Time to Start Planning Summer Travel

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. As we are in the thick of the holiday season I wanted to mention that now is a great time to get the family together to start thinking about summer travel. I know most areas of the country haven’t even had a winter yet, but the summer will be here before you know it.

It might be that anniversary trip to Paris or finally taking the kids to Disney but one of the great things about travel is the planning. The entire family can take part. I remember one year we made it a game where each of us had to pick one place we wanted to visit and prepare a presentation on where it was and try to convince the others to support your idea. It was a while ago and I recall there might have been some collusion but it made the process fun and then we all got involved with planning. When I was a child we had a piggy-bank we used for our travel and we would all put change in it and then when we got ready for a trip we would use the money so we all felt like we contributed. Unfortunately nobody carries change anymore, but maybe we could Venmo or PayPal some imaginary change.

Another benefit of planning ahead is you can decide where you might need some extra points for a flight or hotel stay. Several credit card promotions have great sign up bonuses including the Chase Sapphire Reserve card which is currently offering a 100,000 sign up bonus after spending $4,000 in 3 months Chase Sapphire Reserve It is starting to look like Summer 2017 might be a reasonably priced time to travel. Many airlines are having round trip international fare sales in the $400 range currently and with low oil prices and a strong dollar that trend should continue. Some experts are even predicting the US Dollar will become equal in value to the Euro in 2017.

So, where would you like to travel in 2017?