Affording that dream holiday

I recently learned of a "vacation calculator" designed to help people see where they can make savings in their spending, so that they can save for their dream vacation. The Yaycations Calculator goes through a series of questions, asking how much you spend on various products and services over certain periods of time, then adds up the amount of money that you will save over a year if you opt to go without those things.

Seems like a great idea. I decided to give it a go. I went through all the questions, and I saved...

...precisely nothing.

Its not that I'm not willing to do without stuff. Its that I'm already doing without, and that's how we can afford our family holidays.

Last night I was looking at the monthly credit card bill that had arrived yesterday. Apart from one or two more unusual expenses, all our money was spent on groceries, petrol for the car, and medical expenses. It was quite amazing. I hadn't realised that we lived quite so simply.

Without trying or wanting to sound "holier than thou", here's how we do it.

We have a car, and a mortgage, but we manage to live without lots of the "added extras" that so many people have. We have no TV, so we don't need cable. Neither of us has a mobile (cell) phone. We make sandwiches to take to work and school. We don't buy a daily coffee when out. Instead of buying CDs, we mostly listen to the radio - and purchase music infrequently. We borrow books from libraries - only buying the rare 'must-haves'. We don't need DVDs because we don't have a TV to watch them on. We only purchase clothing when we absolutely need to, rather than just because we want to and minimise the purchase of "label" clothing. I even sew some of our own clothing sometimes. We don't go out to clubs or the local pub.

We still have hobbies, (I do lots of embroidery), we are in the process of renovating our house (we're very much DIYers so we save heaps there), we occasionally will have a meal out or takeaway (about once every one or two months), we have a lawn mower man (John is allergic to grass). We give money to carefully chosen causes on a regular basis. Our kids do extracurricular activities like music and sport.

But far from having a terribly boring and sad existence, we enjoy our lives. We enjoy each others' company, and we enjoy going on holidays together, as a family. We can usually manage a big overseas holiday about once every 2-3 years.

So if your wish list includes a vacation, and you don't think you can afford it, how about firstly trying the "Yaycations calculator" to see what you can save. Then why not take a careful look at your expenses to see what you can do without? As you'll see from the calculator, even small weekly expenses can add to a lot over a year.

For us, holidays with our kids are a priority. We learn heaps about the world around us from our travels. Our family vacations also create shared memories that help to bind our family together. So for us, putting aside money to pay for our family holidays is also a priority. It means that in some ways we "do without", but we can only see great big benefits from doing so.

not all fabrics are created equal

In my quest for my perfect travel bag - one which I think I'll have to make - I read the other day on the Tom Bihn forums about a fabric test that they had submitted their fabric and a competitor's fabric to.

It was interesting to see that the Tom Bihn 1050 denier fabric turned out to be more wear-resistant than a 1680 denier fabric. You can see the pictures and a blurb about it at the Tom Bihn website.

Doug Dyment, has a wonderful explanation about types of fabric at www.onebag.com. You'll need to scroll down to the heading: "Quality Luggage Components".

Doug explains the differences between different weights (denier is a measure of weight, not strength) and the difference between ballistic nylon and cordura nylon.

All this means the plot thickens in my local search for the perfect fabric. While I can find two places here in Sydney where I can get luggage-type fabric, without seeing the fabrics, its hard to know quite what they're like. I do like the shinyness of ballistic nylon, but the fabrics I have found are cordura, rather than ballistic.

In case you're interested, the two sources that I have found so far are Synergy Textiles (caution: very unattractive website!), and Ricky Richards. I'd love to know if there are any places in Australia selling ballistic nylon fabric by the metre. Anyone?

more on packing cubes

Have been reading up more about packing cubes. (Mesh packing cubes from Magellan's shown right.)

One really good case FOR them is that when your bags are searched by airport officials, they don't mess everything up so much, because they can simply take out the cubes and put them each through the scanner.

I reckon that even though we use Doug Dyment's wonderful clothes packing method, the whole bundle could still be put into a packing cube to keep them neatly bundled.

I DO like the idea of everything being nicely sectioned off, so that all the little things don't fall to the bottom of the luggage. I'm really getting close to wanting to try them.

Now, I wonder if they could help me organise my office and keep it nice and tidy...?! Maybe that's going a bit far...

more on bottle bags

I have been corresponding with the nice people at Sea to Summit about bottle bags (see earlier post) that hang from your shoulder on a strap rather than clipping onto your (in many cases non-existent) belt. They were so very kind to point out to me that Nalgene has a range of bottle bags already in existence.

Never having seen them in any Australian store that stocks Nalgene products, I headed over to Amazon to check them out, and see if there were any reviews. There are 4 different Nalgene styles with straps that you can see on the Nalgene website.

A look on Amazon showed that of the four that I could see on the Nalgene website, only one, the Nalgene 32oz Bottle Carrier with Big Pocket, is listed. Of the two reviews, one said it was no good for jogging - well I wouldn't have expected that as it would bounce around terribly. And the other said that it was bulky and not easy to use.

They are a little more substantial than mine, which has good and bad points. I do particularly like how lightweight mine are, and kids do like to carry as little as possible generally! However, theirs are more likely to be able to take a beating! One thing I do notice about them is that the strap attaches to only one side. That seems to me like it would make the thing hang a little funny, with weight going to one side. One thing about my design was because the straps went to both sides, it hung evenly.

Then I found another bottle bag - not Nalgene brand: Mesh 22 oz. Water Bottle Holder And there were once again two reviews, one of which found it terrible for jogging (well, yeah!) and the other which loved it. This one looks like it has the straps going from the top of each side, which will make it hang more evenly. It looks as though it would be much lighter than the Nalgene one too (Amazon says 1 oz as compared to about 6 oz for the Nalgene carrier). The shoulder strap isn't padded, which is a minus.

Then, there was another one that looked pretty good too, the Klean Kanteen Stainless Steel Water Bottle Shoulder Sling (27-Ounce Bottles). You're supposed to use it with a Klean Kanteen bottle (forgive me for never having heard of them...) but as one of the 31 reviewers for this product said, they'd been using other bottles in it quite successfully. Its a little heavier than the mesh one above (at 1.6 oz), and again doesn't have padding on the shoulder strap. The Amazon reviews are quite mixed, and actually a lot of people seemed to be reviewing the bottle, not the sling itself. Many found it very difficult to insert the prescribed bottle in the sling.

So, for all you people who don't have the skills to make your own, there are some shoulder bag style bottle bags already on the market. However, it seems they still may have a way to go before they are as good as we might hope.

Of the three reviewed above, my personal recommendation would be for the Mesh 22 oz. Water Bottle Holder.

wish list: digital travel guides

Our favourite travel guides are the Eyewitness Travel Guide series by Dorling Kindersley, probably because they're very visual, and so are we. The problem with these (and all other brands) is that they're so heavy. Who wants to lug around a whole heap (depending on how many countries you're going to) of heavy travel guides with them?

With the amazing uptake of netbooks over the past year or so (apparently about 1 in 10 laptop sales in Australia are now netbooks) when are DK going to release digital versions of their books so that they can be used on the computers or PDAs that people are taking travelling with them?

If they did release digital travel guides, it’s highly likely that we would end up buying both the paper version and the digital version. We'd use the paper one at home to browse through and use for armchair travel, and the digital one we would use on location.

On our last holiday we had just entered a new country with a different language and needed to find somewhere to buy some lunch. It was a Saturday afternoon in the country and it seemed like nowhere was open. We went to the tourist attraction that we planned to visit that afternoon, hoping that they might have a cafe (they didn't). Try as we might, we just didn't have enough of the language to communicate to the staff that we wanted to know where we could buy some lunch. We raced back to the car and started up the computer. We pulled up the file containing a scan of the phrasebook pages of one of our guidebooks. We were able to piece together enough words to communicate successfully what we were after.

Our computer saved the day, and it confirmed for us how useful digital guidebooks would be.

Other times, it would have been great to pull up detailed maps of where we were, or information about the place that we were visiting at that moment. Internet access isn't available everywhere, so having it all on tap would be great.

So DK, how about it? Eyewitness E-Travel?

favourite travel items: bottle bags

We've been on hot summer holidays before where we need to drink a lot of water. It felt like the whole time we were being nagged by kids for a drink, and it also was a pain having to lug around about 4 bottles of water. This time we decided it would be different: the kids could carry their own drink bottles.

I decided to make a little bottle bag pouch for each of them that they could carry over their shoulders and across their bodies. That way, they could have a drink when they wanted to, and we would only have to carry our own water. I used the same quick dry fabric as I made them each a pair of pants from. That way, if the water spilled it would dry pretty quickly.

I made a fabric tube a little bigger than the size of the bottle, and put a bottom on it. I then added a thin shoulder strap made from some fabric tape. Bottle bags, Mark I.

On their first use, it became apparent that the strap was a terrible design. It was the right length, but because it was so thin, it cut into their necks and was terribly uncomfortable. Hmm, a redesign was needed - and quickly!

Not having much to work with in our hotel room in Paris, I decided to use a pair of the airline socks that we'd been given on the plane. I wrapped them around the strap, and with some string I'd brought with me, I tied them on sausage-like, to create a little padding on the strap. Bottle bags, Mark II.

Next day this was evaluated as being better, but the strap kept making its way out of the sock wrapping. Further redesign was needed...

I pulled out my extremely valuable needle (valuable because I had managed to get it through airport checks!). I undid the ties, and re-wrapped the socks lengthways along the strap. I then stitched along the length of the sock to make it into a long tube. This was Mark III (see photo). It worked well for the rest of the holiday, and the bags turned out to be some of the best things we took with us.

Next holidays, I will revise the design to make it less make-shift and more professional looking, while still having a well-padded shoulder strap.

We have since used the bottle bags for day trips to the art gallery, and even just up to the shops. Not just useful for holidays!

Wish list: For the sake of those who don't have sewing skills, if anyone knows of somewhere you can purchase these sort of bottle bags, please let us all know in the comments section! And if you manufacture them yourself, I'd be pleased to evaluate such a product. I *have* seen ones that clip onto belts, but most kids I know don't wear a belt to clip one onto. I think a shoulder bag style bottle bag is much more preferable for kids.

Items I wish someone would manufacture...

With the introduction of LAG (liquids, aerosols, gels) regulations, travelling light has become somewhat more complicated. A number of companies manufacture travel-friendly empty bottles for toiletries (hooray!). Some even make travel sized products - like tiny toothpaste tubes (more hooray!). But I wish someone would manufacture...

• 100ml ice bricks. The smallest we've seen so far are 150ml. When you travel without refrigeration throughout the day, an ice brick can be extremely useful to keep food cold for longer.
• quick-dry breathable kids clothes (at reasonable prices). You can get all manner of quick-dry clothes for adults, but nothing for kids. There's only so much beachwear you can have your kids in before it looks really out of place. For dining out, rash vests don't really cut it. Similarly, some sights such as historic churches require long pants and covered shoulders - items lacking in kids quick-dry clothing ranges. You would also think that manufacturers would be making quick-dry underwear for kids - but they don't. 
• 100ml concentrate washing powder (or liquid) and stain remover. Getting a huge chocolate stain off a t-shirt in a hotel sink can be a struggle without it. Yes, I know that supermarkets are everywhere, but we don't need to buy (let alone lug around the countryside) a huge quantity of it. We tried to take a small bottle of washing powder on our last trip, but it was confiscated at customs because it was detergent, and therefore not permissible in the aircraft cabin.

Many toiletries are irritatingly just over the 100ml limit. We found toothpaste, sunscreen, moisturiser, shampoo, conditioner etc. at about 120ml. So close, yet so far. We did find the toothpaste and the sunscreen at or under 100ml, but all the rest we packed ourselves into individual empty bottles.