Our vacation...

So, the whole reason I really decided to start this blog was to spread the word about our amazing savings on our vacation to NJ/NY.

I am a planner. You could even say I'm OCD. Seriously, I made a tripit travel plan with down to the minute directions and stops. Now, that's not to say that I'm one of those people who freak out when things don't go according to plan. Nope, not I. I just say, ok, now how to I modify my current plans to fit everything? I feel like if I don't already have a plan, it would just be too overwhelming to make adjustments.

We decided that we would take this trip around the holidays to visit Shane's family and do a little bit of sightseeing. My daughter would be spending a week with her Dad so it was the perfect timing. It started as a small trip, just 5 days, 5 nights...but oh, did it grow. Just like others out there, our finances are tight. Especially during the holiday season. We have so many to buy for and that meant we had to find ways to make this trip the most cost effective possible.

So, the first step, how to take the trip and use as little vacation pay from work. We decided that it would be best to go over the New Year's Holiday. It's too hard to travel the week of Christmas. If we went during a holiday week, that meant an extra day that we would get paid for without using Paid Time Off.

Step two, how to maximize the time. It is a long drive from our home in Tennessee to Northern New Jersey where my in-laws live. Something to the tune of 13-14 hours. This would take up a whole day! I hate spending my valuable "fun" time driving. The solution? We leave after work and drive through the night. Obviously, on the return trip, we would have to drive through the day because it would be nearly impossible to go back to work without rest. Shane and I have made this drive before and we have it worked out fairly well so that neither of us get overextended, but we wanted to make sure we could rest and also afford to have a good time.

Step three, find someone who would like to tag along. Now, I know some of you are shaking your heads and saying, "Why in the world would you want to take other people along with you on your vacation?" Well, it's simple, extra drivers and splitting the trip costs. A trip like this could potentially cost a rather large amount. If there is someone that you are comfortable enough to sleep in the same room with and drive your car while you sleep, why not? After asking a few friends and family members, it was decided that my sister and her boyfriend would go with us. What does that mean for the trip? Driving resposibilities and total trip costs are split between four people. AMAZING!

Step four, find lodging. I work for a hotel. For the purposes of this blog I will not disclose that information or my rates. I'm sorry, but I value my job WAY too much to risk losing it. So, I started researching what hotels were in the area that are owned by my company or the brand that I work for. We would be staying four nights in a hotel. We decided to spend two nights in New Jersey and two nights in New York City. I was able to go to my company's hotel in New Jersey and a branded hotel in New York. Let me just tell you when I told my husband and mother-in-law the rates that I would be getting, I thought they were going to pass out. Now, add to that fact that we would be splitting the cost with two other people, it got even better.

Step five, what do we do while we're there? I don't know about you, but I hate sitting around on vacation doing nothing. Seriously, if I wanted to do that I'd go to my family's lake house that is only 1 hour away. The prospect of getting there and not having a plan was out of the question, but again, how do we afford to have a fun-filled vacation? My answer to this: Groupon. Shortly after the above steps were completed, I began to research the daily deal sites to see what I could get/use while we were on our trip. Let me just tell you, it was the best decision I made in this whole process. For two months, I scoured the sites looking for deals across New Jersey and New York City.