Faithful Five for Planning a Trip or Vacation
- Purpose -I always say there is a difference between a trip and a vacation. On one hand, a trip is where you are going to have things that you have to do, people or things that you need to see. On the other hand, a vacation is where you don’t have anything that you have to do but just sit back and relax. The first thing when planning is figuring out the purpose of your trip/vacation.
- People – Who are you traveling with? Just your family, extended family, or friends. It may be a funny question to ask yourself but, can you spend more than 48 hours straight with these people? If you are planning on having a good time on your trip, the company you have is a very important piece of the equation. This can help determine the length of time away and where you will be staying (i.e. family member’s house, shared house rental, or hotel).
- Price – Do you have a limit? We do our best to maximize our money which is increasingly important these days. When coming up with your budget you will need to keep in mind a lot of things: transportation, lodging, food, activities, and other incidentals. Your budget may even need to include money spent on preparing for your trip/vacation (passports if going outside of the country cost $$$ these days).
- Plan – This is one of my favorite parts. I love to create lists, spreadsheets, and schedules (not that you will need a schedule on your vacation but your trip may need one). As mentioned before you will need to plan your transportation, lodging, food, and activities.
- Prepare – Pack your bags, and get ready to go right? Well, there is a little bit more to it than that, maybe a lot more to it.
Our goal for the posts in this section is to walk through the planning of various types of trips, from simple trips to the zoo to overseas trips that take a lot more to plan!