I love travel planning.
It is an actual thrill to me to put together a week-long, month-long (or whatever it may be) trip for my family, optimize our budget, and then take my family on an amazing adventure.
At the end, I always feel a little sense of pride and think, “I did this. I made this happen.”
But it isn’t without some work.
Planning a family vacation is time-consuming, and it’s much more of a marathon than a sprint.
I’ve had more than one person say to me, “I would love to do that. I would love to take my kids on a vacation like that, but I start the planning process and get overwhelmed.”
I get it.
There are flights, hotels, activities, transportation, food, budgets, schedules, reservations…and suddenly you have 47 browser tabs open and no idea what you’re doing anymore.
So today, I’m going to break it all down for you in the easiest-to-follow, step-by-step format there ever was.
The secret is simple: don’t try to plan the entire vacation at once.
Break it into small, digestible pieces, tackle one thing at a time, and suddenly that giant, overwhelming vacation becomes a series of manageable decisions.
Ready? Let’s plan a vacation!
1. Set Your Family Vacation Budget
This is the first step, and it might also be the most important.
If your budget is $1,000, great! If it’s $30,000, great! Be proud of what you can afford. There is no magic number that makes a vacation “good.”
Please do yourself a favor and be very realistic about what you can afford. Don’t spread yourself so thin financially that you’re stressed and grumpy when vacation time finally arrives. Trust me. It won’t be worth it.
A vacation is supposed to be something you enjoy, not something that follows you home in the form of a giant credit card bill.
So, before you start looking at flights or hotels, figure out what you can comfortably spend, and remember that your vacation budget needs to cover more than just airfare. You’ll also need to account for:
- Accommodations
- Food
- Activities
- Transportation
- A little wiggle room for the unexpected
We track every major expense on our trips so we know exactly what a family vacation actually costs. You can see what that spending looks like here.
Once you have your number, you’re ready for the fun part.
2. Decide Where Your Budget Can Take You
Now that you know how much you can spend, where do you want to go?
If you already have a dream destination in mind, fantastic.
But what if you have a budget and no idea where that budget can take you? Do a quick Google search like: “What vacation can I afford if I am leaving from [your city], have [your budget] and have [number of people] in my family?”
Or, if you already know where you want to go: “Can I afford to visit [destination] with my family of [number of people] if my budget is [budget] and we need to fly from [city]?”
You don’t need to have everything figured out yet. You’re just trying to narrow down your possibilities. Maybe you’ll discover that your dream destination is completely doable. Or maybe you’ll discover it’s going to cost more than expected and you need time to save money. Or maybe you’ll find somewhere you hadn’t even considered.
Great! Now you know where your budget can take you… Let’s start planning an actual trip.
3. Choose Your Dates and Find Your Flights
Sometimes your travel dates are completely out of your hands because of school, work, sports or other commitments, but if you have some flexibility, use it!
The best-case scenario is that you have a general idea of when you’d like to travel, with some cushion around your start and end dates.
Why? Because airfare can vary significantly from one day to the next.
Flying a day or two earlier or later could potentially save your family hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars.
With your general dates in mind, start searching. I like to use Google Flights and Skyscanner to compare dates and prices in cash.
If you prefer using miles and points instead of cash? PointsYeah and Roame are two of my favorite resources for finding award flights.
Once you know when you’re flying and what those flights will cost, you will have a much better idea of what you have left to spend.
4. Create a Daily Vacation Budget
Now take your total vacation budget and subtract the cost of your flights. What’s left is the money you have to work with once you arrive.
Divide that amount by the number of days you plan to spend at your destination, and You now have a daily vacation budget.
From there, break it into four basic categories:
- Accommodations: 35–40%
- Food: About 25%
- Activities: 25–30%
- Transportation: 10–15%
These percentages are just a starting point. Your actual numbers will depend heavily on where you’re going. If you’re camping, you probably won’t need much of an accommodation budget. If you’re visiting a very walkable city, you may spend almost nothing on transportation.
The important thing is to give every dollar a job before you spend it.
And if you spend more in one category, that’s okay! You can balance it out somewhere else.
5. Find the Best Accommodations You Can Afford
Now that you’ve broken your budget into four categories, you know how much you can spend on your hotel each night.
Maybe you don’t need to spend anything because you’re sleeping in a tent. Awesome! You can use that money somewhere else.
But let’s say your budget is $150 per night. Head over to your favorite hotel booking site and see what $150 will buy you. My go-tos are Booking.com and Agoda, but there are plenty of options.
Enter your dates and destination, and most importantly, set your actual budget.
I’m going to warn you now: it is way too easy to fall in love with accommodations you can’t afford. You start looking at the $150 hotels, see a gorgeous $400 hotel and suddenly you’re convincing yourself that “it’s only one night.”
Don’t do it. See what you can actually afford.
Then add the things that are important to your family. Want to be near a specific landmark? Need free breakfast? A pool? A family room? Laundry? Add those filters.
The world is your lobster, as long as you don’t spend more money than you have.
If you’re traveling with a bigger family, figuring out how to find affordable accommodations can be one of the trickiest parts of the planning process. Here’s how we approach finding affordable hotels for a family of five.
Read the Reviews
Once you find a hotel that looks good, read the reviews. Don’t just look at the star rating. Read several actual reviews and look for patterns.
A bad review in a sea of good ones is generally nothing to worry about. But if you’re repeatedly reading that the hotel is infested with roaches, the area is unsafe, or the entire hotel has no air conditioning even though it’s advertised? Trust your instincts!
You’re not looking for a hotel with absolutely no negative reviews. You’re looking for one that sounds like a good fit for your family.
Compare Prices Before You Book
Once you’ve found a hotel you like, check a few different booking sites to see if you can beat the price or get additional amenities.
Priceline, Hotels.com and Trivago can all be useful for comparison purposes, but read the fine print. Don’t accidentally book a non-refundable room to save a few bucks if there’s a chance you might need to cancel.
And here’s my biggest hotel-booking tip: Always check the hotel’s own website.
Sometimes the price is lower, and sometimes the price is the same but includes more, like breakfast, parking or a better cancellation policy.
6. Choose Your Activities
Look how easy this is. You’re doing great!
Now let’s think about activities. Research the best things to do at your destination and decide what looks great for your group. Need inspiration? Here’s a look at some of the experiences my own kids have put on our family travel bucket list.
Want to spend every day lying on the beach? Easy!
Want to visit a theme park and go whale watching? Sounds fun, but you’re going to need to plan ahead.
Schedule the activities that require advance reservations or are likely to sell out, and keep the rest flexible.
Our family likes to splurge when something is really important to us and balance the budget with free or very inexpensive activities on other days. Of course, you don’t have to spend the same amount every day.
Pro Tip: Group Activities by Location
If you’re visiting a big city, try to plan activities that are in the same general area on the same day. Sometimes it won’t work, but when it does, it can save you a surprising amount of time and money on transportation.
And you’ll spend less time dragging tired kids across town, which is a win!
7. Figure Out Transportation and Food
At this point, you have your dates, flights, hotel and a tentative schedule. Look at you go!
Now think about how you’re going to get around.
I am a huge advocate for walking and public transportation when it’s safe and practical. Walking is a fantastic way to see a city and get a real feel for it.
Sometimes, though, you’ll need to splurge for a rideshare, taxi, rental car, train or ferry.
You don’t need to plan every single ride before you leave home. Just get a general idea of what’s available and what it costs. And if there are any major transportation requirements, consider pre-booking tickets and accounting for those in the budget.
If you’ll need a train pass, check children’s fares. If you need a ferry, compare companies. If you’re renting a car, check parking costs.
Transportation is another area where you can save a surprising amount of money when you’re traveling with a family and/or if you plan ahead. Every dollar adds up.
And then there’s food…Of course, you don’t have to plan every meal in advance unless you’re visiting a destination that’s known for its gastronomic scene or you’re trying to hit some Michelin-starred restaurants.
In that case, you better start looking for reservations!
Otherwise, research a few favorites, keep an eye out for places that look delicious while you’re exploring, go where the locals go, and try your best to stick to your food budget.
8. Stop Planning and Go!
See? It wasn’t that hard, was it?
You didn’t have to figure out your entire vacation on the first day. You didn’t have to research 400 hotels. You didn’t have to decide what you’re eating for dinner three months from now.
You simply made one decision at a time. And suddenly, you have effectively planned a vacation.
You saved money. You stayed within your budget. And most importantly, you created the opportunity to make some amazing memories with your family.
And that’s really the whole point, isn’t it?
So open those browser tabs, grab a notebook, and start with Step 1.
You can do this!
And when you’re sitting on a beach, riding a train through the mountains, wandering through a night market or watching your kids experience something completely new, you’ll get to look around and think:
“I did this. I made this happen.”
Affiliate Disclosure
Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. That means if you click a link and make a purchase or booking, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.
I only recommend travel resources and products that I genuinely use, trust, or believe may be helpful to your family. These commissions help support Always Take the Kids and allow me to keep sharing our real-world family travel experiences, tips, and costs.
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