How (and Why) to Make Family Travel a Priority

When our children were younger, travel meant holiday visits to see family. As they got a little older, I had a sudden strong urge to start taking trips with them that didn’t just mean visiting family for holidays. Since Eric and I both grew up not taking many trips, I wanted everyone to start having more travel experiences.

If you have done much traveling, you know that even small trips can really strain a budget. However, after we started doing a little bit of traveling, we started trying to make a concerted effort to save and make room in our budget for more trips.

If you’ve been putting off family travel because of the expense, I encourage you to start making it a priority. Special memories are formed through travel. There is just something about getting away from the normal routine and setting out on an adventure with your family. In the everyday grind of life, it’s easy to lose perspective.  For us, travel sometimes helps us bring back that focus, which is why saving money for trips is a family priority.  

Speaking of some extra money, make sure to read through this post and get all the way to the bottom for your chance at a $100 gift card!

Trips Don’t Have to Be Far Away

You might be putting off traveling with your family because you have in mind that trips need to take you far from home. They don’t! Last summer, we had some extra money and decided that a trip to Chicago would be fun. Even though that’s just a few hours from where we live, we had never made Chicago a destination before.  We had a great time exploring some museums, shopping, eating and even using a portable ping pong set that we bought in our hotel room. It was a great chance for family bonding, and it only took us a few hours away. Where could you explore with your family that’s within an easy drive from home?

Trips Don’t Have to Be Expensive

For a few years in a row, when we first started being serious about making travel happen, we rented a rustic cabin in a state park and spent long weekends there. It was a great chance to reconnect with nature, learn new things and spend some quality family time together. 

Watch for Deals to Help with Traveling

Finding ways to save up money is a great way to make travel happen for your family and so is watching for deals on things like vacation packages, airline tickets, hotels and more. When I saw a great airline deal last summer that said flights as low as $49 one-way, I decided to take a peek and see where we could go for that amount. When I saw that one of the options was Washington D.C., I knew that we had a Fall Break trip awaiting us.  While we did have the expenses of Metro cards, food and a hotel, Washington D.C. offered up days and days worth of free things to see. We would have missed that if I hadn’t checked out possible deals.

Splurge on Bigger Trips When You Can

The first time we managed to go to Disney World as a family (because of a gift from my grandpa), it was so magical that I knew we had to do it again soon. In fact, I may have said that right as we were driving off of the property. Eric said, “Sure. You find a way to pay for it, and we can go again next year.”

Apparently that was all the challenge I needed! I carefully saved money from different sources to make sure that I could pay for us to fly there and cover all of our Disney World expenses for a week. Careful savings made it possible to enjoy a big family trip and pay for it all ahead of time.

Find Ways to Save for Traveling (or Whatever is Important to Your Family)

There are many things you can do to save for traveling, or whatever is important to you and your family. Whether you try to bring in some additional cash by doing extra work or by cutting out (or down) on some regular expenses, you could use that money for more adventures, more wonder and more memories. 

One way you can save every day is with the U.S. Bank Cash 365™ American Express® Card. Since you can earn 1.5% cash back on everyday purchases, it means that all those trips to the grocery store and the gas station could really add up (especially since the rewards don’t expire)! U.S. Bank is dedicated to making possible happen for its customers and communities. What is your possible that you want to make happen? 365 days of more simplicity? 365 days of more adventures?

As an added bonus to applying for the U.S. Bank Cash 365™ American Express® Card, you could earn a $100 Customer Relationship Bonus! U.S. Bank is offering $100 for people who spend $500 in the first 3 months with the U.S. Bank Cash 365™ American Express® Card and have a relationship with U.S. Bank.  If you do not have a relationship with the bank, you may still open a card and receive the bonus if done within 30 days.  (You will need to apply online to earn the bonus, although the card is available online, through the call center and at branches.)

What travel necessity would you first spend your cash back on? Leave a comment for a chance to win a $100 gift card. 

Entry Instructions:

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

1. Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post

2. Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEntry”; and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post

3. Blog about this promotion, including a disclosure that you are receiving a sweepstakes entry in exchange for writing the blog post, and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post

4. For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older (or nineteen (19) years of age or older in Alabama and Nebraska). Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail. The notification email will come directly from BlogHer via the sweeps@blogher email address. You will have 2 business days to respond; otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here.

This sweepstakes runs from 8/1/2016– 8/31/2016

Be sure to visit the U.S. Bank brand page on BlogHer.com where you can read other bloggers’ posts!