Beach Front Vacation is Not a Good Deal.

I love the beach. My family vacationed at beaches in both North Carolina and Virgina as I was growing up. Most of my fondest vacation memories are of digging in the sand, finding shells or looking for sand crabs. Even now that I'm married it's my favorite place to vacation. This year, Carl and I decided to take a beach vacation with the kids. So, I began searching  for place at our favorite beach in North Carolina.

For the first few searches I was following the sensible, frugal approach. Growing up in a family of eight means that frugality is the word of the day every day. I instictively started looking at houses a few rows back from the beach as they are less expensive than and ocean front rental. I found a few good candidates and decided to check out the price of ocean front rentals just to compare.  I was surprised to find some that were just a bit more than the other rentals a few rows back and still in line with the budget. "Granted", I told myself, "these are smaller. And, OK, the kids will have to share a bed in this one, but look there are ocean views from the master bedroom window".  I envisioned a week right on the ocean front. We would  be a few steps from sandcastles, beach combing, and wave riding. It would only take a few minutes to cart sandy, tired kids back to the little duplex. I could even sit on the small deck and watch as other parents packed their sandy kids, bulky ubrellas and coolers and hiked across the foot burning sand all the way back to their "almost oceanfront" and "bayside" rentals.

 I pushed the "book it" button and did a little dance of happiness which lasted only for a moment until I saw the complete price for oceanfront property. Taxes and insurance and other fees added another $200 to the total. For a moment I thought "We can do it. It's vacation and only happens once a year" "It's worth the extra money just to be so close." And then I then wondered what else I could do with $200. $200.00 is a good chunk of my monthly food budget. It's gas we need to go on vacation. It's $50.00 short of  our power bill. It's two months worth of water and sewer service. It's a big deal for my family and, as it turns out,an oceanfront rental is a crummy deal for the Walker's.  I thought about how I quickly justified trashing our vacation budget and here is what I came up with:

1)  Just like anything else, you need to read the fine print. On the surface the rental price between the houses a few rows from the ocean and the smaller oceanfront home was just 40.00 but higher taxes,fees and insurance home significantly added to the overall cost of the home. I also thought it was interesting that the rental company wouldn't give you the entire cost up front. Only after searching and finding a rental that meets your expectation and after clicking the "book it" button do you find out the true cost.

2) Using emotion to justify buying more than we had budgeted for. I'd spent time searching and then was pretty excited about staying right on the ocean and I justified this was enough to spend more money on the rental.

I went back to my original selections and picked a rental further from the ocean and that was in line with our budget.