Planning our Bucket List Vacation

A few months ago, we decided to start planning a "bucket list" vacation for all four of us.  We talked to our children and consulted our big map and talked about where we would go if we could go anywhere.  The list was long and included places like Australia, China and Europe. We finally decided on Hawaii.  None of us have ever been there and as we researched it and talked to our friends and family who have been, it sounds like it really is paradise.

To begin, we had to estimate out how much money we will need for such a trip and where it is going to come from.  We would like to spend about 7-10 days in Hawaii and while we don't want to stay at the most expensive resort, we don't want to do it on a shoestring either. We want to feel like we are on a dream vacation and afford to have some once-in-a-lifetime experiences. We figure that airfare and lodging will be our largest expenses, so we priced some flights for the month we think we will go and looked at the costs of hotels where we would like to stay.  We also looked at vacation rentals.  We considered the cost of food, car rentals and entertainment.  We used expenditures from past vacations as benchmarks but estimated high on everything because it all costs more in Hawaii.  Then we looked at the total and generously rounded up again because we want to have a great vacation without being blindsided with unexpected costs.  If we spend less than our budget we can always put it toward our next trip, but if we don't save enough money, our memories of our dream vacation might be less wonderful than they should be.

With the target established, we made a strategy for hitting it.  We live on one five-figure income, and our only debt is our mortgage.  We live on a budget and pay our credit card balances in full every month.  Because we love doing fun things as a family, we scale back in areas such as cable TV, cell phones, clothing and home decor that are not as important to us.  Limiting our interest payments, bills and other expenditures allows us to contribute every month to an online savings account with a higher interest rate that I opened especially for this vacation. We are also dedicating our tax refund to this account, which is helping it grow much more quickly.  Finally, we created a jar, decorated by our daughter, to collect change from around the house and other smaller contributions to the cause.  In the picture above, it's nearly empty because I recently deposited about $60 from it to our account.  It's a drop in the bucket, but it's getting us one step closer!

We aren't willing to sacrifice family fun and memories for over a year to make our dream vacation happen, but we are planning fewer expensive excursions. We will take spring break and summer vacations, but they will be closer to home. With all that Utah has to offer, that doesn't feel like a loss. We are planning to spend fewer nights in hotels and and more nights lodging with family. We are planning more picnics in the park or mountains and fewer admission charges and restaurant meals. We will still go places and do things as we always have, but we will do so with our goals in mind.  If we maintain our current progress, we will exceed our target savings and fly to Hawaii - hopefully the first of many bucket list vacations - by the summer of 2013!

What vacations are on your bucket list?