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I wrote about this on my old blog before registering for this one, so some may have already read this. But I wanted to share again about our upcoming vacation in September and how I went about finding the best deals!

Ok. So instead of going to the travel agent to book our 2-year anniversary vacation in September, I did it myself online and saved us as much money as possible by finding deals on Expedia and using Ebates to actually book the trip. Here’s what we’ve got planned.

Flying out on a Monday morning and arriving in Myrtle Beach by late morning. We are staying at a nice little hotel in a 1 bedroom suite that has a full kitchen for 7 nights. Flying home from Myrtle Beach the following Monday to be home by dinner time!

The hotel was having a 24 hour sale exclusive to Expedia that makes their 1 bedroom suite 1/2 off the normal price. We’re getting it for $45/night. That’s their cheapest room (all rooms are either suites or studios). By booking the hotel and flight together we saved some money too. I used Kayak to find some cheap flights and was able to combine their cheap flight with the hotel deal. After vacation protection ($35/person in case we have to cancel for some reason), flight, hotel, and all taxes/fees it comes out to $1011, which is only $11 over our budget - and that’s because I always forget about the vacation protection plan.

By booking through Ebates we are earning 1% cash back (ok…so it’s only like $10, but still). Also, we were going to go Sunday through Sunday, but the flights are more expensive. I think I saved us $60/each on flight by booking Monday-Monday.

I asked a friend if he could come feed the cats and change the litter box every other day while we’re gone (so 3 times) and also take us to the airport and pick us up when we fly home so we’re saving like $7/day by not having to park our car there. We’re going to pay him $75 to do this (which covers gas up to $4.50/gallon plus like $5 for each trip just for his time). I’d rather give money to a friend than to an airport parking garage…and the cats need to be taken care of anyway.

I think that’s all. I feel I did pretty well for our vacation planning, and I don’t think we’ll need to rent a car. If we do, maybe we’ll rent for a day or two just to drive around and see stuff further out, but other than that everything is on the main bus line. We’ll have a take a taxi from the airport to our hotel, and vice versa when coming home, but that shouldn’t be too bad.

Now I can rest assured that our vacation is planned!