Our family loves to travel. We love to feast our eyes on new landscapes, taste new foods, and immerse ourselves in different experiences.

I got bitten by the travel bug when I was too young to remember. Fortunately for me, I had parents that were willing to indulge my passion and they made it possible for me to have many travel opportunities. I did three exchange programs, two to France and one to Italy, starting in the 8th grade. I took a semester off from college and set off on a two month jaunt through Europe, with no itinerary.

Those trips shaped my life in immeasurable ways. My husband and I decided that we want the same for our children. We want them to have a broader, more worldly perspective on life. But, we are a single-income family. We cannot simply indulge our every single travel whim!

My husband was born in Turkey and came to live in the United States when he was 11 years old. He remembers his traveling adventures around Turkey very fondly. He also has a very unique World view because of his experiences, one that he is eager to share with me and our children.

We have had some great successes with traveling on a small budget so far, like two weeks at Disney with a 10-day park pass for under $4k, a week at Williamsburg / Busch Gardens for under $700, two weeks in a beautifully appointed townhome on Hilton Head Island, SC for the price of one week, and we are planning a 5-week trip to Ireland / Scotland / Wales for under $7K. I will blog about each of these trips, and others, in the near future. I wanted to share our general travel tips here:

1. You have to be flexible. Let me write that again. YOU HAVE TO BE FLEXIBLE. That means that you may not get to go to the exact destination of your dreams on the exact dates that work best for you for the exact price that you want to pay. You may have to be willing to drive or travel to another airport as well. One of our favorite things about homeschooling is that we have travel flexibility. We have saved a ton of money by traveling during the off season. So, there are three main areas to consider: your budget, your destination, and your dates. Start planning by choosing one area in which you are the least flexible. Then start your research. But you must then be more flexible in the other two areas.
2. Avoid staying in hotels, if you can. Even when you get a good deal, they can be pricey.  There are sites where you can rent time shares from agencies or owners. We have done that in Orlando and Williamsburg. Because my husband works for the government, he has access to timeshare rentals around the World. But you can rent timeshares as well on sites such as timeshare-resale-rental.com, tug2.com and redweek.com. We have also had great experiences with Trip Advisor and VRBO for house/condo rentals (we have traveled to Hilton Head Island, SC and Martha’s Vineyard by renting vacation homes from owners). Some of the perks of staying in a house or condo is that you get a fully-appointed kitchen and, in most cases, a washer and dryer. This is so immensely helpful for families, especially on extended trips. Imagine how you can save on packing space if you have a washer and dryer! For the times when you are only going to be at a destination for a night or two and you must stay in a hotel, compare prices on places like kayak.com to make sure you are getting the best deal.
3. Eat in at least once per day. I can tell you that we have saved a mint by at least eating breakfast in our rental place. It also helps to prepare lunches for the day and take them along if you can. We saved hundreds of dollars by doing this at Disney World. This is also where having a condo or house helps. Having a fully-appointed kitchen is a luxury that saves a ton of money.
4. Plan ahead, especially for international travel. We started planning our trip to Ireland about a year ahead of time. This allowed us to spend some time tracking prices of things like flights. Airfare is often the biggest expense, especially for large families. My husband studied flight prices over the past year and was able to determine the time of year that flights were cheaper for certain destinations. His favorite sites for doing this are Google Flights and Kayak. A first look at Google flights shows DC to Paris at over $4,000 for 2 adults and 3 kids. This is a nice overview since we can see prices with just one click for any city. It is slow to load the prices but eventually, if you leave the map up, it will load the prices for all the places on the map.
   
   We change to graph view and see that flights are $2,000 cheaper if we fly 11 days later. Click on that date and it will move your trip forward that many days.
   
   If you go back to map view London is now also a lot cheaper. We saved almost $2,000 just by moving forward 11 days. One problem with this is that monthly housing is usually rented from the start to end of the month. But, you can take that $2k and make other plans with it. We have found that owners are usually pretty flexible and will work with you.
   
5. But be ready to jump when the deal is hot! This is another area in which you must be flexible. If you want to see the World, especially on a budget, sometimes you have to be ready to grab an opportunity. For example, during a Periscope presentation my husband found a direct flight to London from Washington, D.C. for $2,200.00 for a family of five! That is a phenomenal deal and if London is a place that you dream about going to, that’s a deal you may want to jump on. We happened to pick Ireland in this manner. We stumbled upon our cottage and the price made us take the plunge. The owner was flexible on dates since we were booking so far in advance so we had the time to watch flight prices.

All of these tips go hand in hand and compliment each other in many ways. They have helped us save incredible amounts of money and take trips, even long ones, that we would otherwise not be able to afford. So, we wanted to share our tips with everyone in the hopes that we can get the word out that, with a little time, effort, and the right resources, Worldschooling is within reach!