My grand daughters were pretty young when we first started with our trips. Our first one, I pretty much played the 'adult' and made a lot of the decisions on what we would be doing and where we would be eating, etc. By the following year, we made most of the decisions as a group. Much to my surprise, these pre-teen girls made some really great decisions.
We laid out how far we could go with the time we had and figured where to start and end. How many mile to drive in a day and how that would play out with our beach time. How many nights do we want to stay in each hotel? And how many nights will we stay with friends? They had a way of making it simple.
Finances were a little different. I really didn't want them to feel any last minute frustrations because "we can't afford to do that too". This is how I handled the money and allowed them to have some control also.
A couple of weeks prior to leaving, I went to my bank and got a bunch of those envelopes that they use for change and cash; small but large enough to hold bills with no problem. We wrote on each envelope and sorted them out. Each day had an envelope for food and play. The the trip charted out, so we sorted the money out accordingly. Would we be spending the entire day at a beach? Will we be near a neat amusement park? This planning was fun and helped the girls be involved in decisions from the beginning.
Where this became fun for them is when they are the ones who could decide where we eat; or do we want to eat out of the ice chest? Are we going to sleep in or get down there and take advantage of the continental breakfast? Do we want to have some left over money from today and add it to tomorrow and the next day and go out to a nice dinner? From the very first year, the girls all favored saving their money to go out to a nice dinner. One of the key factors here is to have plenty of good, fresh snacks, drinks and meal items in the ice chest.
The same worked with the 'play' envelopes. They could save a little from one day to the next, in anticipation of getting the one of their favorite boardwalks, in Santa Monica, California. Funny thing was when they went from wanting endless rides to wanting to save the money to go clothes shopping with the left over cash.
The sorting of the money, the adding the left overs from one day to the next, it all became an exciting game. The girls were in their late teens the last year we travelled and we still did the envelope routine. I would be willing to bet that they will do the same with their children someday.
One added note here. I don't advise carrying a lot of cash on trips. One year that we were gone for a full two weeks, we made our envelopes in advance and about half way through the trip, I went to the bank and pulled out the cash to fill the envelopes. This is a budget vacation. We didn't have a lot of spending money or cash. The budget was a necessity for us. By having a rigid budget, it helped me stick to what we could afford and not go into debt. Strangest thing is that we never really felt deprived of anything.
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