This is a contributed post and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Meet The Harris Family.
Family vacations are the one time each year where everyone gets to spend their time together and get away from the hustle and bustle of daily life. We look forward to that moment we can get up at 3am to catch a plane to a warmer country, and finally have the chance to relax on the beach with the kids.
However, family vacations can also be expensive and pretty stressful. If you need some help on how to survive throughout your holiday, here are some tips…
Keep it in the family
If you never really see your extended family too much, you could make the yearly vacation an opportunity to get together with the whole family and rent a large house for the week. It will work out cheaper for you in terms of the rental, and it will be a great chance to spend time with parts of the family you don’t really see often enough.
Take care with money
When you visit a foreign country, you often don’t realize how expensive things actually are and we end up overspending pretty easily. Try saving a little bit each week all through the year to go towards your spending money on vacation to give you a little freedom. You can also save by not using a debit card and finding the best travel credit cards instead. Using a credit card will mean you don’t have to pay overseas transaction fees.
Be a local
Think about how you would travel from place to place if you lived here. The chances are, you would be taking public transport into the center of the city and using the local supermarket to do your food shopping. By doing this rather than getting a taxi everywhere and going out to eat every single night, you will save a lot of money for drinks.
Don’t buy a ton of vacation clothes
The temptation is to go shopping with your partner and the kids a few weeks before jetting off to stock up on vacation clothes, but do you really need to do this? What about every other year you have done this? You will likely still have loads of perfectly good clothes to use when you go away. If you really want something new, you can just stick to buying a new swimsuit.
Keep the kids entertained
This applies more if you have very young children, however one surefire way to keep your kids quiet in the airport and on the plane is to download a few movies and games onto your mobile device before you set off. Give that to the kids to keep them busy and quiet, and remember to supply snacks too.
Relax!
Finally, stop stressing about all of the little things and just yourself enjoy a much needed vacation. You have waited all year to go away, so now that you are you deserve to be able to enjoy it! Pull up a chair and grab a cocktail, and have some fun!
Readers also loved:
