Affordable vacation Options

My wife and I at Nassau, Bahamas on a recent vacation.
Photo Courtesy of Cassidy D’Angelo

We all know that college can be demanding, whether it be mentally or physically. More often than not, students give up sleep to study and sometimes spend countless hours stressing over important exams. These things lead to students becoming exhausted, in need of some type of break. Wouldn’t it be nice, as college students who sometimes struggle financially, to be able to take a vacation to alleviate the stress? Luckily, I have been fortunate enough to do some of my own research on a vacation that is decently affordable for college students.

    Being a college student in Southern West Virginia, I know that we all get the enjoyment of experiencing every season. Winter is a big culprit that gets a lot of peoples’ spirits down. The cold weather, the heavy snow, and the countless lines of salt trucks holding up traffic make for an unpleasant number of months. This is a season college students get to experience in both the fall semester and spring semester. Being piled up with coursework while living through the winter calls for a much-needed vacation.

    I’ve learned that vacation options are limited for a college student seeking a getaway, but I have some good news. I have been fortunate enough to do my own planning and my own research to find some of the most affordable and enjoyable vacation a college student can do, a relaxing beach trip. Step one in planning this vacation is to get to a computer and research hotels. There are plenty of online sites out there that allow you to compare prices of many hotels around the area in which you want to stay. I am a firm user of Expedia. I have been using it for years now and it has allowed me to find the lowest hotel rates available for the area I want to stay in for my vacation. For example, I recently used Expedia to book a hotel room for a night in Jacksonville, Florida. My wife and I needed a place to crash for a night and the lowest rates I could find were around $79 per night. When I got on Expedia, I found an affordable hotel and since I used it, I received a discount and got $10 off my stay. I ended up saving around $20. Just because I used it doesn’t mean everyone needs to use it, but you should definitely keep your options open and look at different sites to see what works for you.

    Step two in this trip is to set aside a set budget for gas money. A lot of times, people don’t realize that gas money can be quite a big chunk of the expenses. Keeping this in mind, college students should research which beach is closest to the area that they are in, calling for a less time-consuming trip with less miles. This saves on piling mileage on your vehicle and helps utilize the cost of gas. Additionally, if you have friends that want to go with you, carpooling is a viable option. This allows each person to contribute to the cost of gas, ultimately saving everyone money.

    Step three in this trip is to keep in mind that you need to eat. Being home means that there is usually food readily available. If you are staying at a hotel for an extended amount of time for a vacation, you need to figure out if it has a continental breakfast or not. Make sure you choose a hotel that has the option for a free breakfast because that can save you on expenses. Furthermore, it is helpful to pack a cooler with essentials in it. These essentials can include things like sandwich meat, bottled water, half gallons of milk for cereal, soda, sliced cheese for sandwiches, and stuff like that. My wife and I took a vacation at Myrtle Beach and packed the car with a cooler that had these things in it. I also packed a portable grill that the hotel said I could bring. This allowed me to pack hamburger meat and pork chops in the cooler as well. We would cook dinner on the grill and eat lunch with the things we packed. It is significantly cheaper to purchase groceries like that at a store than to go out and eat every day while you are on a vacation.

    I hope my fellow college students seeking an affordable vacation will use these tips. I learned the hard way that vacations can be expensive if you don’t plan correctly. If you use these tips, I can almost guarantee you that you will save some money. I’ve taken more than one beach vacation for a spring break and I learned these valuable lessons on my own. Hopefully, everyone can add their own tips to this list so they can have an even more affordable vacation.