My Vacation Challenge To Myself

I love a challenge, don't you?

My family and by "my" I mean my family (husband, kids and I), my mom, my sister and her family & my brother and his family, try to a vacation all together every other summer or every couple of summers.

We decided that this summer would be "our" summer to go. We are an ocean/beach family. There is something about standing on the shoreline, looking out into the open water and thinking abour our Creator. I am in awe at His creation of our world everytime.

ok..ok back to the challenge.

My sister and her husband graciously offered to take care of everyone's lodging.

I know, right?

That is probably the biggest expense when it comes to vacations.

She rented each family a condo in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Yes, she is an awesome big sis!!

Well, as you may remember my husband and I at the beginning of the year made some financial goals and we would like to stick to them, so I knew that I needed to become creative in how I was going to save for our vacation.

With us all staying in condos, for the most part we will be eating in, with each family taking turns hosting dinner. So I will be using my regularly budgeted grocery money that week for food. There will be a few meals eaten out however.

Gas will be the same, we will use our regularly budgeted gas money that week + a little more. Not sure how much more, it will depend on the price of gas.

So we need to come up with our "fun" money. There are some attractions that we know that we would like to do while there which involve purchasing tickets. Multiply that times six and some of the adventures can be pretty costly.

But we want to do them.

So I have made it my mission challenge to have these completely paid for before we leave.

I do this so that we do not touch any savings.

I do this so we can stay on track with our goals.

I do this because it is fun - I love challenges.

A couple of weeks ago, I went online to get prices for what we are hoping to do while there..other than spend a ton of time on the beach.

I came up with the total....gulp...$498.70..YIKES!!!

After digesting that..I went online to find coupons..surely there are coupons or at least group rates, right?!

There were coupons for all, but with one activity it was cheaper to do a group rate.

I brought my $498.70 down to $440.70.

Still alot of money.

But I knew/know I could do this, so I started last week.

I amazingly came up with $97.34!!!

I am almost a quarter of the way there!!

YEAH!!
Here is how it broke down:

$9.60 - Ebates

$17.33 - Ebay (I reflects ebay/paypal charges already subtracted)

$66.00 - Writing Projects

$4.41 - I am not sure where it came from!

I will let you know how I continue to do....