How we are using Groupon to save on our vacation
I love to save money, and we don’t do really do “gifts” in this household for the holidays, but we love experiences! This year, for Yule, the kids will find out that we will be taking a family vacation to Michigan. We are looking at Michigan and Oregon as possible states to move to, so we figured we should check them out before buying land and relocating. In January, we will be taking a week to explore the area of Michigan that interests us the most, from Auburn Hills to Ann Arbor, which is a bit West of Detroit.
In order to keep the cost of the trip down, since we will be going there from New York which is about 8 hours away, I have been using different sites that I earn points on, and cashing out for Domino’s, Taco Bell, and other food gift cards that we will use to avoid the high costs of feeding a family of 8 on vacation. I also cashed out for a total of $400 in Groupon Bucks and used that to rent our hotel for the stay! Groupon always has special deals that you usually can’t get directly through the company. By booking our hotel stay this way, not only did we save money on each night, but we will also get a $20 dinner voucher for each day. The hotel offers complimentary breakfast, which will cut down on our costs as well!
Without Groupon, the cost of our hotel alone would be more than we could afford, so I am very grateful that I will be able to afford a nice family vacation, without the extreme costs. Don’t get me wrong though, there is much more to Groupon than restaurants and hotels. They even have deals on iPhones and accessories, in their Groupon Goods section! Just another way of saving money for the holidays. They have a ton to offer, you simply pop in your location (or in my case, the location we plan to stay in for our vacation) and you can easily search tons of deals. There is no cost to be a member, you just give them your email address and the savings are yours to explore at any point in time.
I am really excited to see what our final cost for this trip is going to be. I am really aiming to keep it as low as possible, because the money that we save from my estimate of this trip will be put into our land fund so that we can buy a nice homesteading plot after we finally decide on whether we are moving to Michigan or Oregon.
