Lower Your Vacation Costs By Planning Ahead

Our vacation is over and as usual we returned with less money in our wallets than we left with.  Most of the money we spent was well worth it but there were a few things we spent way too much on that could have been avoided.

Expensive Accessories
The first night there I discovered I had forgotten my toothbrush.  A trip to the hotel shop for a new one left me $55 poorer.  What, $55!  That’s what I thought when I first looked at the bill.  When the lady explained the price was actually in Mexican pesos, a little over $5 US, I felt a little better.  However, $5 is still a lot for a toothbrush!

Later in the week we realized we needed some baby safe bug spray for an excursion we were taking.  Once again the trusty hotel shop came through with a hefty price tag, 115 pesos ($10.60 USD).  A quick web search shows the same bottle for less than half the price here in the US.

A little better planning just for these two items would have saved us some money from our vacation budget.  These were small costs compared to the overall cost of the trip but I hate paying twice as much for something I know I could have bought for less.

Travel Food
As we waited in the airport in Mexico for our return flight, I was horrified to learn a simple fast food lunch would cost at least $10 USD per person.  We had baby food for our son, my wife was still full from breakfast, and I’m too cheap to pay $10 for an airport lunch so luckily we were able to avoid the expensive food. Had I thought ahead, I could have stored in my backpack some travel worthy food like bagels, rolls, and fruit while at breakfast that morning and enjoyed a free lunch at the airport.

Planning Ahead Saves Money
When you’re on the road everything costs more.  Vendors are able to charge more for their wares because you’re in need of what they’re selling and don’t have another way to get it.  The way to avoid paying higher prices is to plan ahead so you can buy things before you need them.  A good way to do this is to run a few appropriate web searches, in our case “travel packing list”, “packing list Mexico”, “packing list beach”, or “travel Tulum” would have helped.  Of course we didn’t do this and paid the price.  Don’t make the same mistake we did!

Thanks to Guest Writers
A special thanks to the people that helped keep this site updated with new posts while I was away!

– Advanced Personal Finance

– Lazy Man and Money

– Day Tipper

– Quickbooks Expert

– Plonkee

– No Credit Needed

Ben Edwards, the founder of Money Smart Life, saved up enough to buy a Nintendo back when he was 12 years old. When he used the money to buy shares of Wal-Mart stock instead, he knew he wasn't like the other kids... His addiction to personal finance has paid off for his family and now he's helping you to afford the life that you want. Check him out on the web at Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook.

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