How To Go On A Cheap Vacation

Yes, it is possible! Not only can you go on a cheap vacation - but you have several ways to go about accomplishing this goal. I will highlight a couple here. 

Renting With Friends

One way is to rent a vacation home with a group of friends. This works even if you have a family and it could cut your costs by quite a bit. I'll explain with an example:

View from the porch of the lake house

This past summer, my girlfriend, another couple and I rented a lake house in the Arbuckle region of Oklahoma - which, by the way, is a b-e-a-utiful part of the country.  If you've never been - I highly recommend it. It's only about a two hour drive from Dallas and about an hour South of Oklahoma City.

We rented the place for a weekend and it ended up costing each person $62.50 a night!  I don't care which way you slice it - that's a great deal. The rental itself was $250 a night (not including tax).  That means if there were six of us we could have stayed there for $42 a night. After six - they added $10 per night/per guest. Even still, it would cost each person $34 a night if eight people stayed there! Can you imagine? $34 a night for a great view, your own personal hot tub, and a great party with 7 of your friends? Yes, please.

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Using Credit Cards

Another way you can save a buttload of cash when going on vacation is using credit card points. This is potentially the cheapest way to travel. There is one very important thing you should know before committing to this: if you are in credit card debt - don't do it.  It's not worth it. If you are not in credit card debt - this is well worth it.

I haven't been playing the game for very long - but I've already saved hundreds (100% free flight back home to Chicago to meet my niece for the first time in October via American Airlines) and so far I have earned about $1,000 in travel credits. 

Now - having those credits is kinda pointless - unless I have a plan for them. My initial goal was to earn enough credits to travel back and forth between Dallas, where I live, and Chicago , where my family is. That goal has been accomplished. My next goal is to see more of Texas - which by the way is H-U-G-E huge - for nothing more than a gas tank or two and some food. So I will be getting a couple of point-earning credit cards that will allow me to do just that. 

And let me just say - earning these credit card "points" and "miles" is fun and extremely easy. I will explain just how easy in my next post.

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