035 | How a family of 5 travels for $2500 a year

Ordinary Sherpa: Family Adventure Coaching and Design

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Key Takeaways

1. Know what aspects of your travel budget are negotiable. Finding the balance between value and cost are helpful, high price does not always equate to high value.
2. Tourism is designed to play on your emotions. They know when people are on vacation they expect to pay more money. How can you get the benefits from a vacation experience without the added vacation price points?
3. Build on your network to get insights into local and free options for attractions and safe areas to stay off the beaten path.
4. Don’t fight the crowds, your budget will thank you for it. Traveling and eating during non-peak days and times can help save money.
5. Look for ways to optimize your budget to design the experience. How might you hack gift cards, gift experiences for birthdays or holidays, or research options within the attractions. While the example shared was from a health insurance benefit, you can often find gift cards savings through other sites or benefits. We have also gotten free baseball game tickets by completing a kids science program.
6. What aspects of your travel budget actually qualify as a vacation expense versus living expense. If you maintain a similar lifestyle while on vacation you can maintain the spending in your traditional budget categories. For example, groceries and gas might be similar to your typical living expenses.
7. Try to align expectations through the lens of the kids. Many of the aspects of vacations that parents imagine will be outside the conscious minds of your kids, especially at earlier ages. Try to engage the kids voice in the planning and decision making when appropriate.
8. Travel with infants and toddlers is relatively inexpensive. Their tickets and admission are free or discounted, and often don’t add much to the cost of accommodations. While traveling at every age is fun, don’t discount travel with infants. Infants can’t retain the books we read, but that doesn’t mean we don’t do it. Travel can support many aspects of their development.