OP here. sorry I have not been back. Thank you for suggestions. I would love to travel off season but I feel with older kids it gets harder because of school. National Parks and one Europe trip seem to be popular.

New Orleans for Jazz Fest
Disney World
Rehoboth or Outer Banks
Mexico all-inclusive


We can easily swing 2 $3000 trips a year for a family of 3, and 2-3 individual long weekend getaways for DH and I together or separately with friends to go to a concert, or visit a friend in California (around $1500).

I second the Paris/London and national parks suggestions. I also recommend Peru. You can do all of these on a budget.

To keep costs down, I try to stay in one place longer. That saves on train/bus/flight/car rental costs. I like to rent an AirBnb so we can make some of our own meals. My kids are still little so it's much easier to have breakfast and some food for quick meals like sandwiches than try to eat out for every meal and plan around nap time. It also saves money. Also, pre-covid I traveled a lot for work. I traveled to a lot of small towns so I decided to be brand loyal to Holiday Inn. They have properties all over the world. I have never accumulated enough points for a whole week away but I offset costs by spending a couple of nights at a hotel on longer trips or paying in full for long weekends away with points.

I’m a single mom. I’ve taken DS on several “big” trips and tons of smaller ones. Even when I was making $120k (now $200k) I could afford it because it was just us two. I know it’s not easy but we prioritized travel over other things. When he was younger I brought him along to business trips with my mom as the caregiver.

Self paid trips included stays at Hampton Inn type hotels, work trips were 5 star resorts so we got lucky there. My biggest expense hands down was air travel. Once I learned how to chase deals abd rack up points it became less of a cost concern.


Big trips
DisneyWorld * 2
Spring Break - London
Spring Break - Paris and London
Spring Break - Cruise (western Caribbean)
Summer - Seattle visit & Cruise to Alaska
Summer - Toronto
Summer - San Francisco * 2
Late Fall - Cruise (eastern Caribbean)

Small trips
NYC x 3
Beach vacations (Va Beach, Ocean City)
PA Dutch Country
Houston & Austin, TX
WV and western MD heritage railroad trips

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can travel practically anywhere on earth on a budget. We've done it despite having plenty of money.

Where did you go and how much was each vacation?

Not the poster who said that and some of these were lost trips due to covid…

March dc-Vienna British airways $286 rt pp , air bnb’s, total trip cost $1800 2 adults, 1 week
May dc-paris SAS $400 rt pp, 1 week $3,000 4 people with air bnb view of the Eiffel Tower
October dc-Malaga, Spain $250 Rt pp, estimated cost $2,500 family of 4, 1 week.
July Family YMCA adirondacks, all inclusive but food, $1400 total 1 week, family of 4
August MDI Maine 1 week, $1800-2200 depending on lodging
Quebec Canada $2,500 1 week at christmas, old town area, driving.
Canaan valley, WV Christmas $1600 6 nights.

I hope that pricing helps! I often had to search hard and early for good lodging prices and some
Trips were planned based on cheap flights I found.

Those weren’t direct flights, correct? Were they booked through the same airline or did you cobble together legs via different airlines?

The Vienna trip had a layover in London but was BA rountdrip. Paris with SAS had a 24 hour layover in Copenhagen but that was incorporated into the trip. The trip to Spain had a short layover in Madrid. All with the same airline.

Oh and like I said, I subscribed to Scott’s cheap flights, searched Google flights, Airbnb, booking.com, ect.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can travel practically anywhere on earth on a budget. We've done it despite having plenty of money.

Where did you go and how much was each vacation?

Not the poster who said that and some of these were lost trips due to covid…

March dc-Vienna British airways $286 rt pp , air bnb’s, total trip cost $1800 2 adults, 1 week
May dc-paris SAS $400 rt pp, 1 week $3,000 4 people with air bnb view of the Eiffel Tower
October dc-Malaga, Spain $250 Rt pp, estimated cost $2,500 family of 4, 1 week.
July Family YMCA adirondacks, all inclusive but food, $1400 total 1 week, family of 4
August MDI Maine 1 week, $1800-2200 depending on lodging
Quebec Canada $2,500 1 week at christmas, old town area, driving.
Canaan valley, WV Christmas $1600 6 nights.

I hope that pricing helps! I often had to search hard and early for good lodging prices and some
Trips were planned based on cheap flights I found.

Those weren’t direct flights, correct? Were they booked through the same airline or did you cobble together legs via different airlines?

The Vienna trip had a layover in London but was BA rountdrip. Paris with SAS had a 24 hour layover in Copenhagen but that was incorporated into the trip. The trip to Spain had a short layover in Madrid. All with the same airline.

I do have to point out that many on here who are boasting about how they found ultra cheap flights, etc are people who aren't limited to traveling during school holidays. One thing I'm looking forward to in being retired and having kids out of the nest is the ability to travel off peak. It will probably save us about 50%.

DC's former school would schedule spring break at unusual times, and it was wonderful. We made several relatively cheap excursions to European cities when they weren't crowded at all. His current school schedules spring break at Easter and it is terrible for travel. Everything gets booked up early and is very expensive and crowded.

I'm with others who suggest searching early for flights and being flexible as to destination if you want to travel abroad during the peak vacation windows. Otherwise, there are so many wonderful things to see in the US -- the Western National Parks, Maine, the Florida Keys, New Orleans.... All are very different from the DC area and make good road trips.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Credit card points. We haven’t paid for an international flight in years.

Could you expand on this? I feel like we NEVER get enough points for flights even though we put everything on credit and are never late with payments.

NP here
Chase credit cards in our family
Freedom Unlimited - 1.5% on everything
Freedom - 5% rotating category
Points can be easily combined within family. Watch out for opening promo (right now Preferred gives new customers 100K points), alternate opening new cards between spouses for extra bonuses/referrals.
Sapphire Preferred/Reserve - 3% on travel and some other categories. Book through Ultimate rewards - 1000 point = 1.5 dollars with Reserve (1.25 with Preferred). Alternatively, transfer points to your preferred airline/hotel if its cheaper that way (compare before booking)

Solid advice. If you just have points from your basic spending, you won't be able to get enough points in a year to book flights for 4 people. Let's say you can put $4k/month on the cards, if you optimize you might be able to get to 110k points in a year- enough for probably 2-3 domestic tickets or 1, possibly 2 econ tickets to Europe. So you can either take a couple of years to build up enough points, or strategically mix in signup bonuses periodically to get big batches of points like the Sapphire Preferred 100k current bonus. This is all entirely possible, but takes attention to detail and a steep learning curve in how to maximize points values, as there are a lot of different ways to utilize them. Sites like frequentmiler.com and upgradedpoints.com have good starter guides. Please don't mention that tall guy (Points Guy ugh he's the worst).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Credit card points. We haven’t paid for an international flight in years.

Could you expand on this? I feel like we NEVER get enough points for flights even though we put everything on credit and are never late with payments.

NP here
Chase credit cards in our family
Freedom Unlimited - 1.5% on everything
Freedom - 5% rotating category
Points can be easily combined within family. Watch out for opening promo (right now Preferred gives new customers 100K points), alternate opening new cards between spouses for extra bonuses/referrals.
Sapphire Preferred/Reserve - 3% on travel and some other categories. Book through Ultimate rewards - 1000 point = 1.5 dollars with Reserve (1.25 with Preferred). Alternatively, transfer points to your preferred airline/hotel if its cheaper that way (compare before booking)