Budget Managed, at least for the past 4 days

Pictures posted for family to share, washing machine spinning, and half un-packed suitcases litering the hallway; we are officially back from vacation. Every year we take a vacation with my side of the family. This year we headed on to the Texas Gulf Coast. It is only about 3.5 hours away and we all love to go. This year, in post-meteor style, I had us on a strict budget. It's much harder to keep to a budget when you travel folks who have deep pockets, but with some pre-emptive strikes and planning it can be done.

One of the biggest money savers was simply to shop early for a rental unit. We traveled with 3 seperate family units. Our family (2 adults, 2 kids), my sister's family (2 adults, one kid) and my parents. Since we were going to split the cost of the unit we were able to book a 3bedroom/3 bath condo in a nicer area, right on the beach for less than it would have cost us all to get hotel rooms. The added benefit is that a condo has a full kitchen. By planning ahead and getting all the families on board, we were able to split the meal responsibilities up. Each family was responsible for cooking one dinner. We all brought breakfast items and stuff for sandwiches. Since we stayed in a nicer complex, we had access to a beautiful pool, an easy boardwalk to the beach, and, ta-da!, a sprinkler park! Oh yeah, big win in the kid department.

So our budget: I set a budget of $200 (minus our part of the condo fees). Since I used coupons and the "meal-deal" at our local grocery store, our food came to about $65. We spent about $100 on gas (oh that hurts) then we spent the other $35 on snacks during the drive.

If you saw the pictures, you would never know we were on a budget. Yay family!!! And thank you God for the wonderful memories we made this past weekend, You are, indeed, awesome!