Travel – an enriching experience or a waste of money?

Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer!

I can’t remember where I first read this travel quote (it was probably a Facebook meme to be honest) but the words really stuck with me.

We’re not the sort of people who can sit on a sunbed all day (well, Miss Frugal is but the rest of us aren’t) and we don’t even like the heat that much as we all burn so quickly so we’ve mostly holidayed in the UK over the last five or six years.  There’s so many places to visit and things to see and do here in the UK that we haven’t seen nearly as much as we’d like to see yet but even so, I’ve started to get a bit of that wanderlust feeling and I want to travel further afield with the kids now that they’re a bit older.

I’ve told you about my planned trip to New York with Miss Frugal in April which is something we’re really looking forward to and absolutely something that I feel is going to be pretty priceless when it comes to making memories.  We’ve got a great deal on our hotel and flights and we’re all sorted with our spending money and visa waiver form.

(Useful tip: always make sure you get your visa paperwork in order. Check if you can submit your visa application online; this saves you a lot of money and time as you won’t need to visit the embassy.)

I think I might have told you that we’re booked for a week in the Isle of Wight at the end of July but I’ve also just booked a cheeky 4 nights away to Milan over the May half term for us all!

Now I know what you’re probably thinking – this much travel isn’t very frugal at all and you may have a point but honestly, four nights in Milan including the flights worked out cheaper than a trip to London on the train for us and even if it hadn’t have worked out cheaper, I still would have been tempted to book it!

I was planning a couple of days away in this country  but I was shocked at the prices coming up, even taking into account that it was half term it was more than I was expecting to pay so thought I’d have a cheeky look at what as available for city breaks abroad.  I found some amazing deals for Milan, Nice and Berlin. but in the end we went for Milan because (a) it was the cheapest, (b) the hotel looks amazing and (c) we love pizza!  Also a little bit of (d) Milan sounds a bit more glamorous and a lot of (e) I love the Italian accent.

We’re planning on spending some time in Milan but also have our eye on a day trip to either Venice or Rome which are both between 2 and 3 hours away on the train.  We also fancy a day at Lake Como which is less than an hour away and I’d really like to take the kids if the weather is nice because I loved the holidays I spent at Lake Garda when I was younger.

Whatever we do, I’ll be making sure that the kids see as much of wherever we are and learn as much as they can while we explore.  We’ll have quality time as a family exploring somewhere new together and making lots of memories that hopefully will stay with the kids for a long time to come.

So, back to the quote at the start of this post – do you think travel really does make you richer?

Personally, I think it does because I look back on the trips I took with my family as a child and the memories I have from those trips are priceless.  My Mum and brother are no longer with us but I have a huge box of photos of us all on holidays that I love to look through and remember some of the fun we had.  I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have happy memories if we hadn’t have been lucky enough to travel because I absolutely would and do have lots of other special memories but my holiday memories are some of my favourites.

I also think you can absolutely still be frugal when you travel even though you’re spending money. My top three tips to plan a frugal trip would be to make sure you get a great deal, pay for your with savings rather than a credit card and to research where you’re staying so you can find out how to have fun on a budget there (YouTube is actually great for this).

You might also like: How to travel cheap on a budget from a Humble Penny

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