A little bit goes a long way (couples edition)

Since last week’s post was so much fun, I wanted to try again.  But this time… I’m going to take my husband on my trip.

Let’s say we started saving $100 in January, and by the time the fall comes around, we’re itching to go somewhere.  For starters, I want to handle the objection, “I don’t have $100 to save every month.”  Maybe you don’t, but allow me to help you trim the fat.

Let me give you some examples of things that you DON’T need that equal $100 for a couple:

• 4 times dining out at $25 a pop (And don’t kid yourself, you know you eat out way more than 4 times a month)
• 2 movie tickets ($22), 1 trip to Jeni’s ($8), 1 trip to Starbucks ($6), 2 Old Navy t-shirts ($24), one trip to Target where things fly into your cart that you know you didn’t need ($40)
• 2 bottles of wine ($20), 4 fast food meals ($28), 1 set of new sheets ($45), 1 impulse grocery item ($7)

So we’ve saved $100 from January to September and we have $900. 

There is a flight from Columbus to Boston that we’d fly in on a Friday and leave on a Sunday.  Tickets are $256 a person.  So $512 for flights, only leaves us $388 for everything else.

I found a beautiful, roofdeck apartment on Airbnb, in the heart of Boston, for $125 a night.  Total would be $280 with fees.

That leaves us $108 for two days of food, which I believe is doable.  Since we have our own place with a full kitchen, we can purchase some meals at the grocery store and cook ourselves.  We can pack sandwiches, and fruit and snacks.

There are also plenty of free things to do in Boston, there is water, great history, and unique architecture.

Here is a great list of free (and almost free) things to do in Boston.  There are even companies that offer free walking tours.

 

So maybe we’re not feeling a big city scene, but want something with nature or the ocean.  How about we see how far we can get in Florida?

There are flights to Fort Myers in September for $230 a ticket.  One flight leaves 6 a.m. and gets in at 10:20 a.m on a Saturday.  The flight out leaves at 7 p.m. which gets us back into Columbus at 11:15 p.m on a Tuesday.   This means we basically have three days in Florida, but only have to pay two two nights lodging.

I found an awesome Airbnb place that’s in Naples, Florida, that’s within walking distance to the beach, restaurants and shopping.  The place is $222 for two nights.  It also has free use of beach chairs and bicycles, which is a money-saving and activity-boosting bonus.

E-Z Rent-a-car is $86, and that will ensure that we can get from the airport to Naples and around the beach.  I would estimate that we’d need about $8 in fuel to and from the airport, and around the beach.  So I’ll estimate about $15, and to round it out we’ll say $100 for car and fuel.

That leaves $118 for food for two people for three days.  That’s not a ton, but since we’re renting a place and have a kitchen, we can easily get away with buying some groceries and making our own food to take to the beach.

Since we’re renting a car, we can go to Sanibel Island and do some seashell hunting.  I had no idea that these beaches were lined with shells, and I can’t tell you how excited I am to go on this fake trip.  Hunting for beach loot is my favorite thing to do at the beach.

 

The beauty about this is hopefully you were saving money by simply not buying things you don’t need so you can go somewhere fun.  For a much longer trip somewhere that you really want to go, obviously it’s worth it to save as long as it takes to be able to do that.  But if you know you want to just take a weekend to go somewhere other than Ohio, there are ways you can do that for cheap.  Of course, you can always drive places.  There are plenty of places within 10 hours driving that you could drive and spend the weekend, and save yourself even more money.  There are many possibilities.