If you are like me, you can get overwhelmed by the total cost of a trip. The price of airfare, hotel, car and food combined can seem out of reach for your budget. This was something that used to stop me from taking any trips at all. Not after I figured out this next trick!
Does anyone remember old school Walmart/K-mart layaway? You pay a certain percent upfront and make payments on a set schedule. There would be a final date to pay it off in full. Shout out-Walmart for making Christmas possible for my kids! LOL
Essentially, you can do that with your trip. The airfare is your deposit. It’s the part you pay for upfront. (I’ll address some ways to save on airfare in a later blog.) There are a LOT of travel sites (think hotels.com, Travelocity, Priceline, etc) and hotel websites that will give you the option to reserve your room and pay when you get there. The same goes for car rentals. This allows you time to prepare for that cost and also, allows you to continue to compare rates. Many hotels have extremely flexible cancellation policies. I always double check to make sure that is the case. Recently, I had a hotel room reserved and when I checked the rate before travel it had dropped by $130. I just changed my reservation and kept moving!
These pictures are from our daughters 18th birthday trip to LA. I rented a convertible for REALLY inexpensive through Travelocity.com and we paid when we got there. The same was done for our hotel room. I was thankful that we did that because, when I checked to make sure the rate was the same, the hotel was completely booked! We were able to break up the cost of our trip over about four months! That made it budget friendly! I hope these tips help! I’d love to hear if anyone else does this.
Great idea, I never would have thought to check on cancellations for a hotel.
Thank you!