7 Tips to Plan a Beach Vacation on a Budget

With the warm weather finally hitting the scene, it’s time to think about planning a vacation to hit the waves. Think your budget won’t allow you to take a road trip this year? Think again.  Going to the beach doesn’t mean you have to break the bank to get there. With careful planning, you can put together a budget-friendly beach vacation that will be memorable for all involved. Use these seven tips for planning your beach vacation on a budget and it will only be a matter of time before you can feel the sand between your toes and the rays upon your skin.

1. Stay Within Driving Distance

Plane tickets for the family can be a major expense. Add in a rental car and hotel fees, and you’ll find yourself eating peanut butter and jelly three times a day during your vacation. Avoid all of the added travel expenses by choosing a location that’s within driving distance.

2. Go During the Off-Season

Peak season is usually during the months of June, July and August, but this may vary depending on your destination location. Regardless, you should do a little research and try to hit the beach during the off-season. Otherwise, you’ll be paying a considerable amount more, and chances are the beach will be incredibly crowded.

3. Look for Lodging Deals on Travel Websites

Think outside the box on this one and look at vacation rentals including homes, condos, or lodges that you can rent for a full week rather than a per-night fee. If you’re feeling extra adventurous, you can try camping at a state park. Not only will you feel closer to nature, you’ll also save a few extra bucks.

4. Consider Splitting a Rental With Another Family

If you’re able to lock down a great rental home for the week, think about whether or not any of your close friends or family members would be interested in vacationing with you. Splitting the rate with another family or group of people can mean a more upscale vacation spot becomes a viable option. Just make sure you all agree upfront on how you’ll pay for the lodging to avoid any miscommunication about payment expectations.

5. Pack Your Own Food

Yes, it’s fun to splurge on a good meal when you’re on vacation, but going out to eat for every meal will certainly rack up your bill. Instead, take a couple of coolers full of food and water to use while driving and during your stay. Pack dry goods as well, so you can cook up easy meals. For the overachievers out there, you may want to bring freezer meals for a hearty, homemade alternative to going out.

6. Download a Fuel App

Sites like GasBuddy.com specialize in providing you with the locations of the cheapest gas stations near you. Simply type in the zip code of the city you’re in and you’ll be given a range of options for selecting the station with the best fuel prices.

7. Set a Souvenir Budget

Every family member will probably want to bring something back from the trip, but too many somethings can shock your coin purse. Set a limit on how much you’re willing to pay for each family member and then sit back and watch them do the rest.

7 Tips to Plan a Beach Vacation on a Budget – Final Thoughts

Not sure where to go? Take a look these U.S. beach destinations that accommodate lower budgets for some ideas:

• Santa Barbara, Calif.
• Key Largo, Fla.
• Ocean City, N.J.
• Cape Cod, Mass.
• Atlantic City, N.J.
• Block Island, R.I.
• Myrtle Beach, S.C.
• South Padre Island, Texas

Your beach vacation is awaiting you. Use these tips to start planning a trip that you’ll remember forever.

Anum Yoon is a personal finance blogger and writer. She created and maintains her personal finance blog Current on Currency. You can follow subscribe to her blog newsletter right here for her weekly updates. She is currently plotting away on her budget excel sheet to figure out where her next travel destination will be.

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How I Almost Bought an $80,000 Car

Think temptation doesn’t happen to the best of us?  Think again  Here’s a personal story on why I started MoneyAhoy.com and how I almost blew $80,000 on a new sports car!

How I Almost Bought an $80,000 Car – Background

My wife and I are natural born savers.  We have always lived well below our means and put a premium on making due with less expensive solutions to our problems.  Because we were terrible at taking our money and investing it, much of it was sitting in money market accounts collecting interest.  Well, you may be able to imagine that after 8-10 years of modest living, we built up quite a sizable pile of cash.

How I Almost Bought an $80,000 Car – Temptation

After a while, I began to get a little bit of an itch.  What were we doing with all of this cash?!?  “It should be spent somehow, right?” I found myself saying…  Well, that’s when I let my mind start to wander on all the things that $80,000 cash could grant.

Through some kind of twisted mental process, I had convinced myself that the best use for the money would be  a sports car – an $80,000 BMW M3 Sports car to be exact.  I spent countless hours watching M3 videos, reading up on all the specs, and comparing it against other similar sports cars.  My wife wasn’t necessarily 100% in love with the idea, but she didn’t shoot down the idea either.  She basically left it up to me if I should get the car or not.  I was extremely close to being 100% mentally prepared to pull the trigger – I was literally days away from visiting the BMW dealership…

How I Almost Bought an $80,000 Car – MoneyAhoy.com Was Born

However, something in the back of my head was telling me that this decision wasn’t quite right for me.  I’d never owned anything close to a sports car.  A sports car really would make me look cool, but heck, I really didn’t even like working on cars much at all…

It’s at about this point in time where I somehow stumbled across Mr. Money Mustache.  This blog changed everything for me – I realized that I could take all of our hard earned money and use it to allow both my wife and me to retire early!  Why hadn’t this idea ever seriously occurred to us before?  I was about to forfeit more than two years of our working lives (the extra time we’d have to work to break even) just to get a flashy car – talk about insane in the membrane!

It was out of the ashes of this near financial death sentence that MoneyAhoy.com was born.  One of the main reasons I created this blog was to actually PREVENT myself from buying the M3!  I knew that if I started writing about saving, making, and investing money, I wouldn’t be able to actually blow the money on the car.  I used the principle of auto-suggestion to save myself from financial ruin  I created a type of mental wall to prevent frivolous spending.  I was able to successfully fool my brain long enough, through this blog, until the desire to own a sports car completely dissolved away!!

How I Almost Bought an $80,000 Car – Final Thoughts

Now that MoneyAhoy.com has been around for a just over a year, I can safely say that the desire to purchase a M3 is 100% gone  I’m happy with my little Corolla that gets nearly triple the mpg, saves hundreds on car insurance each year, will save me thousands on maintenance over the years, and will probably keep me safer as it won’t encourage “crazy sports car type driving”.  The Corolla doesn’t look as flashy, and the 0-60 has got to be in the double digits.  But, I’ll get MUCH more enjoyment out of retiring 2-3 years earlier with my wife than I ever could out of some quick accelerating hunk of metal!

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Car Downsizing – How I Got a Free Corolla by Savings $700+ a year on gas!

I read about people downsizing their home all the time to save money.  Maybe the kids have grown up and moved out, or maybe you’re just looking to reduce your monthly expenses by getting into something smaller.

But what about car downsizing to save money?  Here’s how I went from a Camry to a Corolla and ended up saving more than $750 a year while getting a model that was 10 years newer!

 Money Saving Breakdown – Car Downsizing to a Corolla

• Difficulty (Super Easy/Easy/Medium/Hard/Expert): Hard
• Average Savings per Year ($/year): 1,043
• Time Required (mins): 1,200
• Savings for your time ($/hr): 52

The Method – Use the Frugal Guide for Buying a Used Car

Well, my current car is ~16 years old, and I figured it was time for a change.  There are a couple of cosmetic things wrong with it that will prevent it from passing inspection (cracked windshield on worn tires).  I figured now would be a good time to switch into a vehicle that gets much better gas mileage.  My current 1997 Toyota Camry V6 gets about 21mpg on the average.  If determined that if I could switch to a Corolla I’d save ~$750 a year in gas.

If you’ve been following along with my monthly reports, you’ll know that I’ve been looking for a used Corolla since May 2013.  Finding a good used car at a decent price is a real challenge.  I estimate that it’s taken about 20 hours of my time.  There definitely isn’t anything easy about this process.  After looking at four cars and scouring hundreds of Craislist posts, I finally ran across one and made the jump to purchase it (shown in pics above and below)!

I followed much of the advice that I put into the Frugal Guide for Buying a Used Car that I developed a while back.  I was able to find a great deal on a car and eventually bargained to get it at $2,200 less than Kelley Blue Book ($9,100 – $6,900)!  Here are a couple of interesting points on the car/negotiation:

• The 2007 Corolla car had been in two low speed accidents.  Because of this, the seller posted the price at $7,600.  I knew this info from Craigslist going in – I really appreciated that the seller was honest about this and priced the car appropriately.  There is absolutely no cosmetic damage, and the repairs used all new parts – so that is in some ways a bonus.
• The seller put this in the posting: “Moving and must sell this week.”  This was a huge flag that they were motivated to sell, and I could get a good deal.
• The seller also added this: ‘Asking $7600, negotiable.”  Again, another clue that they were open to accepting a lower offer.
• The front tires needed to be replaced.  I used this to help get a lower price.
• I used other negotiating tactics such as asking what is the lowest price they would be willing to accept, pointing out the shortcomings of the car, and using plain-old silence at key points to get the better deal on this car downsizing project.

Car Downsizing – The Detailed Calculations

Here is a detailed table on how car downsizing can save you a ton of money!  Here are the assumptions I made when preparing this cost/savings table:

• The Camry repairs would total $490 to pass inspection (cracked windshield, worn windshield wipers, new tires, replace two internal door handles).
• The price of the 2007 Corolla was $6,900 + $190 for new front tires.
• I can sell the Camry for $1,000 on Craigslist.  I subtracted this from the Corolla price ($6,900 + $190 – $1,000 = $6,090).
• Prices for Camry repairs would be $100 over and above the Corolla for first five years, then repairs would be $200 over and above the Corolla for years 6-11.
• Assume price of gas is $3.30 and increases 3% each year.
• Assume that I get $250 deductible comprehensive/collision car insurance for the first 5 years and that the price goes up 3% each year.
• Assume Camry gets 21mpg on average and the Corolla gets 31mpg on average.
• Assume I drive 16,000 miles a year.  This means I’ll get to 250,000 (assumed life of vehicle) with the Corolla in ~11 years.

At the end of the 11 years, I’ll come out having an additional $5,880.83 in my pocket!  This basically means that I get the Corolla for free and stash an extra fifty eight hundred dollars over the next 11 years.  Put another way, I’m getting a 12.6% rate of return on my money for no risk!  Not too shabby!

I calculated that the cash investment to upgrade to the Corolla is costing me ~$547 a year.  Because I’m saving $750+ a year on gas, it’s like I’m getting paid to drive a nicer, newer car  I’m not sure why I ever waited this long to explore car downsizing, but I’m glad I finally made the switch.

Final Thoughts

If it’s nearing the time for you to get a new vehicle or if you’re driving around town in something that doesn’t get 30+mpg, you should really consider car downsizing!  You can save yourself a ton of money over the long run, and it’s better for the environment  Has anyone here taken the car downsizing leap??  If not, what are you waiting for?

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