Vacations can be expensive — there’s the cost of travel itself, as well as lodging expenses and all the money you drop once you get where you’re going. When it’s all said and done, you could potentially spend thousands of dollars on a getaway.

But aside from emptying our wallets, vacations can help us decompress and cut back on stress. But there’s a way to enjoy the same result without having to overspend on a vacation. Here’s how you can save money by achieving epic relaxation without ever leaving your hometown.

1. Disconnect From Technology

Modern technology keeps us continuously plugged in, something many people tie to causing high stress levels. Think about it: Your boss can now email you when you’re home, and social media can constantly bombard us with information.

It can be beneficial to step away from digital communications once in a while. To help you relax, consider turning off the TV, smartphones and computer at least a few evenings a week, if you can. At the very least, you can try to remove tech from your bedroom so that you can wind down before going to sleep, as research has shown that the light from screens throws off our sleep cycles and melatonin production.

2. Establish a Zen Place

There’s a reason we go on vacations to relax. Perhaps we find it easier to unwind in a place we don’t associate with work or home responsibilities. But you can establish a place at home that’s used just for relaxing and in time your mind can start to associate that place with a calm, tranquil mindset.

The exact nature of your relaxation space depends on your resources and preferences. You may have a backyard or room to devote to relaxing, or you may only have extra floor space. But whether it’s a garden patio, relaxation room or beanbag chair next to your bookshelf, you can designate a certain space at home for relaxation.

To help boost the relaxation vibe in that space, consider repainting calming colors on the walls, listening to tranquil sounds (relaxing music) or adding accessories such as plants or Zen sand gardens. You can also try to remove anything from that space that stresses you out – like phones, mail and other stressors.

3. Hire a Pro

Massages, spa days and yoga classes are just a few examples of services that can help you relax. Sure, a trip to the spa may be a seen as an unnecessary extravagance, but it is likely less expensive than a vacation and could be worth the investment. After all, relaxation professionals can help you recharge and refresh. If this is outside of your budget, there are less expensive alternatives you could consider, too, like finding free yoga instruction videos online or soaking in your tub at home instead of at the spa.

4. Revisit Your Own City

Relaxation doesn’t all have to take place within your home. In fact, you can reacquaint yourself with your own neighborhood. Whether you’re in the city, country or somewhere in between, your region should have some great attractions you may not have checked out before (or perhaps it’s just been a while). Try approaching your area from the perspective of a tourist: What would you recommend they try if they were visiting your area?

Whether it’s hiking, museums or fine dining, you can get a vacation-level experience by discovering (or rediscovering) the best your town has to offer. You could develop a new appreciation for your region and find new places to explore and enjoy to boot.

No matter how you decide to relax, whether through yoga, a zen garden or something else, it’s a good idea you don’t overspend — after all, you don’t want to find a good relaxation tool just to find out it’s landed you in credit card debt.

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This article originally appeared on Credit.com.

4 Ways to Relax Without Going on Vacation is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

While my family’s frugality has saved us money on our Disneyland trips that have in part helped make the vacation more affordable, in some ways it has cost us in other ways — time and better experiences. Some splurges are worthwhile.

We took a short trip to the Anaheim, Calif., resort this weekend during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, taking our daughter out of school for two days so we could turn it into a long weekend and hopefully enjoy smaller crowds. I’m writing this post ahead of our trip, so by the time this post runs I’ll be safely home with a credit card bill awaiting.

Our daughter is 11, and this will be her fourth family trip to Disneyland. Looking at that now, I realize that’s a lot of visits, but it is the happiest place on Earth.

I’ve always thought that after spending about $90 per day per person just to get into one of the parks is so high of a cost that it’s imperative that we save money in other ways. While I’m not throwing out all of the financial stops on this trip, there are some high expenses I’m willing to indulge this time because they look to be worthwhile.

Here are some of the ways we’re spending more more money, along with frugal ways to help save money so we can afford these extravagances:

Lunch with pirates

I’ve always noticed the Blue Bayou restaurant inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and thought it would be fun to have dinner there. The dining area is part of the scenery at the start of the ride, and I imagine it almost feels as if you’re part of the cast when dining there.

I’ve mentioned it to my wife and daughter on our last trip, and both thought it would be fun.

Then I looked up the dinner prices. I couldn’t see us getting out of there for less than $150. Dinner entrees run $30 to $60 per adult. But lunch and breakfast, according to Disneyland’s dining guide, “generally cost less,” so I’m hoping we can spend $100 or less on lunch for the three of us.

Paying for a good seat

We’re only spending one day at each park (another frugal lesson), so using our time wisely is important. This time, we’re buying a dinner package so we can see an outdoor show that was too crowded to see from our seats the last time we were there.

Three years ago, we tried to see World of Color at Disneyland California Adventure Park. The show is free with admission, but a Fast Pass is recommended to get the best view.

We arrived at the park early and got our Fast Passes, but an hour before the first evening show started, the passes still didn’t get us a good area to watch from. We were at the back of the crowd, and holding my then 8-year-old up was difficult and we really didn’t see anything from our standing area. All of the reserved viewing areas are for standing only.

I vowed to pay whatever it cost the next time so we could see the show. This time we’ve reserved a dining package, which basically means we’ll be paying $150 or so to eat dinner and then get a World of Color voucher that will let us into a closer area to stand for an hour before the show starts.

Those are the two main extra “experiences” we’re buying to hopefully make the trip more enjoyable and give us memories we won’t forget. But there are some extras we’re not buying, though many would save time and make the trip easier. They include:

Driving instead of flying

This is a big cost saver, even though it’s about 400 miles from our home in the Bay Area. Three plane tickets would cost about $500 or so, and we’d need to rent a car for a few days at about $50 per day. Instead that car rental fee will pay for our gas and we’ll save $500 by not flying.

Of course, we’ll spend two whole days driving south and back, eating up valuable vacation time in a car. Consider in a character-building exercise for the kid.

No Disneyland hotel

I’ve always wanted to stay at a Disneyland hotel, mainly because of the convenience of being practically inside the park and within a short walk of the rides. Walking to our hotel room for a mandatory afternoon break sounds like a great time saver. But the nightly price of $400 or so has always turned me off.

Instead, we’re staying at an Embassy Suites hotel about a mile away, requiring the hassle of a free shuttle ride or a paid taxi or Lyft ride to Disneyland. And then there’s the late night scrum to wait for a shuttle home to our hotel as the parks close. Not fun, but saving at least $250 per night, which will more than pay for our meals.

Our afternoon breaks from the Disneyland crowds will have to take a little more time, but I think it’s worth the savings.

We did get one free night at our hotel through our credit card rewards program, saving us about $130. We have a credit card that gives us reward points in free hotel stays, so we could have booked free rooms for this entire trip. But the room was so inexpensive that we opted to pay for two nights and only use one free night, allowing us to save the free hotel stays for another vacation.

No parkhopper passes

In past visits we’ve bought parkhopper passes that allow visitors to go between both parks in the same day. This add-on costs about $40 more per ticket, and can be worth it when you want to get out of crowded Disneyland and go to the less crowded California Adventure Park for a few hours.

We’re not doing that this year, mainly because paying $120 more for three tickets seems like a waste of money because we’ll only be there for two days.

That’s another change we’re making for this trip — two days instead of three. Mentally, my wife and I can handle two days at the parks, though I can sometimes push myself to almost three if I can find enough benches to sit at. But an extra day costs $150 more for the three of us, and throw in another $120 for the ability to go between parks in the same day, and we’ve got $270 more in expenses. No thanks.

Free breakfast and happy hour

Buying lunch and dinner in the parks is expensive, but it can be a worthwhile cost, I think, when you consider your time. Time equates to money during vacation, meaning you only have so much time and you want to make the most of it instead of trying to save money at every turn with frugal savings that take up more time than they’re worth.

Take my hotel and transportation choices, for example. Both cost less but we’ll spend more time doing these money-saving methods than we would by flying and staying at a Disneyland hotel.

But those costs would add up to about $1,000 for our two-day visit ($500 savings by not flying and $500 more by not staying in a Disneyland hotel) and two days of driving. I think that cost is worth the extra time we’re giving up.

But back to my point of food costs. We planned this trip with the expectation of buying most of our meals inside the parks. But there’s one small savings I’m hanging onto: free breakfast at Embassy Suites.

The hotel offers a made-to-order breakfast, which I plan on getting up early enough to eat before we head to the park in the morning.

And another benefit, if we time our afternoon break well enough, is a free happy hour at the hotel with drinks/snacks. I’m not so concerned about that savings, but the others add up to about $1,300, which should more than pay for our lunch at Blue Bayou and dinner and World of Color vouchers.

It’s not adding up to be a free trip, obviously. I’m not trying to completely justify the extra expenses by saving money on hotel and flights, but it is a good feeling to be saving such a hefty amount of money on a short trip.

Update: Read a followup post I wrote about how worthwhile these two splurges were.

Why We’re Spending Way Too Much at Disneyland is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

For years now, getting a good price on a hotel room has become quite the cat-and mouse game. The Internet made comparison shopping incredibly easy, putting price pressure on hotels. They responded by inventing tack-on surcharges like “resort fees” to obscure the bargain-hunting process. Then they beefed up hotel rewards programs in an effort to steer users away from comparison sites. And all the while, dynamic pricing and other digital-age tricks have made getting a good hotel price a lot more like hitting a moving target.

There are plenty of tricks you can use, however, to at least make sure you aren’t overpaying during your summer vacation. So here’s a guide to buying a hotel room.

1. Go Opaque

For starters, most of the really great deals are on the so-called opaque sites that sell “distressed” room inventory, says travel expert Chris Elliott of Elliott.org. Hotels pay to keep the lights on whether a room is used on not, so they will often find ways to sell rooms very cheap on sites like Priceline or Expedia. Otherwise, when buying from the hotels themselves, pricing is actually a lot more consistent than you’d think.

“Unlike airfares, hotel rates are fairly stable and not subject to the wild swings like airfares,” he says. You will rarely see a hotel room offered for $200 on Thursday morning but $300 on Thursday afternoon, as can happen with a plane ticket. You do, however, see hotels sell out, so timely booking can be a good idea.

2. Go Last-Minute

On the other hand, Expedia says there are often bargains to be had as the clock ticks closer to your vacation stay.

“Last-minute bookings tend to show lower (average daily rates), as hoteliers aim to fill as many rooms as possible,” said Expedia spokeswoman Lindsay Cameron.

3. Play the ‘Free Cancellation’ Game

Expedia also suggests taking advantage of hotel free cancellation penalties to book early and ensure you’ve got a room, but then re-check the price as the cancellation date approaches, in case a better deal has come along.

4. Know the Market

Travelers can also benefit from knowing high and low season, Expedia says. Obviously, expect to pay more if you head to Florida during the winter. But remember, busy times can vary from week to week or even day to day. Travel to South Dakota during the Sturgis motorcycle rally and you might pay double what you’d pay a week later. Pricing out your hotel rooms nice and early — even if you aren’t ready to book — is one easy way to make sure your travel plans don’t collide with the American Widget Makers Annual Convention in Boise.

5. Go Direct

Many hotel chains have finally come around to the idea that they’d better offer consumers real value if they want them booking directly through their own websites, rather than through an aggregator like Expedia. That means offering lower prices or rewards points, or both. Use a site like Expedia to find the best price across various brands, but when you settle on a specific property, always check the direct booking price. Sometimes, a hotel’s website price is more, sometimes it’s less, but it’s always worth looking.

6. Double-Check the ‘Best Available Rate’

With all this clicking around, don’t forget to apply and re-apply for your deserved discounts, like AAA or AARP. Some hotel chains will offer you a drop-down choice that says “best available rate,” but you might see that the AARP rate is actually better than the “best available rate.” No kidding.

7. Fees, Fees & More Fees

Don’t immediately trust the price you get on a website – do your research. Your ultimate, out-the-door price could be much higher if a property socks you with one of the fees listed below. Always check a hotel’s fee policies, and consider them when comparison shopping. It’s common that the lowest price you see online ends up not being the lowest price after all the fees are paid. Here are some examples:

• Internet Fees – The more expensive the hotel, the more likely you will be charged a hefty WiFi fee of $10-$15 per day. The new trick I’ve seen lately is for hotels to offer “free” WiFi in the lobby, but charge for access in the room. (That means be skeptical of free WiFi offers now!) Best way to avoid that fee? Before you leave, make sure you know how to use your smartphone for broadband access.
• Resort Fees – As the name suggests, this fee is most prevalent in resort-y places like Las Vegas. But resort fees can pop up anywhere. Or they can come with other names, such as…
• Housekeeping Fees – Hotels like charging to clean your room now, as if that’s not included in the price. The worst part of the housekeeping fee: Often, housekeepers don’t get any of the money.
• Pet Fees – Traveling with Fido (or Rusty)? The good news: More hotels are embracing travelers with pets. The bad news? They are doing it because it’s good business. Hotels charge anywhere from $10 to $100 for allowing a pet in your room. If you use a site like Expedia to sort through pet-friendly hotels, make sure you manually check the fee. Not all pet-friendly hotels are created equal.
• Safe Fees – This one bugs me. Some hotels put a safe fee on your bill, even if you never use the safe. You can ask that it be removed. Same for the newspaper fee.
• Cancellation Fees – Gone are the days when hotels could be canceled by 6 p.m. on the night of a reservation for a full refund. Cancellation policies are all over the map now, and can even vary based on how the reservation was initially made. Never book a hotel without knowing what the cost of a breakup would be. Travel always involves adventure, which involves unpredictability, which means plans change. Make sure you plan for that.

8. Outright Scams

Finally, your hotel fee could end up much more expensive than you initially believed through no fault of the property if you end up falling for a lodging-related scam. There are plenty. The Better Business Bureau recently issued a warning about websites that appear to be hotel aggregators, but are really scams that purchase search engine placement and intercept web surfers trying to pay for legitimate hotel stays.

“It may have a URL similar to the real hotel website or established third-party booking site, such as Hotels.com or Expedia.com. The website may also use the same logo, colors and/or design of the legitimate site,” the BBB of Louisiana wrote in June. “The website might look okay, but it’s a fraud.” Directly typing the hotel’s website into your browser’s address field is your best bet.

Other scams include fake pizza delivery, used by thieves to get you to open your hotel room door; the “late night desk clerk call,” which can be an ID theft trick (“Sorry, sir, your credit card didn’t work. Could you share another one with me?”); and data hijacking through free hotel WiFi. Don’t answer the phone or the door if you don’t expect anyone; and don’t trust hotel WiFi with sensitive surfing like online banking.

Monitoring your financial accounts frequently (even daily) for unauthorized charges can help you put an end to any issues early, and hopefully save you from taking too big of a hit. It’s also a good idea to check your credit reports for signs of fraud — new accounts you didn’t open or higher balances on existing accounts for charges you didn’t make. You can get your credit reports for free each year through AnnualCreditReport.com, and you can get a free credit report summary every month on Credit.com.

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This article originally appeared on Credit.com.

This article by Bob Sullivan was distributed by the Personal Finance Syndication Network.

Source

8 Ways to Avoid Overpaying for a Hotel Room is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

Here are five saving tips for summer vacation that we’re using in full force this year:

1. Plan ahead

Some things shouldn’t be put off if you want the best prices, starting with travel and everything that goes into getting there. For flights, rental cars and accommodations, we booked most of our summer vacation in January for the best prices. Booking early also helped get available rooms at our destination because we quickly discovered that a convention or some sort of big gathering is taking up a lot of rooms there.

One thing I don’t like about planning ahead for a vacation is the lousy feeling in your wallet when prices drop. This is rare, but sometimes airplane seats, hotel rooms and rental cars are underbooked, and prices drop for last-minute shoppers.

To avoid this, most of our hotel reservations can be canceled within 24 hours of arrival, and Southwest Airlines has a good rebooking policy if you find a better price. The rental car can also be changed without taking a financial hit.

2. No car for a few days

Rental car prices can be crazy during the summer. We’re flying in to one city and flying out of another, so picking up a rental car at one airport and returning it at another was expensive for two weeks.

I even looked into what Auto Slash offered, which wasn’t a deal. The great thing about the site is after you’ve booked through it, it will send you email updates if prices change and will automatically reserve a car for you at the lower price after searching multiple vendors.

Even with that prospective savings, it still hasn’t found a cheaper price than what we found by going without a rental car for the first few days of our trip and then renting one.

Our plan is to take a taxi to a nearby hotel for the first night because we arrive at night via airplane — so we really wouldn’t use a rental car much anyway that first night. The next few days we plan to get around town with Lyft, Uber or taxi. Then we’ll rent a car, saving at least $300 in rental car fees by not having it for two full weeks.

3. Groupon and other coupon sites

I’m still searching on Groupon and elsewhere for coupons for tours, food, drinks, and activities at our summer vacation destination, and I expect to find something to save some serious cash during the trip. I did this on a meal out last summer and saved 50 percent.

4. Credit card perks

We pay off our credit card each month and use the collected points for free hotel stays. I try to hoard the points for summer vacation, resulting in five free nights this summer in one of our favorite cities.

5. Other summer vacation accommodations

In addition to the free hotel rooms, we’re saving on accommodations by renting a house through VRBO, one of the many vacation home rental sites out there that can save families money by renting a home together and splitting the cost.

We’re also using Airbnb for a few nights, saving at least 50 percent on what a hotel room would cost us. It will be the first time I’ve ever used Airbnb, so I’ll report back after summer vacation on how it went.

Until then, take all of these steps for your summer vacation, and let us know how it goes.

5 Saving Tips for Summer Vacation is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.

From relaxing on the beach to a hike in the woods or however you enjoy your time off, a vacation can be a great break from work and a time to relax. Part of the fun — as I’ve found in planning my own vacations, and from reading published studies on the topic — is in planning a vacation.

In a study on overall happiness from a vacation and how long the happiness lasts, researchers in the Netherlands found that the biggest boost comes from planning a vacation. Anticipating a vacation increased happiness for eight weeks.

After the vacation, most travelers reported that their happiness levels dropped back down to baseline levels, according to the study published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life in 2010.

Cost of planning a vacation

The study didn’t say if planning a vacation makes it worth the cost of the trip, but in my view, it’s a worthwhile expense.

I don’t think a vacation is worth going into debt over, but with careful planning and saving for it, a great vacation can be done on even a frugal budget. It’s something that the whole family can get involved in — from picking a place to visit to lodging, activities, travel arrangements and people and places to visit during a trip.

Even if planning a vacation does take you a little off your budget, it can be a worthwhile time together as a family that children will remember forever.

A few years ago, my family took a trip to Australia to visit my brother and his family. The trip cost a lot of money, but we pulled money out of our savings because we thought it would be a great experience for all of us.

Our daughter and my brother’s daughter — both girls are about the same age — giggled like crazy one afternoon when he took us on his boat to a nearly deserted island and they saw crabs run along the beach that they went on to catch. It was a sound I’ll never forget, and made the trip worth the cost.

Planning a vacation this summer

I try to plan ahead so that we can save as much money as possible during a vacation. This summer, we’re visiting relatives in an area with a lot of water parks. It’s a trip my daughter has been anticipating for months.

We’re visiting a few cities, so we nee a few lodging options. We’re trying various ways to save, including renting a house through VRBO, using Airbnb for a few nights, and using credit card rewards to stay for free at a hotel during the last part of our trip.

Through all of this planning, which included paying for the flights and most of the lodging ahead of time, I think the happiness hit all of us well before the eight weeks of happiness cited by researchers in the Netherlands for people planning a vacation. So far it has been worth the cost just in the planning alone.

The study didn’t find any relationship between the length of a vacation and increased happiness. Most of the happiness comes from planning and anticipation, which could translate into more happiness if more, smaller trips were planned instead of one big vacation.

All of the happiness during a vacation can make the costs worthwhile, but planning a vacation can be more rewarding. Think about that the next time your boss piles extra work on your desk and you’re looking for a reason to goof off online for a few minutes as you plan your next vacation. It might even convince you to move to a vacation spot.

Planning a Vacation is Worth the Cost is a post from: When Life Gives You Lemons. Did you like the post? Follow me on Twitter, like me on Facebook, or hop on over to my blog and leave me your feedback.