Hellobee Boards

1000--1200ish? For a week long vacation. 600-700 for a long weekend. We usually get a nicer place, go out for more meals for a long weekend trip and try to spend less money if we are able to be somewhere longer.

We usually do one "big" vacation and several long weekends in a year. However, since we're temporarily living in Europe, we're taking advantage and traveling more than usual. It's offset by the fact that my husband's company pays our rent. So this year, we went on a cruise, a long weekend in Paris, a trip to Disneyland Paris and are heading to the Mediterranean for two weeks in August. I'll be sad when this adventure is over!

@MamaG: @TRAVELLINGBEE: Like @lawbee I also travel hack and we only really need to budget for expenses like activities and local transportation and food. Even though I don't travel for work as much as I used to, I still have plenty of points and miles because of travel hacking. For example, we put our daycare expenses on our credit card which is almost enough for two free roundtrip tickets to California (from DC) in a year. We put almost all of our expenses on various credit cards to earn points and miles.
I did a series on travel hacking on hellobee, which includes links to many great resources: http://www.hellobee.com/2017/01/30/have-children-will-travel-traveling-for-free-using-points-and-miles-part-1/
http://www.hellobee.com/2017/03/14/have-children-will-travel-traveling-for-free-using-points-and-miles-part-2/
http://www.hellobee.com/2017/03/15/have-children-will-travel-traveling-for-free-using-points-and-miles-part-3/

If we need to fly, it probably ends up being $4000-5000 for a week. I aim to cover either the airfare or hotel with points so our out of pocket cost would be lower. We went to Hawaii 2 years ago for a week and spent just a fraction. It was awesome! I think we spent maybe $1000 for the week on everything -- airfare, hotel and food -- we had miles for airfare and most of our hotel nights. We even stayed at an amazing hotel that was normally $500+/night... I want to go back one day!!!

This year we are spending $4000 on airfare alone because we're visiting family in Europe. Luckily we won't have too many expenses once we arrive since we'll be staying at their family cabin.

Just to caution people about the travel hacking -- it is deeply rewarding to get so much "free value" out of trips, but it can also be time consuming, frustrating and possibly NOT FOR YOU if you carry credit card debt. No amount of points will ever be worth paying 20%+ credit card interest! So if you're not credit card debt free, this isn't for you.

The airfare if necessary is so variable so I'm not going to include that though usually we have enough travel rewards to pay for at least one ticket. I try to spend $150 per night max for lodging and we stay in Airbnb's these days. We usually have one meal out a day, one meal in and then something quick/cheap. Food still is easily $100 a day. Lastly for activities it depends on the place but our last trip to San Diego we spent about $500. So that's $1750 plus transport for a 5 day trip which is sort of our sweet sport right now (gives us the weekend to recover when we get home!)

That's for a family trip just us 3. We do two other 5-7 day long vacations every summer with family/friends that are much more economical where we spend maybe 2000 total for both.

We tend to take one big international trip a year (usually 2-2.5 weeks). We cover flight costs and sometimes lodging with points (though we're more likely to stay in reasonably-priced local places) so we really only have to pay for in-country transportation, activities, and meals. I would say we spend between $1-2k depending on the country and how many cities we're visiting.

I know this will get more expensive as the kids get bigger though...