How I Save Money for Our Annual Vacation EVERY YEAR

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Saving techniques that will become habit for every vacation

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After many years, I have gotten quite good at saving up for family vacation.

This past year excluded for obvious reasons, we are on track for hopefully hitting the road sometime this year.

Let me share with you some of the tips to saving I have learned over the past years.

Some may work for you. Others you may want to avoid like the plague. (Oh – poor poor choice of words there………..sorry)

• Credit Card Points

We started this a few years ago. The particular card that we use allows us to accrue points when we spend and then we use purchase eraser.

For the most part, we try to make all of our purchases with the credit card all year so that we can accrue the points (This is ALL done with a budget because NO ONE wants to carry credit card debt in order to gain points – then there’s no point!)

So, when I purchase our tickets to go visit my parents, 24 hours later, I can “erase” the cost of the tickets and have a zero balance on the credit card.

This took a few years to balance properly. Now, because of Covid and no travel last year, we are a bit ahead of the curve and that works for me!

• MyPoints https://www.mypoints.com?rb=29772892

This is another website that I discovered several years back. This one is my most productive one out of repetition.

Each morning as part of my daily routine, I check off my daily 5. You build up your points and then redeem for gift cards.

This comes in super handy when traveling because of the amount of food we eat out, I save up for our favorite restaurants that we don’t have here at home.

There are a lot of ways to earn those points as well. As said earlier, I start with my daily 5.

I have a tendency to stay away from the surveys unless they are under 10 minutes. I seriously don’t have the want or need for the amount of points offered when I know that I can get them in different ways. If you are a fan of surveys, GO FOR IT!

Every once in a while my big guy likes to get Papa Johns. I go to the Buy Gift Certificates section of my points, buy the Papa Johns gift card with my credit card.

Now, I am getting points on my card AND getting Mypoints points for buying the gift card. Doubling down!

If you click the link above, you would join based on my referral. This is slightly different than an affiliate program. Very similar.

If you sign up, I earn 25 points. This continues to add up depending on how many people sign up through the link. Again, going for food for hungry teenagers here so, I’m hustling! HAHA

Black Friday is my BIG point gaining weekend. I quite often find myself bouncing back and forth between Rakuten and MyPoints to find which will be the better deal in the end.

In the end, I find myself doing very well on both. Which then leads me to my next source:

• Rakuten https://www.rakuten.com/r/WENDIE144?eeid=28187

This is a service that I have downloaded on my computer. For every website that is associated with a rebate, I get a pop up in the upper corner of my computer stating that I can get money back on the purchase.

Competitively, I DO check back to My Points to see where I will do better between the 2. Not all stores or services are signed up for both rebate companies.

Once again, if you sign up through my link, I get a bonus and SO DO YOU! Everybody wins.

Rakuten pays out quarterly. I like to take those checks and deposit them right into the vacation savings account. Which then leads me to my next source (See the theme?? LOL!):

• Savings Account

Now this make make me sound old – even though I am not – but did your parents ever talk about having a Christmas Club bank account when you were younger?

My mom always did and although banks don’t offer this particular account any more, specifically, it really is just a savings account. I set up weekly transfers of 10 – 15 dollars each week. Our “funny money” as it would be while we are away.

Somewhere around $600 for souvenirs, food at places I don’t have gift cards, etc. The kids are older so the spending is quite different and quite less.

Depending on the destination(s) of our vacation, I will sometimes put a little extra in when the money is available. Which leads me to my next source HAHA…..

• Acorns

I started with Acorns a few years ago – this is one of those auto-pilot savings accounts.

I actually forget about it most times because it’s linked to my debit card and since the debit card doesn’t collect points anymore, it rarely gets anything added to it. But that’s OK! It is slowly collecting and staying available for me.

Essentially, when you spend money, it rounds up the change and puts it away. Let’s say something costs $1.47, then .53 is put into the account. I like even numbers…….Click on the tree for more information.

Get it? LOL! Squirrel it away……….

There are plenty of other sources out there to help save money for vacation. What other ways do you save up for your vacations? Drop your comments below!