The catch-22 of travel is rather obvious to those who’ve completed domestic adventures with family in tow. For all the rest, relaxation and time away from work, vacations are expensive. How expensive? According to a Forbes magazine article citing figures from American Express, you could easily spend more than $1,000 per person by the time your trip has wrapped up and you’ve returned home. This is of course why people will scrimp and save their way toward having the funds available to travel with loved ones. However, travel expert Andrew M. Berke is here to offer some insider tips for 2018 and beyond as the spring and summer vacation seasons starts to dawn on us all. Read on, take notes and save money – your bank account will be thankful you did.
First, the good news: Your specific destination doesn’t matter. In the eyes of Andrew M. Berke, a vacation is a vacation regardless of where you plan to travel to. Some trips may cost a little more than others due to distance or admission fees, but that just means you’ll have to stick to your savings plans a little bit harder. When establishing a vacation fund, Mr. Berke says establishing a dedicated vacation account will prevent you from pulling funds from it during the weeks and months leading up to the trip. When it comes to contributing money to this account, Andrew M. Berke has this insider tip: add the same amount bi-weekly from each of your paychecks and stick to it.
One of the trick Mr. Berke has picked up along the way is that off-season visits are a great way to shave financial costs and stress off from your vacation. For example, Walt Disney World sees the fewest amount of visitors during September up until Thanksgiving and around Memorial Day. This is according to Frommer’s Travel Guides, which adds that weeks at Walt Disney World are almost always a peak time of visitorship. It’s this time of pre-planning that can work wonders when determining the length of your vacation and when to see specific sites. TripSavvy.com adds that days of the week factor into ticket prices at Walt Disney World, so a mid-week visit during the winter break might offer the most rewarding cost-benefit comparison.
As Andrew M. Berke says, you can never do enough planning when it comes to a once-in-a-lifetime trip. The idea is to come home with memories and not a severely low bank account. He hopes that you accomplish exactly that by heeding the tips above for your next trip.