Vacation planning is fun and easy, so you don’t need to be overwhelmed. The first thing I want you to do is take a deep breath and not panic. If you’ve never done this before, relax. I’m here to help you with some simple steps to planning a great vacation.

1. Determine your budget.

There are many ways to determine your budget, but I usually set a price for how much I want to spend (per person) and then go from there to determine how to find the best travel deals based on where I want to go. a cheap vacation. You must be reasonable about what the budget will be for your vacation or getaway. A very realistic and reasonable budget for a budget vacation is between $ 800 and $ 1200 per person, including airfare, hotel, car rental, food, tips, and airport parking. I have traveled across the country on business and the average budget for a two to three day business trip is roughly the same amount so it is very reasonable for a cheap vacation for a whole week (especially when it comes to air travel and a much longer stay).

2. Choose your destination.

Here’s a little insider travel secret. I have traveled to incredible vacation destinations at incredible prices, but I don’t usually choose my destination. Fate chooses me. It can be a bit frustrating, but I can tell you that if the destinations didn’t choose me, I would have never gone to Jamaica and seen a live starfish swimming underwater when I was snorkeling off a beach in Negril, climbing the Great Wall of China. . , traveled through the Panama Canal or met a baby sloth at a sloth sanctuary in Costa Rica just to start. I went to those vacation destinations not because I had a deep desire to travel to Montego Bay, Beijing, Panama City, or Puerto Limón, but because I was looking for a travel deal. Now, vacation planning through finding a deal is a great way to get cheap vacations and save a lot of money. I have taken amazing trips and gone to vacation destinations that I would never have had at the top of my “travel destination list”, but I realize that chasing the travel deal has kept me from going to the island paradise of Tahiti , Bora. Bora (my life’s dream of traveling) and I still want to do the “Sound of Music” tour in Salzburg, Austria. So you generally have a choice: search for the best travel deal or choose your dream trip.

3. Reserve your airfare, hotel and car rental.

When planning your vacation, the best way to save hundreds of dollars on your vacation is to book everything together as a complete travel package. I have no technological reason why this saves you money, but it does. Feel free to experiment with your own online travel booking engine of your choice with this concept by consulting separately and then as a package, but it has been done before and has been shown to save you money. I know that Rovia Travel has the best price online 68% of the time compared to Travelocity and Expedia, based on a recent independent survey from Topaz International, so you may want to check them out.

4. Research your vacation destination and plan your travel itinerary.

Researching my vacation destination and planning great itineraries is one of the things I excel at in vacation planning because I love researching the most popular tourist attractions in the vacation destination I’m visiting. I know some people like to “improvise,” but that lack of vacation planning can really add hundreds of dollars to your trip. There are two excellent ways to do your research. First, there are so many online tools at local tourist offices in the areas you visit that they have all the main information at your fingertips, plus many have coupons or travel deals that you might not have been able to find in other ways. The second thing I like to do is pick up an excellent guidebook for the destination I’m going to. The Frommer Travel Guides and Rick Steves Travel Guides for Europe are very well researched and written and these authors update their books almost every year so you know you have up-to-date information.

5. Make two checklists.

Now you need to make two checklists to plan your vacation. One is a list of things to do before going on vacation. This includes finding a pet sitter, having a neighbor pick up the mail, calling your mobile phone service to arrange a text / email package while you are away if you are traveling internationally, obtaining a passport or visa (if you need them), Get medical shots if needed, call your credit card companies to let them know you will be traveling and which cities or countries will expect charges to arise, and the like. The second list for planning your vacation is a list of things to pack.

Now that wasn’t so bad, was it? Now you see how simple it is to plan your vacation even for an inexperienced traveler. These are the basics of vacation planning and now that you know how to plan your vacation, we have plenty of additional travel tips on my travel website (see below) to help you discover a world of ways to see the world. Have a good trip and have a fabulous vacation.