Wednesday, May 4

Unplanned Vacation - CHEAP!

I used some of the $ I saved from couponing to "buy" us a trip to St. Louis over 4th of July weekend! This was unplanned, we've talked about it, but just never made the effort to budget for it :)

We are going 4 days, 3 nights and our ENTIRE trip will be under $500...including hotel and food! I have never used http://www.hotwire.com/ before, but NO WAY was I going to pay $200 a night to stay at a hotel that was 1m or less to the arch. On this website you purchase a star-rated "package" before you even know the hotel. Oh, I prayed the whole time that it wasn't a joke and that it wouldn't come back to bite me, LOL! However, trying out something new paid off!!!! I got us a room at the Sheraton City Center Hotel for $75 a night!!! I couldn't believe it! On top of that, http://www.restaurant.com/ was having 80% off again (they have this ALL THE TIME! Just google a code) so I got us 3 dinners and 4 lunches (7 - $25 gift certificates, grand total of $175) for just $11 out of pocket! Score! When using that site, READ the minimum ticket amount required and look over the menu to make sure you'll like the place. ALL of my certificates had 0 minimum or $35 order. So at most I have to spend $10 more per restaurant for dinner. Hey, we are eating at a dine-in restaurant for the price of McDonald's!

Most things to do in St. Louis are FREE, or at a small price. You can bet that I will be hunting more coupons over the next couple months to use on this trip :)

Try these sites out! Maybe you'll get a trip you weren't able to take before OR cheap date nights using the restaurant.com site. I bought 6 - $25 certificates for just $2 each for our date nights. Now we can afford to go twice a month and hire a babysitter!

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