Off to College!

So we are sending our son off to college this week which of course is exciting and sad all at the same time. This is our first kid to go to college, so we don’t know what we don’t know yet. We are driving him down to Arizona and turning it into a mini-vacation. Since we have done such a great job budgeting using Summit’s Climbr, we could quickly save more into the vacation savings and tap into those funds instead of racking up debt on a credit card. 

I meticulously researched hotels along the way and once I found the one I wanted to stay at, I called to see if they could offer an even better rate than what was offered online. I did get two hotels to take an extra $20 off!

I also researched all available options for discounts – Groupon, Costco, etc. to see if any of my “memberships” got us any more discounts. I created a spreadsheet that has all expenses figured out including dining budgets and fuel costs based on miles to each stop. This is something I have never done, but it is going to help us stick to the budget and not come home to any credit card bills. Now, we will be using one of our credit cards to pay for everything on the trip for security purposes, but we know exactly what’s in the bank dedicated to this trip. So even though we could buy now pay later, we will not. We will stick to exactly what we have budgeted and enjoy this time away with our family.