Frugal Road Trips with Kids
My husband, toddler and I drove today from St. Louis, Missouri to Oklahoma City for a swim meet. We travel by car fairly often to attend the swim meets of our teenage daughter, so we’re really mastering the art of traveling with kids and doing it on a budget.
As I was driving today, it occurred to me that it might be time to share my tips and tricks for inexpensive family travel as part of the new Frugal Living focus on Lipstick to Crayons.
Keeping Kids Entertained
Planning goes a long way toward keeping kids happy in the car. It helps to have movies and video games, but it helps even more to have movies they’ve never seen or games they don’t own. Still, it can get expensive to rent a bunch of movies and games — especially if your trip is long enough that you might incur a late fee. So we like to do a swap with friends and neighbors before taking a road trip. Both families in the swap get to enjoy some “new” movies and games, and no one has to spend any money. We also sometimes rent a few items from the local library — you can find a lot of good movies there that you may have missed at the theater, and you can almost always get your hands on a few classics that your kids may not have seen.
Speaking of the library: many of them have established a vast collection of online books that you can download directly to your home computer and transfer to your iPod or MP3 player. As a distance runner, I LOVE this feature because I enjoy listening to books while I do my long training runs. But it can also be a way to help pass the time while driving across long stretches of barren highway, and sometimes older kids likes listening to books on the electronic devices, as well. Since downloadable books and books on CD can get very expensive, this is a huge cost savings.
And of course, the library certainly offers tons of books and magazines for those delightful children who are happy to sit quietly and read in the car. I only got one of those out three, so if you have a carload of them, count your blessings!
Another splendid trick I have used over the years is the “Present Bag.” Before going on a trip, I go to one of those dollar stores and buy a bunch of $1 items that are age-appropriate for my kids, along with a few fun snacks like candy necklaces, dot candy on paper and pixie sticks. Then I wrap each item individually in newspaper like a present. When the kids start to get restless in the car or I sense that they are about to begin bickering, I bride them with a gift from the Present Bag. (Make sure you mark the presents so you know what’s in each one — my son didn’t appreciate a book full of Strawberry Shortcake stickers one time).
Another great use for Present Bag: eliminating the whine, beg and eventual cost of purchasing stuff at roadside convenience stores and souvenir shops. Kids want and need to get out of the car and they love going into these stores, but if you can use the Present Bag to distract them from that overpriced toy that will be broken before the next exit.
Meals and Snacks
Of course, it’s cheaper to pack a cooler full of food and bring bags of snacks from home than it is to buy them on the road. (One convenience store owner told my husband his stuff costs 18 to 20 percent more than the grocery store). But again — kids want and need to get out of the car, and those exits tend to be at places selling food and snacks. I try this approach: I pack sandwiches, veggies and dip, trail mix and other snacks from home, and use the fast food restaurants and convenience stores to “compliment” what I bring. For example, I might tell the kids that we have drinks and sandwiches in the car, but they can each get an order of fries to go with their sandwich. Or, I tell them I have trail mix or popcorn in the car, but they can each have a pack of gum or mints.
Plus, eating from a cooler of food that you made yourself is tremendously more healthy than eating from the deep fryer at a fast food chain. And during spring, summer and fall, a short picnic at a rest stop is more fun for the kids than having to sit still at a restaurant anyway.
Accommodations
There are all kinds of ways to get reduced rates on hotel rooms and lots of Web sites dedicated to doing that. I do think that showing up at the desk of a hotel and requesting a certain rate in person works best, but only when the hotel isn’t full. We save money by making one hotel room work for our family of five, and we choose hotels that offer free breakfast. That’s a decent savings, particularly if it means you can eat a later breakfast, skip lunch and do an early dinner. And if you have a room with a fridge and a microwave oven, make use of them by having at least one other meal each day in your hotel room.
How do you save money when you travel? I’d love to hear your tips and tricks.
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