{"id":3488,"date":"2015-08-22T20:20:07","date_gmt":"2015-08-23T00:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coffeefreakdesigns.com\/teenstotsandeverythinginbetween\/?p=3488"},"modified":"2015-08-22T20:20:07","modified_gmt":"2015-08-23T00:20:07","slug":"saving-on-saturday-vacation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/?p=3488","title":{"rendered":"Saving on Saturday- Vacation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sos\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I really do enjoy travelling and especially enjoyed our vacation this year if you could not tell by all the pictures. One reason, that I was able to enjoy our vacation this year is because of the fact that we actually spent overall less on a week at the beach than we have spent on a long weekend trip. So today, I am going to share some tips that I used this year to not only save money but also to make this trip so enjoyable.<\/p>\n

The first and most important tip is PLAN AHEAD!.\u00a0 I booked our condo in January this year in order to get the specific week that I wanted for the rate we could easily afford. But I actually started buying for the trip back in November 2014. CVS usually runs some awesome Black Friday sales, starting the\u00a0Sunday before Thanksgiving, for the past several years these have\u00a0included laundry detergent for free after ECB.\u00a0 I am pretty brand loyal, but\u00a0in this case, I\u00a0carried the free laundry detergent home and placed in\u00a0a plastic container. During our\u00a0beach trip, we typically come in from the beach and toss all suits and towels in the wash. My thoughts are free is good enough as long as it helps to remove the sand.\u00a0Other items that I find on good deals (usually $0.75 or less) include hand soap, toilet paper, dishwasher tablet\u00a0and dishwashing liquid.<\/p>\n

The next way that I plan ahead for our vacation\u00a0is meal planning. I know there are a few meals that the entire family loves and so if I am making one of these I will just make two and place the second in the deep freezer to take to the beach.\u00a0Our plan ahead meals this year included baked ziti, chicken and broccoli casserole and\u00a0gravy biscuits. If I find a\u00a0good deal on a special snack food that we like I will also go ahead and purchase that as well. This year these items included goldfish crackers, Oreos and\u00a0\u00a0Kit Kat Minis.\u00a0 I also do the same with paper plates, cups and silverware. The condo does have a dishwasher but I prefer the paper for the convenience.<\/p>\n

Another way that we save\u00a0money is by saving and reusing certain items year after year.\u00a0 I have a 20 year collection of sand toys that I\u00a0store in a large bag in our building. Each year we\u00a0take it with us to the beach. Some years we come back with less sand toys as if they\u00a0break they are thrown away\u00a0at the beach. We also have\u00a0purchased a beach cart, umbrella\u00a0and several chairs that are specifically for beach\u00a0use. It may\u00a0seem like a lot of trouble to carry these items back and forth but in\u00a0the big picture it continues to save us money as we don’t purchase new items unless they are needed.<\/p>\n

A finally way that we save money on vacation is by increasing the temperature of our house to 82* and turning off\/unplugging anything possible. Our electric bill dropped by $30 this month in comparison to last\u00a0month with the only difference being our vacation week. We also saw a $5 decrease in our water bill which is a direct result of less laundry.<\/p>\n

How have you been saving money this week?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really do enjoy travelling and especially enjoyed our vacation this year if you could not tell by all the pictures. One reason, that I was able to enjoy our vacation this year is because of the fact that we … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,11,4,19,5,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budgeting","category-ditl","category-life","category-menu-planning","category-saving-money","category-shopping-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ySyX-Ug","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3489,"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3488\/revisions\/3489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}