Cheap Airfare

Three years ago my family was going to Kauai for a one week vacation.  When we got to the plane's gate, the plane was over-booked.  In the past, we never took advantage of the "kick-back" the airline offered because we didn't want to mess up our vacation.  Also, there was never a time that the flight was over-booked so much that they needed 5 seats to be given up.  This flight, however, was different.  They started by offering $500 per person (up to 8 people) to anyone willing to take the next flight, which was the same time a day later.  We didn't act.  It slowly got up to $800 per ticket.  We went for it.  We received $4,000 in travel vouchers on American Airlines, we got 2 hotel rooms at a local LA Hilton and vouchers for 2 food meals for 5 people.  We decided we would look at it like our vacation started, but in an LA hotel.  We had a blast at the hotel and the kids liked just hanging out.  We didn't lose much in the way of hotel value on the Kauai end, since we were in a timeshare for the week.  Here's the caveat.  You only have one year to use your vouchers.  Here's the part they don't tell you.  Every time you book something with your vouchers, if you don't use all of the funds, they give you a NEW voucher for the remaining balance and THAT voucher now has a new one year window for use.  Therefore, by shortening our vacation to Kauai by 1 day, we were able to fly for free for the next THREE years.  We were able to pay for 5 tickets from LAX to St. John, USVI, 5 tickets from LAX to Orlando and 5 tickets from LAX to Richmond, VA, which is how this Washington DC and Williamsburg trip started.

Washington DC - An Edu-Vacation

I have 2 kids who are going to be sophomores and one that is entering 8th grade.  As freshman, my 2 older kids were offered an educational trip with their school to visit Washington DC and tour the capitol and stuff like that.  The school wanted $3,500....  PER KID.  Well since we almost never spend that much on a family vacation, much less a trip for 2, my wife got to work figuring out how we could DC frugally.  The first thing we would need is cheap airfare, since we live in southern California, or none of this would work.

Dislosures

So I'm not a pilgrim.  But, unbeknownst to me,  Pilgrim also means traveler, and that is what I am; a penny pinching traveler.  But being a big fan of alliteration, I went with the 3P title.   So what you will be seeing here are all the ways my family and I have been able to save money and be able to afford some outstanding vacations without breaking the bank.  Let me clear, neither one of us are coupon clippers, we don't scrutinize every dollar being spent, we don't even operate with a family budget (although I think we probably should).  What we do is figure out how to afford spectacular trips for our family of five and do it for much less than most people.  Hopefully you will learn from all our research.