Planning a Vacation?

With the year coming to an end, many people are planning last minute vacations or planning vacations for next year.  There is so much to plan on for vacations that at least for me it can be overwhelming and I end up just winging a lot of it!  First, you have to decide where you are going and what you want to accomplish there!  Are you going somewhere to swim and relax, hike, ski, shop, sightsee, or looking for family activities?  Then there is how are you going to get to your destination – car, plan, or train. For my family we end up driving places now because it is just too much money for four plane tickets.  You then have to decide where you are going to stay – hotel, timeshare, cabin, or family members house. If you are considering buying a timeshare, you must fully understand the pros and cons of your timeshare ownership because you might experience trouble should you decide not to continue with your ownership in the future. Why is it so hard to cancel a timeshare? Cancellation is difficult due to financial reasons.  Next there is how much money can you budget for food and entertainment.

After all that, you get to start planning what you are going to do.  Maybe you decide you are going to try to make some of your own meals rather than eating out three meals a day.  We also pack snacks or pick some up for our hotel room and try to eat at least one meal our hotel room.  As far as entertainment goes, I sometimes buy tickets for places or events ahead of time because we can usually save money that way.  I am not one to plan every minute of our vacation though because with kids you have to kind of go with the flow sometimes!  One thing I never really thought about was travel health insurance.  Maybe if we were flying or going on a cruise, I would check it out but for now we just hope for the best.

I also recently heard about visitor medical insurance.  It is insurance to help you with medical bills if you were to get sick while overseas.  I think before I looked into this, I would call my health insurance and see what exactly they would cover, but it is something to think about because medical bills are outrageous.

Overall, there is a lot to plan and think about when planning a vacation.  So just breathe, take notes with ideas, search around the web and remember it is okay to wing it sometimes!

Mama’s Money Savers Disclosure:  This is a sponsored post.  Please see my Disclosure Policy.