Traveling vs. Vacationing

Let me start by saying that my wife Lori and I absolutely love traveling. Our viewpoint is that life is short, so let’s do our best to experience as much as we possibly can. We find though that once we start searching for a destination on say YouTube or Google that afterwards we invariably get swamped with advertisements for exotic destinations promoted by beautiful and adventurous social media travelers. We know firsthand how that can suck you in. And exotic vacations are going to cost you big time. Or will they?

I’ve learned that there is a distinct difference between “Traveling” and “Vacationing” from a former CFO colleague of mine who remarked that his wife liked to “vacation” well – like $750 a night hotels that offer butt kissing service. As a result, they don’t go away that often. Lori and I on the other hand have become experts at “Traveling”. We travel on a budget. That is to say that we travel within our means and try and maximize the amount of travel that we do by being cost conscious. As a result we travel about 3X times as much as my CFO colleague does. I call that being smart. Would I like to vacation well? Absolutely. But I’ll wait until the day that I can comfortably afford that, if ever.

Ah, I know what you are thinking. Bryan and Lori probably stay at motels, go camping, or do staycations, etc. That’s definitely not the case. In the last 15 years we have been to the jet setting haven of St Barts 3 times, Tulum, Isla Mujeres, almost all of the Caribbean Islands, the Abacos, Exumas, and Berry Islands of the Bahamas, Italy (Amalfi Coast, Tuscany, Cinque Terre), Dublin, Barcelona, Santorini, Germany, Switzerland, Paris, and London. I’ll stop there, as I imagine you are getting the picture.

Ok, so how do we do it? We look for bargains, far in advance of our travel dates. We travel off season if possible. We book discount airlines, especially abroad. We book AirBnBs early so we get the best ones. We try and piggyback work trips with our vacation time. We use credit cards that offer travel insurance and travel reward points. Sometimes we find someone’s unwanted timeshare weeks at a steal. We learned how to sail and navigate rental boats so we can sail the Caribbean at a fraction of the cost of a crewed charter.

I guess my point is that you don’t have to be wealthy to travel well and often. You just need to be smart about your choices. It doesn’t mean that you need to stay at Motel 6 either. Traveling on a somewhat of a budget doesn’t work for all, but it works for us. No regrets.