This is part 3 in a series about vacationing on a budget.
Recap
I’ve said it before, and will do so again – by budget I do not mean “cheap”, I mean “a plan” – on paper, on purpose, before the trip began.
There are many people who take far more expensive trips than we did, but our trip was far from being a “budget” trip.
Or budget for the entire trip was $2,400. We broke it down into the following categories, and ended up spending as follows:
| Category | Budgeted | Actual |
|---|---|---|
| Lodging | $1,200 | $1,188.84 |
| Vehcile | $300 | $339.23 |
| Food, Groceries, Supplies | $400 | $588.98 |
| Activities | $500 | $124.38 |
| Total | $2,400 | $2,241.43 |
We ended up spending far less than we had planned on activities and sight seeing, bu spent a little more on our vehicle and quite a bit more
on food and groceries. However, we came in under our overall budget by almost $160, which we will carry over to our vacation next year.
A Few Lessons Learned
There are a few things that we could have done differently that would have saved us a little bit on this trip.
- We should have booked our hotel in Atlanta earlier. We stayed there for part of the Memorial Day weekend, and hotels filled up quite quickly. We could have saved about $25 / night if we had booked one day sooner.
- We could have brought some staples with us to save maybe $15 on groceries, including laundry detergent, ketchup, mustard, sugar, etc.