Da'Bitz

If you follow Da’Bitz.com you’ll figure out in a hurry that my family and I love road trips. If you need any proof of that I’ll tell you that my daughter who is now six years old, had been to Florida four times by age four. Three of those were road trips from New Jersey where we currently reside. Even though we live a very busy life, we take every opportunity we can to escape on a road trip to… well in this case, to Hershey, Pennsylvania.

It is no secret that even though the economy is showing signs of recovery, and, “knock on wood”, my family and I have been very lucky to be able to keep our jobs and survive wave after wave of layoffs, money is tight. Who on this country has not changed their spending patterns? We now think not months, but years ahead of financial stability when we have to dig into our pockets, especially when planning a vacation trip.

But like that old commercial says, there are things money can’t buy. And one of them is “quality time”. I have a special folder in my main computer with several spreadsheets I have created over the years. Calculating from gas spending to hotel comparisons, discounts, etc. And all in the name of “quality time”. So if your budget is tight, and even if you are saving every penny you earn, trust me I don’t blame you, there are ways to spend good times with your family. If you don’t want to spend on plane tickets, maybe driving is a cheaper option. If you can’t stay at a Hilton Hotel, maybe you can find a good deal at websites like expedia.com or hotwire.com.

In my case I was able to resist the temptation of visiting Florida once again. However, I managed to plan a great 3 hour road trip to Pennsylvania. A $192 fee will get me two days access for three at Hershey Park. Another $60-$80 will get me into a train museum and ride. And so on. The point is times have changed and so we have to adapt. I by no means had the best spending manners when things were going well, but I have learned so much that I wish I could rewind my life a few years so I could erase a few costly mistakes that I made in the past.

Here are a few tools I use when planning a vacation trip:

• Expedia.com- Some times expedia sells hotel at discounted rates. So if you find a hotel room for $200/night at a hotel’s main website, chances are rates are going to be cheaper at Expedia
• Hotels.com- Similar deal than Expedia but not as good
• Hotwire.com- This is a real good one. I’ll show you a trick also. Hotwire will buy unsold rooms to reputable hotel companies and sell them directly on their website at rates way cheaper than buying directly from the hotel, and even cheaper than Expedia or Hotels.com. What’s the catch? Here is the good and bad news. I’ll give you the bad news first. No, Hotwire will not tell you the hotel’s name, only until you have already made your nonrefundable purchase. As bad as that sounds here is a workaround that. Hotwire will present you the options by area and Hotel “stars” from which you blindly have to make your choice, mostly based on location and price. But if you visit the same website’s Packages and trip planning feature, they will list the hotel names in the area you are looking, and they will also list those hotel star rating. Based on that information, you can narrow down to which hotels Hotwire uses in the area you were originally looking at.
• AAA Fuel Cost Calculator – This site will allow you to calculate gas spending from point A to point B, having in consideration actual gas prices

So here we go… leaving Monday, June 21st and onto our very next adventure on the road. I will update this post as the days go by so check back again.