First of all, I have to say that when we take longer trips, we always look into renting a car. We don’t like to put an excessive amount of miles (like over 5,000) on our own car. We find that going through Costco saves us a lot of money! If you’re a Costco member, DO THIS when renting a car! We used Budget (with our Costco membership) and only spent about $350 for an 11 day full-sized car rental!
My second tip is if you are hotel brand loyal (like I am), save your points and your reward certificate for big trips. I did that and we were able to stay three nights for free! Not only that but I racked up a ton of points from the rest of our trip. We were gone 10 nights and spent 3 with wonderful (and generous) family members, had 3 nights free, and then found the best deals at other Marriotts for the other 4 nights. In total, we spent about $350 on hotels.
Next up? Food!!!! We do not joke around when saving money on food! On travel days, we ate peanut butter sammiches (don’t make fun of how I say that;)! Yes, yes I did pack a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a plastic knife. Why not? I brought TONS of snacks (which did include fresh fruit and some other semi-healthy things. We also made sure to take advantage of the free breakfasts at our hotels along the way. Another tip? Check credit/debit card reward points. We were able to get several gift cards to places like Subway and Taco Bell with those points. So we hit those places up, too! Food budget was very minimal until we hit LA and spent ONE MILLION dollars at In-N-Out and Del Taco. It’s always worth it and I knew it would happen so I planned accordingly!
Look for free things to do along the way! We stopped and did a lot of things and we didn’t pay for any of them! How did we get into 3 National Parks for free? Welp, we have a fourth grader. They get into National Parks for FREE until August 31. Take advantage of that! Lola saved us A LOT of money at the Grand Canyon, Joshua Tree, and the Petrified Forest! Check out the link!
That brings us to gas (no not the gas my kids passed in the car) but fuel for the car! We did download the gas buddy app to find the cheapest gas prices along our route. You can also use grocery store points (like we have at Kroger) at Shell stations. So that helped out a little!
We had a great trip! And it was mostly paid for by Billy’s soccer reffing weekends! So thankful for all of his hard work! We were able to enjoy a wonderful time together as a family. And we didn’t go totally broke....just lost a lot of money on food at In-N-Out and Del Taco (no regrets)! If you have any questions, I would love to answer them! You can email me at yadons@gmail.com. Or if you know me, text me!
Wherever you go, go with all your heart!
-Confucius
