How to Travel More as A Family in 2024

If one of your goals for the new year is to travel more with your kids, you're in the right place.

2023 was our family's biggest travel year yet! Locally we visited the Florida Keys, Washington DC, San Diego, Palm Springs, and Asheville.

For international travel, we visited Italy and Greece as a family, and my husband and I traveled to Ecuador and Colombia without the kids to visit some college friends.

If you want next year to be full of exciting travel plans like that, keep reading! It took our family a few years to get to a place where we could travel this often, but every family's situation is different. It might just require a few mindset changes or a few simple actions for your family to start exploring more new destinations in a year than you thought possible.

You don't have to quit your job or travel the country in an RV to fill your year with travel. You don't have to be super rich either!

When we first started prioritizing travel, I was a stay-at-home mom and our family was living off my husband's teacher salary. We had student loans, and our budget was very tight. We still found ways to make travel a part of our year and set ourselves up for more travel, and we're now reaping the benefits of those decisions!

My best advice to you is to read through this blog post, then sit down with your partner and come up with a travel plan for 2024. Last year was great, but let's make this year the best travel year yet!

How to Travel More Often in 2024

If you want to push yourself outside your comfort zone and set yourself up for as much domestic and world travel as possible this year, here are my essential tips for making the most of 2024.

Change Your Mindset

The first step to traveling more with your kids is to change your mindset.

(I know, you want action tips. We’ll get to those! But first, you have to change the way you think!)

Trips and experiences aren’t just going to fall into your lap or magically appear. You have to think ahead, plan them, and seek them out.

If you’re not intentional about exploring more as a family, it will never happen. And that’s ok! If it’s not a priority to you, there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you find a deep desire to get out of your rut and show your kids the world, then it’s time to get intentional.

Make it part of your family identity. “We are a family that loves to explore.” or “We are a family that travels every chance we get.” Say it out loud. Put it on your fridge. Put post-it notes around the house. Put up pictures of past trips.

Open a Travel Bank Account

The best thing we ever did to start prioritizing travel was to open a travel bank account.

We started automatically transferring a small amount of money each month to our travel account. Every time we made some extra money, we automatically added it to our travel fund.

The benefit of having a travel bank account is that you'll have money set aside to jump on flight deals when they come up. You will know exactly how much money you have to spend before a trip, and you won't have to worry about ruining your budget each time a travel opportunity comes up.

In the early years, we used this money for weekend getaways and cabin vacations with our extended family.

These days, we have plenty of money in the account to book flight deals as soon as they land in our inbox.

Having a travel bank account is such a good idea because it takes the guilt out of travel. You have money already earmarked for your trip, giving you peace of mind when you want to plan your next vacation.

Build Your Travel Fund

Now that you identify as a traveling family and have a bank account set aside for travel, it’s time to start saving.

Travel costs money, there’s no getting around it. The idea that travel is only for the rich or upper-middle-class is what stops many families from even trying. They look at their budget and don’t see a lot of wiggle room, so they think that “someday” when they’re in a “better financial position” they’ll take some cool trips with their kids.

Someday will never come if you don’t plan for it.

An easy way to start building up your travel fund is to automatically transfer whatever is left over in your budget to travel. When we first started, there were months when all we could afford was $10. Start there, and as you pay off debt or earn more money you can start setting aside a bit more for travel.

You can also take on extra jobs! Nowadays there are so many ways to earn extra money with a side gig. You could deliver DoorDash, work part-time as a virtual assistant, have a garage sale, or sell things you don't use on Facebook Marketplace.

My way of contributing to our travel fund was to start earning money as a travel content creator. This blog that you're reading right now is my biggest source of income, but I also grew my social media accounts and started taking on paid sponsorships. While it took some time to start earning "good" money, in the beginning, every little bit helps, and the time will pass anyway.

Map Out Your Year

Maybe you’ve got some breathing room in your bank account, but you’re wondering WHEN the heck you can fit travel in! With so many different schedules in your family, it might be difficult to find a time that works for everyone.

The first thing you want to do is go through your calendar for the entire year. Look for random days off of school, 3-day weekends, holidays, and school breaks.

Pencil in when you’re already using days off to visit family or celebrate holidays with family.

If one or both of you have a 9-5 job, figure out how many days off you can spare for travel.

As far as you’re able, write down extracurriculars or obligations that fall on weekends so you know which weekends you have free.

At the end, highlight any weekends or breaks from school that are OPEN for travel. You can also take kids out of school if there’s a time that works best for parents but school is in session - just check your school’s policy on this!

Take Advantage of Long Weekends and Holiday Breaks

Don’t underestimate what you can fit in during a weekend - especially if it’s a 3- or 4-day weekend! Our family always tries to plan quick road trips if there’s a Friday or Monday off of school. To us, anything within a 4 or 5-hour drive is fair game!

Think of cities, state or national parks, or off-the-beaten-path destinations in or around your state that you’ve been meaning to visit. Pencil those in on your long weekends!

When we lived in Florida, our school had week-long breaks during Thanksgiving. Since we lived across the country from our family and couldn't see family anyway, we decided to use one of our Thanksgiving breaks to road trip through the Florida Keys and visit the remote Dry Tortugas National Park. We went with friends to split the cost of accommodations, and had a wonderful vacation!

Maybe you only get a few days off for Thanksgiving, but you have a longer spring or Easter break. Maybe there’s extra time at Christmas. Figure out when you’ve got some flexibility around public holidays and plan some travel.

Yes, travel destinations tend to be busier during holiday weeks, but maybe you can find a destination where it’s their shoulder season or off-peak season. Or like us, you could just put up with the extra crowds because that’s what’s available. It’s all in the attitude!

Plan an Epic Trip During Shoulder Season

If you and your partner DO have some flexibility with when you can take off from work, I would highly recommend planning your epic or international trips during shoulder season or off-peak seasons.

Hotels and flights will be far cheaper, there will be fewer crowds, and you’ll probably find your getaway to be much more refreshing than if you went during peak season.

Simply make a small list of where you want to go and find out when the best time of year to go is. If you can arrange for time off during that window, go for it! Even if it’s last-minute, you might enjoy taking off with few plans and even fewer expectations.

Let the Deal Determine your Destination

If you want to find the best deals on flights, you have to have some flexibility. You can either be flexible with your destination or with your dates.

Since we are pretty tied to the school schedule, we have decided to be more flexible with our destination. I like to play travel roulette by letting the flight deals determine where we travel next - a surprise trip!

We mostly use Going (formerly Scott's Cheap Flights), a subscription service that sends flight deals to your inbox. There is a free membership option, but the Premium and Elite memberships send deals more frequently. I started with a free membership before upgrading to the Premium Membership for a few years. I just upgraded again to the Elite membership a few months ago. I think for most people the Premium Membership is the best option.

I have booked several trips because of a flight deal I discovered in a Going email, and have never once regretted exploring somewhere I didn't know I wanted to visit!

Make Use of Credit Card Reward Points

Credit card reward points and travel loyalty programs are a great way to squeeze in some extra travel at a discounted rate.

I will always make the disclaimer when talking about credit cards that you have to know yourself, and whether you can be financially responsible with them. Personally, I feel no temptation to spend beyond our means, so I just use it the same way as a debit card for groceries, gas, and subscriptions, paying it off each week.

If you tend to get yourself into trouble with a credit card, this defeats the purpose of travel hacking. Points and miles are a way to save money on future travel, and you don't need to overspend to reap the benefits.

When you sign up for certain cards and spend a certain amount of money within a designated time frame, you earn what is known as a "sign-up bonus"'. For example, with the Chase Sapphire Preferred card that I have, we needed to spend $4,000 within the first 3 months to get 60,000 reward points. Those reward points can be redeemed within the Ultimate Rewards portal, or transferred to many airline and hotel chains at a 1:1 ratio.

The Chase Sapphire Preferred is the card I would recommend for beginners (use my referral link here) since the points are flexible and can be used for booking flights or hotel stays. For domestic airfare, I love transferring my Ultimate Reward points to Southwest Airlines since we just qualified for the Southwest Companion Pass, which lets us fly one member of our family for free for 2 years!

Chase is also a transfer partner with Hyatt, which typically has hotel rooms that fit a family of 6 (like Hyatt Place) for a low amount of points.

We have a lot of people in our family, and since we have to pay for things like groceries and gas anyway, we might as well get some free or cheap travel out of it! Putting our everyday spend on a travel reward credit card has helped us book flights to South America, Puerto Rico, and Edinburgh, and has provided us with free hotel stays in San Diego and Palm Springs.

The CSP also comes with travel insurance when you use the card to book travel, so you can save money and have peace of mind if something goes wrong!

Get the Southwest Companion Pass

The Southwest Companion Pass is a benefit you can earn that allows you to choose one person (your designated companion) to fly for free with you whenever you book a flight. To earn the Companion Pass you can fly 100 qualifying one-way flights on Southwest or earn 135,000 qualifying points with Southwest in a calendar year.

You get to use the Companion Pass for the remainder of the year in which you earned it, PLUS the entire next year. So if you earn the companion pass in January of 2024, you can use it until the end of December 2025.

As you can imagine, this is one of the best ways for families to increase the amount of trips they take within North America and the Caribbean. Not only does one person get to fly for free (well, other than the $5.60 taxes and fees), but you can also use the points you earned to get the Companion Pass to book flights!

In recent years travel demand has gone up thanks to revenge travel after the pandemic. That means flights during popular travel times like spring break and summer vacation are super expensive. Using the Southwest Companion Pass and Rapid Reward Points to book your trip as far in advance as possible (usually about 11 months for Southwest) means you can get your flights for a steeply discounted price.

We paid WAY too much for our spring break in 2023, so I was very motivated to get the Companion Pass for our trip in 2024. Now we have a trip to a popular tropical destination booked for a family of 6, and we only paid for one flight.

To earn the Companion Pass, I signed up for and met the minimum spend on one personal Rapid Rewards credit card and one business Rapid Rewards credit card.

Get TSA PreCheck

This won't necessarily help you travel more often, but it will definitely make your airport experience much more pleasant.

For the longest time, my parents had TSA PreCheck and whenever I would travel with them, they would leave me in the dust at security. I always thought that waiting in line for the regular TSA security line wasn't that big of a deal. That is until I almost missed a flight from Orlando to Milwaukee last year! My parents took my toddler with them in the TSA PreCheck line, and I waited in the regular line which wrapped around the entire airport. Thankfully I made it to our gate with a few minutes to spare, but it was cutting it close even though we arrived at the airport with over 2 hours until our domestic flight.

That motivated me to finally make use of the perk that came with my United Explorer Credit Card - a TSA Precheck Credit! You make your appointment for your PreCheck interview, and when you make the payment with your United Explorer Credit Card it just reimburses you automatically for the cost.

TSA Precheck has made going to the airport an enjoyable experience. We never feel rushed, we don't have to take our shoes off, and we don't have to take our tablets and laptops out of our bags. When you sign up for PreCheck, your kids automatically get to go through the PreCheck line with you, which saves so much time and effort.

If you do a lot of international travel, you might want to consider Global Entry instead, since it includes TSA Precheck. That is also covered on the United Card.

Many credit cards offer this benefit, but if you're thinking of signing up for the United Explorer credit card, here's my link!

Make Sure Your Passport is in Order

In 2021, we didn't have any international trips booked, but I knew I wanted to take our first international trip as a family of 6 in 2022. That summer, I decided to get passports for our entire family just so we were prepared well in advance. Sometimes passports take longer than expected, or there can be government shutdowns, so it's better to be safe than sorry!

My husband and I had to renew our passports, and only one of our kids had gotten a passport as an infant. Adult passports expire every 10 years, while chidlren's passports expire every 5 years. That means every member of our family was up for a new one.

We made an event of going to Walgreens to get our passport photos taken and turning in the paperwork at the nearest passport center. We started to dream about future international trips we would take as a family.

Keep in mind that passports must be valid for at least 6 more months from the date you return home, and you need to make sure you have at least 2 blank pages for passport stamps.

Checking the status of passports for everyone in your family is a great way to make sure you don't have any travel document emergencies during your year!

Visit Friends and Family

If you have friends or family members who live out of state, planning a trip to visit them can be a wonderful budget-friendly way to add more travel to your year. If they are open to hosting visitors, you will have a free place to stay and a local tour guide to show you around. You'll hopefully enjoy some unique experiences while spending some quality time with loved ones!

When we lived in Florida, we loved having family and friends stay with us, especially when they wanted to escape the winter weather. We showed them our favorite local beaches, took trips to Disney World, and explored some nearby towns.

Save Money by Learning to Pack Light

Baggage fees can add several hundred dollars to your trip, especially if you have a larger family like ours. Learning to pack light will save you tons of money in the long run.

Our family prefers to travel carry-on only, and sometimes we push ourselves to travel personal items only. That means each family member only gets one backpack for our entire trip.

Packing clothes that you can mix and match easily, learning to do laundry on the road, and being ruthless about what makes it into your bag will help you have a cheaper and more enjoyable experience.

On our 2-week trip to Italy and Greece, we brought one backpack each, and it was so freeing to not have to worry about having so much stuff to worry about.

In addition, learning to pack light can all you to jump on those great deals you find on budget airlines that charge a la carte for each bag.

Plan Travel Around Big Events

One of the travel trends I'm seeing is planning a trip around seeing favorite artists or sports teams. For example, if you love Taylor Swift and want to see her perform, you might travel to a different city, or even a different country, to get tickets.

If you're a sports lover, you might travel to different stadiums or arenas around the country to watch your favorite team play. You might even make a personal bucket list to try to see every baseball stadium in the country.

Whatever your passion, or your child's passion, planning an entire trip around a big event, and then exploring the destination in your free time will allow you to make the most of these experiences that are already pretty expensive.

Expand Your Idea of What It Means to Travel

Ultimately, even if you follow all these tips you still might not be in a position to take big trips. Maybe you are on a tight budget with no room to spare (been there). Maybe you’re focusing hard on a financial goal. Maybe you’re in a busy season of caring for kids or relatives or your job is demanding and you simply can’t take the time away.

Whatever the case, I would challenge you to expand your idea of what it means to “travel.” It doesn’t have to mean big vacations abroad or staying in a hotel. A travel experience can happen in your local communities, in your own city, or road-tripping around your state.

Travel can be a night or two away in a local hotel or vacation rental.

It can be camping in the nearby state park.

Travel can be road-tripping to visit family. Maybe you stop at some silly roadside attractions or landmarks you always pass but never visit.

Travel can mean saving up for months - or years - for a dream trip, and involving your kids by reading books about the destination, looking at maps, and putting spare change in a change jar. (We saved up for 3 years before taking our big trip to Italy and Greece! Worth the wait!)

During the pandemic with all of the travel restrictions, people began to have a new appreciation for local travel. Plus, experiencing your home community as a tourist gives you a sense of adventure, inspiring you to work toward your bigger travel goals!

Here at A Mom Explores, I’m all about doing the most exploring you can with what you have, whether that’s in your backyard or halfway around the world.