Saving for a Jamaica Vacation: A Two Year Plan

After two kids and eight years of marriage, my husband and I enjoyed our first international vacation together in January 2011. We live in Alaska, where winters are long, cold and dark, so we chose a distant destination: sunny Jamaica. I am a stay at home mom and my husband serves full time in the Army National Guard, so our budget is limited. Through careful planning and diligent saving, we paid for our entire trip without going into debt.

These are the tips and strategies that worked for us:

1) Start early. We chose the time and place for our Jamaica vacation about three years in advance. We started saving for our trip two years in advance. Because we gave ourselves so much time to save, we were able to save just a small amount each month, allowing it to add up over time.

2) Use a separate bank. We opened a no fee savings account specifically for our vacation money at a new bank. Keeping it separate from our other savings and checking accounts kept us from dipping in to the money.

3) Make it automatic. I treated our vacation savings account just like a bill. I deposited money into our account every month without fail.

4) Earn extra income. About six months before our vacation, I started working at a local restaurant one day a week. I worked on a day my husband was off work so we could avoid childcare costs. Every week, we saved the tips I earned in cash in a jar. When it was time to leave, we had a nice stash of spending cash that hadn't put any strain on our tight budget.

5) Watch for deals. I made our money stretch as far as possible on this trip by watching for specials and promotions for our resort and airline tickets. We used frequent flier miles for one leg of our trip, and purchased tickets for the second half. I checked the rates for frequent flier reservations regularly, and waited to purchase them until they had gone done by 15,000 miles. Between my husband and I, this saved 30,000 miles- more than enough for one frequent flier ticket for our next vacation.

We chose our resort early, but didn't make any reservations until about eight months out from our trip. I watched travel websites and the website of the resort itself to get an idea of the standard rates, and then held out for a promotion. My strategy worked, and we scored a two category room upgrade and a $500 resort credit for no extra charge by making our reservation on the resort's website during a spring promotion.

We enjoyed our time on the beach in Jamaica so much, we are already planning (and saving for!) our next international vacation.