So, last year we had some great travel. Amazing travel. Big budget (for us) travel. Which means that this year we need to spend as little as possible and save as much as possible for the next trip. As of last year, the next trip we had planned to take was a road trip south this summer, but that has been pushed to 2017. So, we are looking to make the most of Summer 2016 on a super tight budget.
We are very fortunate to have wonderful family and friends who understand our desire for experiences over stuff and who gift us passes and gift cards to great attractions for holidays and birthdays. One such gift was season passes for Six Flags. We live just about a 90min drive from Six Flags Great America, so we will be visiting there often. As well as using our current memberships for Brookfield Zoo and Museum of Science & Industry, and using the one-day tickets the kids earned to Raging Waves through their school with the Plunge Into Fitness program. All of these will make for a great Stay-Cation kind of summer, for sure.
But. We like to travel. So we began brain-storming and decided to look into a weekend get-away to St Louis. We have been there before but we have not been to Six Flags St Louis and our season passes would grant us admission. A road trip destination less than 5 hours away, so not too much gas cost. A whole day of activity at Six Flags that is no additional cost to us while being a new experience. And we typically stay at the budget-friendly Choice Hotels, so this trip is shaping up to work out nicely on this year's budget!
Once that idea started to take hold, we began thinking of ways we could maximize this little weekend road trip and still stay in our super-tight budget. Choice Hotels often runs a promo to stay two times and earn a free night. Idea #1: Stop in Springfield on the way there or back. We love history; we have not been there as a family; there are free sights to see. Idea #2: Find some free sights in St Louis to add on to our trip.
Also, we have not utilized our Choice Privileges Visa card since our road trip in 2012. With this and other road trips hopefully over the next few years, it was time to revisit which card gets us the best rewards on our everyday purchases. There may be nothing as confusing as comparing credit card reward systems -- percents, real cash, gift cards, points, free nights -- talk about apples to oranges! But, it seems to us that using our Choice Privileges Visa will earn us a better value in rewards than our current Capitol One Mastercard which earns us a straightforward 1.5% real cash back on every dollar. I love real cash back and that money has been used for many things over the past few years, but, if we are making travel a priority then earning free hotel nights faster than we could earn the cash to pay for a hotel night is definitely the way to go!
We are still firming up the plans to make this happen, shooting for July 2016. Stay tuned.
