Traveling Cheaply

As many know, I have two teenagers now,

the pharmacist with my Xanax prescription
the wine store owner with my favorite white
the grocery store as I am buying for a small army weekly

This past week we went on a Spring Break trip for 7 days and only spent 1400 dollars!

Yes, that's right 1400!

How did we do it, I thought I'd share:

Spring skiing is your best value when it comes to travel. We drove to Killington saving airfare traveling out west this year.

We started with a rental car from Enterprise in Boone, it was much cheaper than trying to rent a car at an airport or city! The car (a Dodge Ram truck) was $263.00 for the week.

How do you survive a 14 hour drive with 3 teenagers?

Cooler!

I filled a cooler with snacks and drinks. A case of water costing 2.99 vs a bottle of water at a gas station stop at $1. Of course since we were on vacation, I really saved money buying the 12 packs of soda at Walgreens, etc than purchasing the same thing individually at a gas station.

I was also able to hit the grocery store for snacks, combining the junk they love along with a few healthy alternatives. Once they went through the junk (15 minutes in to the drive) they had nothing left but healthy snacks!

We did splurge once a day with some fast food but ordering simple ChickFilA sandwiches and letting them grab drinks, etc out of the cooler we were still able to satisfy those urges.

Oh and of course, $1 Sweet Tea at McDonalds!

Another great money saver with teenage boys was finding lodging that included Breakfast! If they have an afternoon cookie or two even better!

We found the Killington Mountain Lodge, 1.5 miles from the resort on a website for $59/night!

And that included a buffet breakfast every morning of Vermont favorites, syrup, granola, milk, etc.

This is a very casual, comfortable hotel complete with a 20 person outdoor hot tub, a pool, pool table, games in the common area complete with a fire each night, oh, and a bar for Mom and Dad. We relaxed each evening in the common area, the boys even checking out the nightly movie in the theater. (Rogue One one night!)

The cooler came into the room with snacks and drinks, giving the kids what they needed after the snow.

We went out one night, splurging spending $100 on dinner for 4 at an Italian restaurant.  The rest of the week using grocery stores deli department and pizza delivery.  Here's the breakdown:

Italian Restaurant - $100/ four pasta dinners, water and one glass of wine (hey, I'm stuck with boys)
Pizza Delivery - $30 - 1 large pepperoni pizza and two orders of garlic knots plus delivery tip.
    The boys took the pizza to the hot tub and enjoyed hanging out.
Grocery Store - $18 - two large vats of Beef Stew one large vat of mashed potatoes.
Grocery Store - $15.99 one large rotisserie chicken leftover mashed potatoes and veggie side.

So we ate well, spent time at the lodge and didn't miss out on the Killington experience.

Lift tickets to Killington for spring skiing were only $25/day purchasing them 2 days early online in block of 3 days.

Good thing to remember for spring skiing, if you are only going one day make sure you bring a lift ticket from another resort and Killington gives a 50% discount off of your lift ticket!

Saving money in Killington opened up the coffers for adventure in Baltimore. I still was able to get out of the city for around $400 for all of us. We enjoyed an Oriole baseball game, crab feast, skating at Charm City Skatepark and a hotel downtown!

Oh and talking to a local, we found a way back South avoiding all the tolls on the way back including avoiding the traffic on 95!!

There's nothing like traveling and experiencing with children, all you have to do is a little early planning and you can save big while having the best experience.

The best part of the trip was listening to one kid whisper to another, "Dang! $9 for a cheeseburger, that's pretty expensive!

This way I'm preparing them for those traveling trips their senior year in high school or college or Spring Break!