When Connie
Francis made this tune popular vacations in my family were load up and head for
the lake where we swam, fished, played cards and got royally sunburned for two
weeks every summer. Occasionally a long
weekend as well.
I was so envious
of my friend Sandee, her dad worked for an airlines in Tulsa, OK and her aunt
lived at Anaheim, CA. So every summer
their vacations were free air fare to Anaheim and two weeks of Disney Land.
I swore when
I was an adult my kids would vacation more than going to the lake to bake until
they were a Crispy Critters(remember that cereal?) in the summer sun.
By the time
our oldest was three and the youngest six months we were taking big traveling
vacations. At first it was small places
like Silver Dollar City (which had nothing
to speak of for children in the mid 1970’s) and DogpatchUSA (now out of business). Then
as the kids got older we widened our horizons to Six
Flags Over Texas.
Then in
October of 1981 we took advantage of the kids being out of school for various
reasons for nearly two weeks and headed toward Florida. At age 31 I had finally made it to the Magic Kingdom, I
stood there with tears running down my face so excited to see the castle and
upset that my kids didn’t want to let me enjoy the moment. We were finally on the BIG vacation and it
wasn’t going exactly as I had planned. I
made a fool of myself being upset, something the family has never let me live
down now 32 years later. Such feelings and upset are one of the downsidesof big
planned out vacations as we all know.
Nothing ever goes exactly according to plan.
We so fell
in love with the magic of Disney we’ve been back over 30 times and are anxious
to go again sometime in the future.
Anyone who knows me in the least knows this. The last time we were there it was December
2006, over six long years ago.
Life and
unemployment has kept us either at home or west of Oklahoma traveling for work.
I’ll admit
it, we have been secretly planning a getaway for December this year for several
months, but reality set in recently and that trip will not be happening unless
several things change.
It started
small. Traditionally we drive down most
trips. We love to travel with our
camper, and see historical sites along the way to and from. Stopping at beaches is also a treat. The first reality check was the escalating
cost of fuel. We could fly, stay in a
resort hotel for a longer visit eating all our meals out cheaper than we could
drive and boondock three days there and three days back! Okie Dokie.
I like flying and six extra days in the “Happiest Place on Earth” works
for me, even if it would cut down our tourism to other venues in the Orlando
area. I know we could have rented a car, but that part of planning hadn't happened yet.
Then my son
had to use most of his vacation time for the year due to an illness he couldn’t
seem to kick earlier this year.
Thankfully it’s now gone.
Follow that
with my husband’s job telling him he would probably be going to some schooling
in Las Vegas at the time we were planning on taking the trip.
Then there
was the budget, a HUGE consideration.
You see we, as most who read this know, are on the Dave Ramsey Total
Money Makeover Plan to become totally debt free. We are finally to the point where our
snowball is really rolling. Look out this
is where the adult part comes in…
I’m a math
nerd and I started playing with numbers, trying to figure out how to both keep
the snowball rolling swiftly and how to pay for a totally blow out vacation
with all the frills that included annual passes so we could go back 2-3 more times in the year that followed. We are talking some serious cash. A number
that made me rethink the whole idea. I
wanted to be debt free MORE than I wanted to go to Florida—who is this woman
and where did she come from?
I calculated
up that if we put the vacation off until spring/summer 2014 and used that money
for the snowball we could not only pay off one full debt, but most of another
and save over $500 in interest. All by
waiting ONLY an extra 4-6 months. At the end of that 4-6 months all our consumer debt would be paid off and only our mortgages would remain. Definitely a reason to celebrate, BIG.
When I
mentioned this to the guys they both thought, as I did, that delaying the big trip was an excellent idea. Sean could use the extra money he would have been spending for the trip this winter on his house he is building and still have money for the trip next spring/summer. He would also have
more vacation time. Gary and I would have a lot more ready cash that we wouldn’t feel
like we were shorting a bill to pay for the trip and we’d enjoy it all the more!
However, we
all love to travel, we love vacation and a full year doing NOTHING might drive
all three of us nuts. Enter the book “The Great American Staycation”.
I found this
book by accident while at the library and I am so glad I did. Staycation is not a new idea, in fact it is a
banned word in some areas I’m certain, because in the last few years it’s been
so heavily over used. I know I have not
been fond of it as a word. Remember I
grew up staying close to home for every vacation. A staycation to me basically was the same as
deprivation. No big vacation? Then we
must be truly poor!
The first
thing I learned from the book was to adjust my attitude. In the book it talked about how you plan for
a vacation. Boy do we, I do cost
comparison charts, menus, travel routes, time schedules, budget I plan for a year or more for our big
trips. Even the second to fourth trip in
a year to WDW because each trip is a little different. I thoroughly believe that half the fun of a
vacation is the planning. Yet in the
last several years where we’ve been doing “Trips on a tank full” because our
budget wouldn’t allow anything else I’ve never really planned them out. After all they were “just something to do
near home.”
As I read it
became clear to me the solution for our year to wait for our big trip(s) in
2014 was to do PLANNED Staycations of under 100 miles for as near to free as
possible. That way we could have fun,
relax and not feel financially guilty about melting part of our debt snowball.
I put the
idea to my family this way:
My
suggestion was every other pay day we take one to three days of “vacation”, but
instead of using vacation time that would take away from our 2014 trip(s) we’d
do it on weekends/holidays. Oklahoma
City was as far as we would possibly travel, roughly 100 miles from our
home. The closer to home the better,
because diesel is EXPENSIVE.
On our “vacation”
days we would eat just like we would on vacation. Many days on vacation we eat donuts or other
cold foods for breakfast, but at least once each trip to WDW we eat at Trail’s
End all you can eat breakfast buffet. So
occasionally we will “treat” ourselves to Golden Corral’s breakfast buffet. The guys really liked this, it is a good
buffet and if we are on vacation, why not?
While I do
fix some meals when traveling in the camper we eat out a lot too, at places
that are new to us. There are hundreds
of restaurants in our area we’ve never tried. So some of our staycation meals
would be at new to us restaurants, including fast foods we’ve never tried. Yes, there are fast food places we’ve never
been to—like Panda Express, why I don’t know, we just haven’t.
The list
went on, listing how we normally vacation and how when we will do it on the
staycation.
The guys
said it sounded great, but WHERE would we would go. Again I quoted the book. It suggested things such as looking at your
local city/town’s tourist information website.
Okay, I’ve done that in the past for Tulsa, but I had never checked the
calendar of events of smaller venues in the local small towns as the book
suggested.
Imagine my
surprise to find that in the next few months the little town that is less than
20 miles from us has SEVERAL different events going on that we had no clue
about. Things we’d be interested
in. Including a blue grass festival, and
here we’ve been driving to Branson, MO, Claremore, OK, Davis, OK for bluegrass and there is a festival practically at our back door? Who knew?
With such
success with that little town I started googling “calendar of events” and the
name of every small town I could think of in our 100 mile radius. Holy Moly!
We could do something EVERY weekend if we wanted!
Moving on to
the suggestion of checking our local museums calendar of events I found more possibilities.
Factory
tours, Brahms Ice Cream has a factory between Broken Arrow and Coweta and they
give tours! We love the tv show “How it’s
made” so this sounds fun to us.
Library
calendar events, more things to see and learn.
Theater, I
love live theater and concerts. Colleges,
little theater groups, all located by googling (or bing if you prefer).
Zoo’s and
aquariums have special events as well.
Did you know for a small fee many zoo’s have overnight sleepovers at
their locations? What a cool kids birthday party that would be.
The book had
more ideas than I could type here without really stealing Mr. Matt Wixon’s
thunder. He’s the author of the book by
the way.
Their next question was "How would we pay for it?" In the book Mr. Wixon suggests doing just as you would when planning an out of state big vacation. Contact the department of tourism for discount tickets to events. Also keep an eye on your local newspaper, soda pop cans, Entertainment books and much more for coupons. Listen to the local radio for "special events."
I'll add here that I will be consulting our Oklahoma AAA guidebook for ideas of local free or near free things to see and do as well.
Don't forget to ask for discounts, just like you do on vacation AAA, senior citizen, straight a student rewards, discounts offered by your auto insurance.
He also suggested volunteering as a way to possibly get into some venues for free--after you actually do the work.
Check online for gift cards for restaurants that offer a perk for getting the gift card through them. An example is mypoints, buy a Chili's gift card get x amount of extra mypoints points. Points you can later trade in for a free gift card.
Other things he suggested doing was taking a LOT of pictures, you do on vacation so why not on vacation.
How about souveniers? Who says every t-shirt in your wardrobe has to say Walt Disney World on it. What's wrong with one that says Philbrook Museum?
So our
boring, stay at home summer, has now morphed into a every four week vacation
here at home!
Yours can
too, just start googling and you might be surprised what you might find to do
for free or near free for adults and/or kids in your area.
Jan who is
so glad she found the book, which you can read my review of that includes much more about all the websites he includes and such by clicking on the review hyperlink in OK
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