It’s that time of year when people start planning out their summer vacations and begin booking all their weekends. One of the things we have coming up is a wedding to attend in July. We live in Seattle and the wedding is in central Montana. It’s one of my last cousins to get married and we really want to go to see her get married and also visit all of our cousins and relatives back there.
Over the last week or so I’ve been checking airline flights and it looks like the cheapest flights are about $350 round trip. When you multiply that times 3 it’s over $1000 just in airline tickets for my wife, daughter and I. Add in the hotel room and we are easily heading north of $2000. Ugh. On top of the actual expense of the trip is also the lost income for my wife. Since she is a contractor, she doesn’t get paid time off. Every week day we are gone makes the trip that much more expensive. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t avoid going just so my wife can keep earning income, but it’s certainly something that comes in to the equation when deciding how long of a trip to plan.
The other option that we have is to drive there. It’s about 850 miles each way and takes a couple days to drive when you have a 5 year old. (In the past I’ve always just headed out at 4:00am and done the trip in one day but I don’t think my wife is going to approve of that plan now that we have a child). If we drive we would spend somewhere around $300 on fuel. That’s a lot cheaper than flying, but we also have to calculate in some wear and tear on the car. If we use the IRS mileage rate to calculate “real” costs it would be about $850 to drive. (The 2008 IRS mileage reimbursement rate is .505 per mile.) So, even if we use the conservative IRS calculation, it’s still cheaper to drive.
I guess the big question is how much is our time worth. The flight would take about 2 hours, while the driving would take around 13-14 hours. By spending an additional $200 we would get a couple extra days in town with our relatives. Of course if we fly, we may have to rent a car to get around there. In that case, it would really be more like $500 more to have a couple extra days in town. Hmmmmmm. I guess we’ll need to sit down and really hammer this out to decide what feels right.
If you want I work at a rather large hotel and resort company and can usually get some pretty descent deals for friends and family (nothing spectacular, but good solid deals). I could look in to something in your area if you want to see what’s available if you e-mail me over the week your going and where you need to be.
I tend to support driving when plane tickets start adding up so fast and the drive can be done in a day. Also, you might find that a one day drive is still possible even with a little one in tow. My daughter has been drug between Wisconsin and Maryland at least a dozen times for weekend trips — long drive, but cost less than flying (of course, airlines eventually added decent cheaper flights between the two, but our trips ended before that happened). When the trip takes several days, we fly (or we just don’t go, which is usually the case).
I’m in the same boat as you. My friend from college is getting married in October in a remote destination where tickets will probably cost me about $400 round trip. She hasn’t let me know if I’m invited to bring my boyfriend yet and I don’t want to be rude and ask. If he is invited we could possibly use his rewards points for a free ticket. If not, I’m left traveling alone.
My parents used to drive with us from New York to Florida every year straight through while we slept. It was long but we put up with it!