Almost everyone dreams of a wonderful weekend getaway during the summer. The thought of heading off to some interesting locale by yourself, with a romantic partner or with your whole family seems like a fun escape from the routines of everyday life. People are often willing to toss down a lot of money for that kind of fun.
Of course, a weekend getaway doesn’t have to be an expensive one. If you allow yourself to be flexible in terms of the planning, you can have a fun trip for a surprisingly low price. You just have to be willing to go where the moment takes you.
Here are three strategies you can utilize to prepare yourself for a wonderful summer weekend getaway without blowing your financial plans to smithereens.
[See: 12 Frugal Ways to Save on Vacation.]
Take a day off on either end. Here’s the reality: The tighter your window, the harder it is to find inexpensive options for travel. If you’re leaving Friday evening and must be back in the office Monday morning, your window of time for travel is limited, which means you can’t open your doors wide for bargains. Plus, airlines account for this and charge plenty for ordinary weekend trips.
To maximize the value of your weekend getaway, give yourself a day on either end — or, ideally, a day on both ends. Take a Friday or Monday off work, and suddenly you’re able to look at flights on Thursday evening and Friday morning or on Monday, too. Those extended dates open the doors in terms of what you can plan. And the more options you have, the more likely you are to dredge up some serious bargains.
This is definitely the best strategy if you’re a more meticulous planner and don’t like playing things by ear. Having an extra day to work with simply gives you more options for planning, whether you do it early or at the last minute.
[See: 12 Habits of Phenomenally Frugal Families.]
Set aside the time, but plan the trip at the last minute and be super flexible. Many people want to start planning right away, but it’s actually much more effective to be really flexible. Wait until the last minute, and then book whatever is really inexpensive. Doing this will enable you to buy some super-cheap tickets to “fill up” a flight that isn’t fully booked yet, which often means you get a dirt-cheap ticket and plenty of breathing room on the flight.
Plus, there’s the spontaneity of the whole thing. With this kind of last-minute vacation planning, your whole trip becomes spontaneous. You might suddenly be spending a weekend in San Diego, Seattle or Portland. It’s an exciting adventure.
The key here is to start searching for deals when you’re less than a week away from when you hope to depart. If you’ve got a day off on either end of the weekend, you can expand your searches for cheap flights. Check out Kayak’s global search tool, which makes it easy to plan flights with flexibility. Tinker around with available dates and time ranges. See what comes up as super cheap, then go from there.
[See: 11 Easy Ways to Slash Travel Costs.]
Catalog interesting locales within the “Friday evening drive” radius and look for bargains within that. Another strategy for a weekend getaway is to ignore flight availability and instead look to places you can drive to in the evening after work from your home. Pack your bags in the morning, get off work, and drive to some place within a reasonable evening driving radius, check into a hotel late and sleep in a bit the next day. You’ll wake up refreshed and ready to tackle a new day in an interesting new place.
This type of planning gives you a great deal of flexibility since everything within several hours of your home is eligible. You don’t have to plan around flights or anything else — just jump in a car and go. In fact, you can do this at the very last minute and decide where you want to go that very day by simply searching for cheap lodging in a few interesting areas in that radius.
One good way to get started with this strategy is to simply pull up Google Maps and start looking at everything that’s within a few hours of your home. What do you find in that radius that’s interesting and new to you? Maybe it’s a fairly rural place near a national park. Maybe it’s a city you’ve never explored. Just start making a list of those interesting options. Then, when a weekend free of obligations comes up, choose one of those options and head out. Just start calling hotels in the area to see what’s available for lodging and play it by ear.
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3 Strategies for Planning an Inexpensive Weekend Summer Getaway originally appeared on usnews.com
