Saving on Vacation Expenses

We having been planning and saving(Dave Ramsey says don't let your vacation follow you home!) towards a warm winter getaway! For 2 years we have socked away our pennies and looked for ways to do a destination holiday inexpensively! I am excited to share some of what we have found! The first thing is car rentals. Part of the way we are saving on our accommodations is that we are not in the hub of things(which our family doesn't enjoy anyways)but which means we need a car. The bus system in Hawaii is supposedly quite good and reliable and inexpensive, so it is a good choice also. For us we are planning on exploring lots and because we are a fair size family, we feel a car would be good. So, on to the story. Back in September when I booked our flights(I will blog about this in another post) I started looking for car rentals. At that time it looked like $700 was cheap for our 3 week stay! I decided there was no panic in getting a reservation, so I checked the rental companies periodically. I stumbled upon a website called www.carrentals.com which is a search engine of all the major car rental companies. I signed up to get their email alerts about their sales. At the end of October I got an email from them saying there was a sale. I put in our dates and it came up with $506.62! I booked(the nice thing about this site is you DO NOT have to provide a credit card!)it. 2 weeks later I got another email about another sale, again I checked it and now it was $469.01! But, to top that off, I had entertainment coupons for this car company. There isn't a spot to enter coupons, so I called them and they applied it, bringing my total down to $400.95!!! But wait there's more! A week later they emailed another sale and with coupons applied(thanks again HJ!)my grand total is now $325.18!!!

What kind of time are we talking for this almost $200 savings?? I checked the site a total of 3 times and I called 2 times! Maybe 15minutes???Worth it? I think so!!

Now a note about insurance, the insurance the car rental company offers you is extremely expensive! There are several options: 1. Check with your car insurance(in BC we are covered if we have Road Star, thanks Heather for the tip!)2. Several credit cards offer rental insurance as a bonus, check your policy carefully.

Happy Travelling!