If you are like most American families, with the stagnant recession, escalating gas prices, and unstable job market, you’ve chosen to forgo vacations for in-home activities. Believe it or not, there is a way to stick to a no-credit card spending mentality, and still provide a wonderful family vacation to your family.
Because booking hotel, airplane, and car rentals often request a credit card as payment, it takes a little more creativity to make a family vacation possible with using plastic. Sometimes, it might involve using family and friends who still use credit cards. Do not hesitate to give close family and friends the money to secure vacation necessities that require credit cards.
Some vacation necessities like car rental companies charge ridiculous fees to use a debit card versus a credit card. It is also a good idea to think about getting a prepaid phones, or even phone cards, so you don’t spend extra money on long distance charges with your cell phone provider. Maybe even look into renting a phone at your destination.
For instance, when I traveled to Israel about six months ago, by renting a cell phone through an Israeli cell-phone provider, it saved me hundreds of dollars.
Here are some tips to avoid using credit cards and encourage the children to take part in the planning before winter break hits:
1. Start saving change in a vacation jar.
By saving all change in a vacation jar, it’s an easy and painless way to pay for the entertainment portion of the vacation. Use the saved money to schedule which museums, attractions, amusement parks, and concerts, you plan on taking the children. Have the children place some of their allowance money into the jar if they are willing to participate.
2. Pick a dollar denomination and save those dollars.
Whether its five dollar bills or one dollar bills, whatever denomination is chosen, stick to saving that bill type. My father bought a two thousand dollar computer by saving five dollar bills (no joke). This savings pile could be used to pay for food and car rental fees.
3. Use automatic transfer options.
Whenever you set up an automatic transfer from you’re checking to the savings, it’s another easy way to painlessly save money. Because you never really get to see the money, it’s a lot easier to save the money. Consider saving anywhere of about $10-$50/month. By saving just fifty dollars, in twelve months you could have saved enough money to purchase the airplane tickets.
4. Find hotels with free food.
It’s always a great idea to try to find a hotel that includes continental breakfasts and a kitchen. Even if your family eats in one meal a day, you could save hundreds of dollars a week. This money could be used for entertainment or souvenir shopping.
5. Try to find layaway hotels.
Some hotels like Apple Core Crop., offers a layaway program. Customers can choose the amount of money they would like to pay upfront and budget the rest accordingly.
6. Try to find layaway vacation packages.
More and more travel agencies are offering entire vacation packages on layaway, which makes it easier to use debit and cash to pay.
7. Have the children purchase their own souvenirs.
Decide upon a reasonable amount of cash to give to each child to spend on extra food or souvenirs they wish to purchase. This way the child can understand the costs associated with taking a vacation.
It’s important to emphasize the power of saving small amounts of cash each day. While some experts suggest using credit cards and allowing no more than six months to pay balances off; why put yourself in borrowing situation ? Its one thing to borrow money to pay medical bills or a sudden unexpected cost, but a vacation should be all about relaxation and rejuvenation, not stress and turmoil six months down the debit-insomnia road.
I love the idea of having kids purchase their own survivors. We did this on our last vacation – my son found a shark tooth necklace that he really liked (I had gotten one in Mexico a few years earlier) and decided that was the thing he wanted from that vacation. He thought long and hard about it, and bought it with his own money. He wears it often, and is proud to say that he bought it himself!
That’s awesome Travis! We did something similar with our 5 year old when we went to Pennsylvania and New York this summer. He didn’t make up his mind as fast as he would have had we been the one paying for it. He thought long and hard too and eventually decided on a great toy that wasn’t a piece of crap. LOL
Good suggestions. I hate using credit cards for anything, let alone vacations. I agree with Travis on the kids purchasing their souvenirs. That’s a really neat idea.
I’m with you Matt, I hate using credit cards for anything, in fact, I own not one single credit card of any kind. 😀 I like it that way.
I don’t own any credit cards either Brad. That makes us total weirdos, you know.
Totally and completely weird here! (and PROUD of it too!) 😀
Very creative ideas! When it comes to international travel, phone calls can be a major expense. I found that texts cost less than phone calls on my cell phone for international communication, but you have good ideas, too.
That’s a great idea! 😀 I’ve personally never traveled out of the country but hope to one day soon. Texts will definitely be one of my options of choice. 😀
It would be really hard to take a vacation without using a credit card. We use them just to make it easier to pay for things, but as you know, its much easier to ‘overspend’ when you aren’t using cash. I remember when I was growing up, my family would go on vacations and we would have a ‘vacation jar’ just as you mentioned. We put all of our change in that jar and that would pay for most of the food and camping spot. We never went on ‘expensive’ vacations.. we did it the real way, of going to the mountains and finding a camping spot next to a lake or river. Getting out in the wild was our thing.. I miss those days!
I don’t know Ben. I know there are some things where it’s just more convenient to use credit cards but I have found that my debit card can do just as much with only a little bit more hassle. The only thing I’ve had the hassle of dealing with was car rental but we did manage to work it out with our check card. The key in that scenario is having enough extra money to cover the hold that is generally placed on the card until the sale is complete.
I am with you dude on the vacation stuff. I LOVE the mountains and those kinds of vacations are what I love too. Hiking, boating, and swimming oh my! LOL I love it! Thanks for the comment! 😀
Just to clarify, there is a HUUUUGE difference between paying for a vacation (or anything else) with your credit card and paying with credit. I assume you’re issue is with folks who go on a vacation without the cash to immediately pay off the card? There is certainly nothing wrong with a little piece of plastic that moves your money from you to the vendor and earns you some sort of benefit in the process. I look at a credit card just like a debit card, check or cash. They are all methods of payment, the only difference to me is that I get a benefit for using the card.
We pay for virtually everything in our lives on our card. I also pay it off completely every Friday. I think of it as a debit card that just takes a few days to pull the money from your account rather than a few seconds. Our CC is affiliated with Air Canada so we earn mileage on every purchase. Running our normal gas/groceries/utilities/insurance etc through the card means we have enough for 4 free flights to Europe every other year. This year we stayed in North America and did New Orleans + cruise to Mexico + week in San Fransisco. In addition to free flights, we cashed in my husband’s Holiday Inn points from his business travel, for free hotel nights in SF (vs $279/night). The cruise, any restaurants or activities we did all went on the card. We were earning flight mileage on this holiday that will be used on the next. Midway through the holiday I went online and paid off any charges from the first week. When we got home I paid off the restaurant charges from the second week. Done.
I never put anything on the card I couldn’t have paid for in cash. I just use it as a way to earn free flights, and as a bonus it means virtually all our spending it itemized in one place. The only things that can’t go on the card are our mortgage, property taxes and the electricity bill. When we bought our last (used) vehicle we asked for the maximum we could put on a credit card ($2k deposit) and paid cash for the rest. I paid off the $2k on the card later that day. Why wouldn’t I take those 2000 miles just for swiping my card and taking 1 minute to go online to pay it off? For folks who don’t love to travel like we do, then by all means choose a card that gives you cash back, or something else you can use. Credit is only dangerous if you can’t restrict your spending to what you can afford, for me it’s a way to cut our travel costs just for doing what we would have done anyway. Of course the credit card complanies hate people like me that have never paid interest, but too bad!
Great point Jenn, and I completely agree. This post is certainly not directed at people like you who have the discipline to pay your credit cards off each and every month. This site’s primary focus is on those people who have debt and those people generally have proven they struggle with treating credit cards that way. Definitely hard to argue with any of your points because I would LOVE to fly to Europe for free. 😀 That is awesome!!!
I personally do not own a single credit card, nor does my wife, but I understand that the decision that we made for our family may not be right for everyone, but in most cases, it’s a good idea for people with debt. The way I see it, if you have debt, you shouldn’t have credit cards at least until you’ve proven you can handle that responsibility. I totally believe my wife and I could, but we’re perfectly happy without them and see no reason to start using them again.
The best part about your comment is that you emphasize the importance of financial responsibility and understanding that credit cards shouldn’t be used as an open tab to buy whatever you want whether you have the ability to pay for your purchases or not. Thank you so much for the detailed and well thought out comment. 😀