going through a lot of the stores that were there were like, oh, I was pretty cool. 

Yeah. Let's let's get that. And then we were like, Where's that going to go, right? What's the real purpose of that. And then we checked ourselves. Yeah, we really don't need that. Yeah. Yeah, it's a, it's a habit that I don't think many people realize they have. How easy is it to go into Walmart for one or two things and come out with a basket full, especially everyone that does. 

And we have family members that do this. So I'm not trying to pick on anyone specifically, but those people that go in and they're like, oh, it's on sale. I know a friend that has a friend that might need this. And just because it's on sale, you get it. You're calling my mom out.  I wasn't going to admit to eating. Because she has such a kind heart. 

She sees something for sale and she's like, oh, somebody else can get this. And I can't say I haven't done the same thing. If you specifically know someone who has a specific need, then bless them. I absolutely, I'm not saying not do that. But what I am saying is, is just getting something because you think someone might need it. Find someone who can use it. Yeah, probably need to check yourself. 

Yeah.  Those are the kind of things that we've had to one stop doing, because we're not going to have the space for it in an RV where we're struggling as it is downsizing our home. , not because we're attached to things, it's just because we didn't realize we had so many things. And then too.  You spend so much so quick without realizing it, it adds up. If you go through your monthly purchases of items that you didn't necessarily need, it becomes quite a bit. 

, and I, and I do believe you have to have things in life that you enjoy. You do need to go out and. You know, by some things sometimes that just make you a little bit happy, uh, not expensive things, but we, again, prefer to do that when we're traveling, when we're on vacation, we'll set a little spending budget for us then. And get our little, our little shopping cake done, then. And not by throughout the month, any other time, unless it is items that we need.  Absolutely. 

And looking at items that you need, you know, things that you need that you're going to use day to day. Guys, I'm going to call you out. That fishing pole, whenever you have 20 more already on your boat, do you really need that fishing pole? I mean, let's be serious or. Or another tape measure. Just because you don't want to go find the ones in your toolbox. Because you can't find your other tool that you have three of them stacked away, somewhere that you forgot where you put them. 

It's like, it's those little costs that add up with everything else. They really do. I challenge everyone to go back in their last months budget  or a bank account expenditures. However you keep up with it. And see what purchases you made that were not necessary purchases and see how much. That you could have saved by not purchasing those items. 

I think the number might surprise you.  And with that being said, I highly, highly, highly recommend you set a budget. If you don't already have a budget for your household, I don't know how you're surviving. But, um, as an adult, to me, that just seems. 

Like common sense. But, uh, as I get older, , I find out that there's more and more and more of my friends and relatives that do not have a budget. 

And I don't know how they.  How they survive? Like how do you, how do you know what you're spending what's coming in? What's going out? Like, how do you do that? I don't know. Set a budget. Set a strict budget. And follow that budget. , budgeting apps can be very helpful if you're not the one that wants to set it down on pen and paper. 

I use a mixture of both. I like to get it out on pen and paper and just physically write it out. I don't know. There's something therapeutic about it. And then put it into my budgeting app when I'm done and then keep up with it through my budgeting app every month. , But you have to be really strict. 

You can't be like, oh, well, I'm going to pull out of this area and my budget so that I can spend more in this area of my budget. You, you have to be strict with it because if not, it becomes a habit of constantly. Over spending in a certain budgeted area. It seems like it's not very much, but just those few things that we have done. Has made it to where we can afford to do monthly trips. 

Just those few things. And I'm sure there's probably areas in your life. You can  look at and be like, maybe this is where we can cut back on, or we can make a little sacrifice here or, you know, decide and prioritize what we want to do, but just. That is all we have done, which has afforded us. To make more memories with our children. 

 So now we're going to talk about how. We spend less when we travel, , how do we make the most of the, you know, couple hundred dollars that we have every month to go towards travel? And my first tip is.  Find as many free activities as possible.  There are so many out there, especially whenever you're traveling, you're going to be going to a more likely, a larger destination or a tourist area. And there are plenty of plethora of free items, free things that you can do, or even set up to kind of be in that area during a certain time. Like usually, you know, flea markets or markets within themselves are usually.  Sort of Vince that people are putting on or are free. 

So there there's things. To do there, if you spend the time to do the research. Yeah. And if you are a family who likes to do nature things , some of the time we're going somewhere specifically for a hike or something like that, which is free to do things in nature. Majority of the time that's free, unless you're going into. Uh, national or state park or something. 

And you pay that daily park pass. Be. Um, for the most part, you're going to be able to do free things in nature. You can go fishing. That's free. You go hiking, that's free. You can explore, you know, city parks and. Things like historical sites and you know, those are all free. A lot of times you can find free museums. 

This is. More. So in your larger cities, your smaller cities tend to ask for a donation or a small fee, which, and again, they're usually a small fee to help them afford to keep up with their museums. But in the larger cities, those museums are sponsored by someone, if not the city itself. So you can find a lot of  Art galleries and museums that are absolutely free to go and explore, especially if you're in a downtown area. 

Like when we're in downtown San Antonio, we like to hit up all of the free   art galleries and museums. So that's one of our main things is we do try to find as many free attractions as possible. 

We actually have an entire podcast episode. If you haven't checked it out yet. Of just all the free things you can do in San Antonio alone. And that's just San Antonio and you can spend days. Going through it. Right. And we just got back from a week in south Padre, and there's so many things to do in that area for free. If you want to visit a specific area. I do that. 

And then do your research of, okay, what can I do? Um, each day that is free. And then what can I do each day that costs money and that will help kind of set a budget, a tone before you go. That's something that I do before we go somewhere. I find all the free activities that I know interest my family. And then I schedule them in our itinerary and then the, the spots that are empty, I go through and fill with things that cost money. But  I feel it with as many free activities as I can first. And the free activities are usually going to be some type of leisure. Activity walking. Hi, Kate. Flea markets. Museums galleries.  Enjoying nature, just kind of at your pace, doing your own thing. Whereas a lot of the other stuff is going to cost you entertainment. Eating. Amusement. Those are going to cost you. 

And so get in a nice balance in between all of them. Like every trip that we've gone on,  they had some type of nature hike. That was absolutely beautiful that we walked.  Or we just enjoyed spending time, you know, you'll too. The Florida keys or you go to south Padre. You're going to spend most of your time on the beach, which doesn't cost you anything. 

Yes. Yes. And sometimes  the ones that,  don't cost money. Are the ones that we enjoy the most because we do enjoy having those leisurely times.  

Another suggestion. I'm not going to get into very much. And if you want to hear more about it, go check out our passes and membership episode, but it's city passes. If you get a city pass, if you're in a larger city or a larger metropolitan area, check out the city pass and you can do. Things such as zoos and, um, local activities for a discounted price. That is another way to, to save a lot of money, but have a lot of fun on vacation.  Now let's talk about hotels. So, this is how I personally save money on our hotels. 

The first thing is for every hotel chain system out there, make sure you are signed up on their reward points. 

It costs $0 to sign up and accumulate those points and they add up fast. So, no matter what hotel chain you're staying in. You're getting points for it. You're getting rewarded something for it.  And I promise you, after a few stays in a certain hotel, like it's gonna add up. And sometimes when you stay there offering double points or something like that, and certain times of the year or certain events that they have going on, you can get double or even triple points. 

And I don't know how many times. Our hotel cost for an entire weekend was completely free because I. I use my points or I got it out of severely like discounted rate because I used my points.  And those stack up there's so many different programs inside of them that you can use for reward points or be at a loyalty member. Or stay in so many times they give you free points that you can use. To have a free vacation. Right. 

And if you're not a hotel person and you're an Airbnb person, Then my suggestion for saving money on Airbnbs is, do not. Um, stay in Airbnbs that are in your city centers. They're going to be way more expensive than those on the outskirts. And to one up that if you stay in a suburban type area, we have found that those tend to be the cheapest Airbnbs. So if you're on the outskirts of a larger city, In a suburban type setting then  you'll probably save hundreds 

if you went to the inner city downtown. You know, where you don't have to get in your car and you can just walk around. It's going to be way, way more expensive and those type of Airbnbs.  

Another thing that you want to do, especially for your hotels. His book them as far in advance as possible. Sometimes I can save 30% by booking two or three months ahead. Like I have our trips planned out sometimes six months in advance of what we're going to be doing. And I book them as soon as possible. 

Sometimes. Um, certain chains want me to pay up front and certain chains. I don't have to pay till I get there. So it just depends on what your needs are, but the more. In advance you book them , the cheaper they are. And I know a lot of people like to book through websites like Expedia and things like that. 

And I have done so in the past, but I have learned that if I book directly through their website, Not only am I getting those points and things like that, I will often get bigger discounts. Than I can get by going through. You know, a second party website by going through something such as, um, you know, book travels or Expedia . A lot of times.  I will get a bigger discount. Directly from their websites. 

I don't understand that or how it works. Um, I'm not saying every time, but most of the time that is what happens. Absolutely.  So take a little bit of time and. If you're using.  Uh, helpful out to kind of help you find hotels at a reasonable price. I always jump on and compare. Compare  that deal that they're trying to give you. 

And then what the hotel is actually offering, because.  Sometimes it works one way. Sometimes it works the other, and that's just an extra way for you to save, you know, 20, $30. And you can go have a great evening with that. Not to mention. There have been a few times that I have booked I'm on a second party site. And it did not. Translate over to our hotel and our bookings were all jacked up.  Or they overbooked because of second. Party websites and things like that. 

I think that's whenever I stopped booking from that, whenever it happened to me several times in a row and started booking straight. And I think Expedia was the main one that I used. But I started booking straight from the websites and that's when I learned, Hey, I can actually get this a little bit cheaper by booking directly through them. 

So. Uh, another way that we save money when traveling is, we like to travel in the off seasons as much as possible, every area has a different off season. Like. I think summer is an on season for everybody in America. I think no matter where you go in America, summer is considered a peak season. For a vast majority. 

I will agree with that where I will push back is for the ski resorts. Summer's not really.  Now they still have a lot going on. But that's more of like a spring break. Peak season. Right. But they're really focused on winter time and snowing.  But all of your theme parks,  yeah, winter is the downtime. Everything else is full blown to the summer. 

I think for most everything, your peak seasons are spring break summertime. Christmas. That's like, that's the basic rule of thumb. Tom's Halloween. If they have a really good Halloween program. Yeah. I think that's mostly Disney, but that's like your basic rule of thumb. There's always exceptions to the rule, but that's your basic rule of thumb, which means any other time of the year, you're going to be able to travel. Uh, at a discounted rate in hotels, theme, parks, um, activities, whatever it is you're doing, it's probably going to be a discounted rate.  Not really discounted. 

It's going to be their basic rates because the peak times they Jack, those rates are really high. Yes. Um, to go even further than that. If you're booking a hotel and sometimes even Airbnbs because they're more expensive on the weekends than they are during the week. Sunday through Thursday is when you want to book. You want to avoid booking on Fridays and Saturdays if possible. Now I know that with work schedules and school schedules, that's not always possible,  but if it is, it is a really great way to save some money. And I'm going to tell you guys a little secret. So we just spent five days in south Padre.  We only spent $327 or our hotel. For the entire time we were there. And we were.  Like a 10 minute walk to the beach. I mean,  we were almost smacked up in the middle of the island, so we could've walked anywhere without really  taking any kind of time. Yeah. We did actually one day walk all over the island. Was really nice. 

I mean,  

it wasn't a luxury hotel. That was the word I was looking for. But it fulfilled all of our needs and it was nice. It had really great reviews and the staff was tremendous. So, um, again, that's how we, we are able to do what we do. When I have loved to stay on one of those big luxury tower hotels that they have that was covered in fog the whole time we were there. 

Yes. But could I afford it? No. So smart travel. If, if you want to travel, then travel smart. Don't travel outside of your budget. Whether we were in, you know, a big luxurious hotel or staying in the one that we stayed in. It didn't change the memories that we made. It didn't change the fact that we had a great time, especially since the majority of our time is spent outside of the hotel room. 

The point of vacation is to get out and do something that you normally don't do. 

And just . Enjoy things. So you're not going to spend a lot of time inside of hotels or Airbnbs. I mean, you're going to be there for breakfast. You're going to sleep the night and the rest of the time you should be out doing something. Yeah. I only have one requirement when it comes to hotels and Airbnbs and that's that it's clean. It's clean. I don't care if it's outdated. I don't care what the outside looks like. I don't care how big it is, how cheap it is, how expensive it is. 

I'll small. It is. It's clean. That is all I care about. Like, I don't want any bugs in it and I don't want it to be nasty. I want it to be clean and fresh. And this hotel absolutely was that. And again, the staff was amazing. So we spent almost a whole week in south Padre for $327, and that is including tax and fees. 

So, um,  Considered that when traveling and again, we booked it Sunday through Thursday.  And by just doing that, it saved us about another $230. I think it made it another $230 cheaper because that Friday and Saturday is sometimes double or more than the price of the other times. And it, and of course we went to south Padre on an off season, February, which is an off season, so we saved even more money. 

So  those are things that we do to help save money. And Jeremy was talking about, you know, Um, you're mostly just going to be.  In your hotel for breakfast and sleeping. Another thing that we like to look at. If we are stayed in a hotel, doesn't have a free breakfast because that's another way we're going to save money is by not going out to eat for breakfast.  Now are you going to get the gourmet breakfast sometimes? Real fancy, fancy and breakfast that you want from, you know, maybe a mom and pop place where they have everything is well, I'm talking about like, you want a hot.  Fresh eggs, whatever way you want it. 

, the whole nine yards,  is going to be on the menu. No, but are you going to get a breakfast that is going to sustain you and allow you to go do activities before you go out and you actually hit lunch and dinner? Absolutely.  And although we didn't have like a full blown hot breakfast. , in Padre.  It was still. A good enough breakfast that it got us through until lunch. 

And actually what we did, which is another tip. Is the day after we got there, we went to HEB, we went to the grocery store and we grabbed a few items. We had a microwave and a fridge and side of . Our little hotel and we grabbed a few more items to supplement that breakfast along with like sandwich items and a few snack items. Anything that we could put in the fridge or that could go in the microwave, things like that. ,  And that was another way that we save a ton of money. 

When we're traveling. We just talked about how expensive it is to eat out. And although we do like to eat out on vacation, there are two reasons why we don't eat out every meal on vacation, if possible. Now, if it's a weekend vacation or a day trip, this does not apply. This is for. When we stay three or more days, somewhere, I think would be our, our rule of thumb. 

If we're going to stay more than three days, we're going to get some type of groceries while we're there. The main reason.  It's expensive to eat. Yes. I mean, we've already talked about it at the very beginning of this podcast, how expensive going out to eat every meal is, and by saving some of those funds. You can spend it on other things or you can put it back and go on another trip the next month.  

Number two. We get really tired of eating out as crazy as that sounds.  Especially, I think me and Justin. Like we get so sick of eating out after having to eat out three meals in a row, we're done eating. Like we don't want to eat anymore. And, um, Jeremy mentioned this in one of our YouTube videos that just came out recently. When we were in Padre, is that whenever you're eating out, you feel like you have to , eat everything on your plate. And oftentimes your plates are much larger than they are when you're at home. 

Like they give you way more food. And what you would consume at home, or at least for us, that tends to be the case. Oftentimes when we go out to eat, we have to split mills because we can't finish a plate. , but when you're there and you've spent that money and you're eating good food, you're like, oh, I, I want to finish this. 

I need to finish this. I have to finish this. And you just don't blah.  Or if you don't finish the plate, You get it to go. And then you take it back. You put it in your hotel refrigerator, and then you go eat the next bill out and the next bill out and you never eat your leftovers that are in the fridge.  So we did that several times where we went to a place where we're like, oh, well, we're not going to finish all this. 

We'll just take it back. You know, it was lunch and like, we'll take it back and we'll eat it tonight and we might stop somewhere and.  Grab a veal, you know, just to supplement it. So, you know, we don't help. We don't waste food cause. We definitely don't want to be wasteful no matter where we go on, what we do. Um, but.  

Real quick. 

We'll talk about this. Um, Senior donkey. Is that, what is that?  Yes. That's what it went south Padre. It was amazing. One of the best TexMex food places that I've ever eaten.  But it was definitely one of those things that I got the nachos and they were so good. 

And I was like, Warming up nachos.  It's not very good the second time. No. So I ate the whole plate and you could ask Misty. I was like, I'm miserable. I don't feel like eating now because my stomach is so full by the time it gets to dinner time. I'm still, already formed. We're going to go eat again, except we did have to go find your ice cream.  I had to have something to come and calm it down a little bit. Ice cream to calm down your stuff.  You always have room for ice cream. And it was. It's just one of those things though that we've done it so many times on vacation, especially like our first meal. 

We'll go and we'll order.  Nothing that even looks big to us, but the portions that they give us. I was like, whoa. I did not expect this if they're just like, well, we can't take it with us, so we need to eat it. And then we're full. And then we just kind of feel blond miserable. Yeah. Which is another reason why we tend to split mills whenever we eat out, we it's very rare that we can finish a plate individually. 

Maybe Jeremy can sometimes. The rest of us almost never. And, and that's only Jeremy, if he hadn't eaten for the whole day and he's eating for the first time or something like that. So we do tend to split mills, but just another way we save money and it's. It was a great idea because. I'm going to get a hamburger. 

She's going to get a chicken fried steak and Justin's going to get something else. And it's like, okay. Hey. Well, let's just try each other's food and see which one we liked the most. And then , you get all these different varieties because who knows that might be the one time you get to go to that restaurant. And you order one thing, whatever. 

You're like, oh, especially for me, I have a hard time.  Finding something on the menu that I want, because I want all of it. Hmm. And so coming up with that one item. I wait for everyone else to order, then I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to try those two. So let me get this. So we don't double up on the same thing. That's our family style way of eating. 

I think that's why I love Asian restaurants so much  that's how we like to eat. It was mom and pop country ones where they bring it to you.  Chicken. Yes. Kind of just bring it to you all that. Big platters and you get to divvy it up yourself. Yes. 

I love going to places like that. And we get to try, you know, more than one thing at a restaurant. So yes, that's another way that we save money. What we like to do is limit each day to eating out once. Plus some sort of snack, whether that's ice cream, a bakery, a coffee shop. I candy store or something like that. 

So we try to eat out one mill, one nice mill. And then once snack. Type stock item. And again, I mean, You're talking about.  A five day vacation saving over $300 by doing that. Yeah. Just by watching what you eat. Absolutely.  Another thing that we do when it comes to food is we want to eat where the locals eat.  We don't want to eat at it. 

Big fancy chain restaurant, because there are usually more expensive. And they don't taste as good. And to the touristy type restaurants that are the ones that draw people in, they're going to be way more expensive than your local mom and pop stores. Uh, and we have found that majority of the time, the mom and pop ones tastes so much better.  And I think we talked about this on our podcast. 

Um, finding the best food when traveling. But your cheaper restaurants tend to taste better.  You're more expensive restaurants. I don't know why. So, what we like to do is, you know, um, showcase an area and see where, like, what looks the most local, where do we see locals hanging out and in south Padre, that was easy to find because it was the ones with the Texas license plates. Yes. That's where we want it to go. 

Or even if we go to San Antonio and other places, like number one. You know, the chain places. I mean, there's.  You can pick them out. But just driving down some of the streets in the highways and byways and going. Wow. At that place is packed. Yeah. So it has to be good to have that many people.  In a non tourist area.  That's where your locals go. 

That's where you need to go.  

  My last bit of travel advice that, that we personally do to save money when we're traveling is we use discounts whenever possible. Whether that's a military discount. Jeremy has his veteran discount, whether it's a student discount, whatever kind of discounts they're offering, we take them. And if you're staying somewhere for, you know, four or 5, 6, 7 days, And you're visiting multiple places. 

Those discounts stack up. Um, quite a bit. A lot of times. Just by Jeremy's discount alone. We can say like $50 within that trip. Total. Whenever we went to the state fair, his military discount, um, Was something that we were able to use for everyone's ticket, not just his, for the whole families. And there are a lot of times that we get to do that. His military discount will discount the whole family for him being military. So whatever kind of discounts are available. You know, senior citizen discounts, whatever they're offering, take the discount. 

Sometimes you have to. Not sometimes a lot of the time. So you have to specifically ask for that discount. They're not going to assume anything by looking at you. They're usually not going to ask, are you this, this or this? Do you qualify for our discounts? , you're gonna say one adult or whatever, and they're going to charge you full price without saying anything we like to check to see what discounts they offer. 

You can do it on their websites. You can do it through Google or sometimes when you're standing in line waiting somewhere,  it'll say it and advertise it. And we say, Hey, we would like this and this discount. And it's no problem, no issue, but  if you do not speak up, you're probably not going to get those discounts.   Don't feel bad for using the discount that they offer. They're offering that discount for a reason. Instead it's only a week. To several places. And we were asked multiple times. Because there's a military base in San Antonio. Are you military? Cause we give a military discount because they want to show that appreciation . To the group of people that they're offering that discount for. And there's nothing wrong for that. 

That's just their way of showing a little bit of love and kindness to you for doing. You know, the things that you've done or if you've hit that senior citizen age. You know, I know a lot of people are like, oh, I don't want to claim it. I'm ready to claim. Yes. I'll be so happy. I'd be like, ah, begin that discount.  

I don't know if my body's ready to get there yet, but my pocket. Book is definitely ready to get to that discount. So just don't feel bad for using the discounts that they give you because they want to show it's a way of blessing you and they want to show you the appreciation for what you've done. I don't think most people would feel bad about it. 

I think they just are too afraid to speak up.  . I've seen people get really upset. Like they didn't even ask me if I wanted that discount.  Nope. They're probably not. 

And we have learned that most people do not, unless Jeremy said like you're in a specific area that is like, has a military base ,  I don't know what they give you rude to ask someone if they're qualified for a senior citizen discount.  And say that they don't ask quite as often anymore, 

 You have to take it upon yourself. Yeah.  You as the consumer, you need to be proactive. And I'm telling you, it adds up, like we use discounts on almost every single trip that we go on and that money accumulates. Uh, , which brings me into like this last little bit of this  discounted topic. We are about to go to a pickle festival next month, which if we're all super, super excited about. We're going to a pickle festival. 

And whenever I purchased the tickets, it was for each adult ticket. You get two tickets for anyone under the age of 12 for free. And so.  Um, focus your activities and your planning and stuff around things like that. If possible, 

if you're not sure. You know what you want to do, but you know, you want to go do something which, I do that a lot, knowing we want to go on a trip every month. I'm like, oh, what. What is going on this month? Now I will just kind of search, uh, a general area and see what kind of festivals or activities they have going on. 

And then I'll choose the one that one, I think we're going to have the most fun, but two that offers me the best discounts and you know, a buy one get two free is a pretty darn good discount. And sometimes it's, you know, there's other things that you can go to that. They give you a ticket and then it's half off the next ticket. I mean, so they give discounts for purchasing multiple tickets, because , they need to fill their spots. They need to make sure that their park is being used or the activity is being successful. And so they'll offer those up and , I know that whenever we went to. 

 The state fair that, you know, , we plan for my military discount to only go towards my ticket, but it went to all the tickets and it saved us like 30. $35. Yeah.  

. Didn't six flags used to have this.  Program, like if you bought in a Coke bottle or something like that, you got.  A percentage off like a Coke. Can, it was something like that where you got a percentage off of your ticket. Percentage of the ticket or a lot of people do. Uh, food drops, canned drops. And if you bring in so many cans or a certain type of can, then you also get a discount on your ticket as well. 

I mean, it can cost you what.  57 cents and you get like five or 10 bucks off , your ticket.  Yeah, that's huge savings. Yeah. , our activities that do cost money. We try to do things that can be discounted. There are times when we like to do the more expensive things and. You know, we budget for those. 

And we plan for those, especially if the month before was a low budget trip and we did free or discounted things, then we'll plan something a little bit more expensive the next month. But as much as possible, we try to do those discounted items. Like I'm going to.  Where did we go? The national historical.  Museum of Palo, the Palo Alto national historical.  More park. 

Okay. Like, what is that called? Like that was a free, completely free for us to go in and explore that and do things like that. But if, if we're national parks in general, we can in free because we have Jeremy's America, the beautiful pass. And so we just, we just tried to do as many activities as possible. For as low of a cost as we can. Now don't get us wrong. If there is something that we are dead set, something that is a must, something that we're not going to pass up. Painful price.  , it's just one of those things. 

Yeah. And enjoy the fair. If we're going to go to it, then we're just going to go to it. The state fair was one of those. Yes. Our tickets were discounted that we did not expect, so that was nice. But then we spent around 200 or more dollars just on.  Yes. And you're going to do that. The stopper. I knew we were going to do that. We have planned to do that because. The state fair. 

Like half of the reason you go to the state fair is for the food. Yes. Yeah, you can't miss out on everything. That's fraud. Um,  Well,  Not everything was fraud. But I mean, All the food vendors there. It was extremely good. We enjoyed everything that we got there. But it was budgeted. It was budget and plan. It was going to happen, right. If we were to go to, you know,  Something that we just can't pass up. 

We, we go to Washington DC. And we want to go through some of the museums that are there. They cost X, Y, and Z. Then we're going to pay whatever the cost is because how often are we gonna be able to go to Washington, DC and walk through everything? Right. 

.  Now what I'm going to suggest. I need to make sure that this is very crystal clear. If you are not dedicated to a budget, or if you are not self-disciplined. This is not for you. I need to make that very clear because what I'm about to suggest or . Another thing that you possibly can do. Can lead to a lot of financial stress on you that you do not need, unless you are very disciplined and you handle this correctly. But if you use a credit card,  There are a lot of reward points. As far as flying. Um, we have a chase Disney card that we use. And we use it for certain things. We don't use it all the time, but we use it for certain things and it gives us points. . . I've always used it for park tickets. And so we use those. To get a discount for what we've done, because they're giving us free points for using their card. But we are very self-disciplined to make sure that we keep that balance extremely low. Number one, it helps our credit. Number two, we're getting free points for doing things. But we keep it extremely low. 

And on top of that, um, a lot of times when you have a credit card, they want to extend your maximum spending limit. 

We have our own spending limit. Anytime that the spending limit has been extended. I do not. I do not use the expended. Like I won't go over a certain amount. That I don't want to have to pay for. Absolutely. Because they expended it by a couple of thousand dollars does not mean that I I'm going to use that extended limit. Yeah, it can get approved for three extra thousand dollars. I know, right. That's a trap that if you're, if you're not careful, you can fall in. And almost financial ruin. 

Yeah. We're not big on credit cards. In fact, that is the only credit card that we have. Um, other than  our mortgage, that is the only debt that we have. We don't do. We don't believe in a lot of debt. , we  don't want any other credit card. And we only got that one to increase the credit so that we could buy a home several, several years ago. We because we don't use credit. We pay cash for everything. Um, again, that Dave Ramsey coming out on us, but because of that, we are, our credit was just like non-existent and we had to, it wasn't. Wasn't active because we didn't have any kind of debt, no loans. 

Right. And so to purchase our first house several years ago, we had to get a credit card and then we did get one that came with the reward system. And things like that. And so, yes, we use our Disney rewards specifically for park tickets as what. In fact, last time we went to Disney at paid for all of them, all of our park tickets. 

So that was nice.  But be very cautious. I cannot say that enough with using credit cards do not become vacation broke.  

Yeah. And I'm not even going to suggest you even do that. Unless.  

You don't already have a credit card. If you already have credit cards. Get rid of them before you even consider getting anything else. Yes. If you can't. This is for you that don't already have credit cards. This is just a little budget, you know, kind of. Kind of talk here, . Yeah. So if you plan to go on vacation and you plan on using the credit card, save up that money.  Use that credit card, get those points, get, get everything that it rewards you with. And then pay that balance off because if not the interest alone will kill you. 

So those are.  Our personal tips and tricks things that we do in our family that enables us to travel every single month and have a really great time. , I have a personal budget for us for traveling every month. And there are a lot of times that I fall under that budget, especially if it's just a day trip and I will take that money that I did not spend and put it into next month. 

I will roll that over. So if we want to do a longer, more extended state, we can do that. And that's what we did with our south Padre trip. .  We didn't do too much in December and January. It was very small trips. And so we extended those. And rolled over what we didn't spend and got to do that far south Padre trips. 

So that was really nice.  

I really hope everyone. Um, Considers all of the things that we talked about, if travel is a priority for you and your family, or if it's something that you want to do more often than, you know, sit down and think about everything that we have talked about.   I guarantee you're going to find a way to make it. Happen to make. Um, travel happen more for you.  Join us next week, we are going to talk about something that's near and dear to Jeremy's heart. 

. It's a subject he's been wanting to talk about for a while and I keep delaying it, but we're going to talk about. How to deal with disappointments when you're on vacation.  

How We Afford to Travel