Vacations Blog

Until a few years back, a vacation meant piling the kids into the back and hitting the road. But times change, and now you have a whole new bunch of requirements to fulfill before you can even think about the beach, a cold beer and some peace and quiet.

Beach Vacation

If you don’t want your neighbors and colleagues to look down on you, follow this list of ’friendly’ things that your vacation has to be.

1. Environment-friendly:- It’s bad enough that your vacation destroys your entire year’s savings. Don’t let your vacation be blamed for the destruction of the earth. Find a destination which cares about their surroundings, get a green hotel, try to avoid trips by air and don’t do stuff which will be harmful to the environment – like wasting water, and leaving trash and beer cans in the outdoors or on the road. Read More »

I don’t know about you guys, but my family starts wishing for our next vacation the second we get home from our last vacation. Having as much time in advance for planning makes it a lot easier to pull together the required funds. About once a year we plan a “big” vacation, and once we’ve got a destination in mind, and a general cost figured out, we start working toward saving the money.

And again, I don’t know about you guys, but my family lives RIGHT up to the edge of its means, every single month. With our paychecks exiting the bank account every bit as quickly as they’re deposited, it’s a challenge to find the wiggle room to set aside money for vacation. Here are five ways to save money every month.

#1 – You were going to spend it anyway, so put it away instead. The next time you plan to drop, say, $50 on dinner at a sit-down restaurant, spend $20 at a fast food joint instead, and put the remaining $30 in an interest-bearing savings account. If you get into the habit of down-scaling your plans and setting the extra money aside, you’ll be shocked at how quickly it adds up.

Read More »

Pacific Park photo by Carrie Tracy

1.  Indulge your playful side and go on some rides at Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier.  Open until midnight on Valentine’s Day.

2.  Take a gondola ride in Huntington Harbor.

Queen Mary by Sfoskett, Wikimedia

3.  Enjoy a special Valentine dinner at one of the restaurants on the Queen Mary in Long Beach Harbor.

4.  On a budget?  Grab a blanket, a bottle of Two Buck Chuck, and sit on the beach staring up at the stars with your beloved.  Loaf of bread not required.

5.  If you’re really lucky, have someone watch the kids overnight and make a weekend escape to a luxurious downtown Los Angeles hotel like the Biltmore, which is running two “specials” right now.  (Babysitter bribe might cost as much as the hotel, so this one is not for the budget conscious.)

Standard Hotel Rooftop Bar courtesy of standardhotels.com

6.  Don’t have enough time for that?  Skip out for the evening and have a drink at the rooftop poolside bar at the Standard Hotel in Hollywood.  Breathtaking views, beautiful people, crappy parking options.

7.  Do something different.  See a show at the Pasadena Playhouse .  “Stormy Weather” based on a biography of Lena Horne is now playing.  Tickets cost $63-$78 each.

8.  Get kinky.  Go shopping together at Frederick’s of Hollywood (locations all over Los Angeles) or The Pleasure Chest on Santa Monica Blvd.

9.  Or you can do what we will probably do.  Visit the local Blockbuster and just watch a regular movie before passing out on the couch after we wrestle the children into bed.  Happy Valentine’s Day.

10.  This list originally had only nine items but then I saw this post and figured I’d better include Disneyland.  Duh, happiest place on earth.