Traveling on a Budget with the Heroic Tribe

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Last Updated on September 28, 2021 by Leslie Stroud

guest post- a photo of Heroic Tribe mom, Tammy

Hello world! I am Tammy, the mom of the HEROIC Tribe.

We are a traveling family of 8 who is traveling to help the world become more technologically secure. My husband is Chad and we have 6 kids, 3 boys and 3 girls. They are Broc, 15, Bailey, 13, Brighton, 11, Beckham, 9, Bella, 5, and Boston is now 6 months old. Chad is the CEO of HEROIC.COM and works remotely, managing his team all online.

The Heroic Tribe on the beach with cruise ships in the background

Table of Contents

1 HOW IT ALL BEGAN
2 OUR TRAVEL PLANS
3 OTHER MONEY SAVING TIPS
4 HOW TO FOLLOW US

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

I am so excited to tell all about the fun and crazy ways we have made travel a reality for our family. There are quite a few different methods we employ and many of them can help you, even if you only travel a couple of times a year! We started traveling in July of 2018. This was an idea that we had for about a year before we left home. We decided that this was the perfect year to get away as a family since our kids were old enough to enjoy it but young enough that they wouldn’t miss much at home.

OUR TRAVEL PLANS

To begin, we sold our home and took our beat-up old minivan and drove around the USA for all of July and September. Our van was plenty old enough to be paid off so we had no expense there except gas. The sale of our home also helped us a bit to pay for any big expenses. We stayed in hotels and with family since our family is spread out all over the USA. Many of our destinations were based on getting close to family! Even though our family is huge, we often just squeezed everyone into a two-bed hotel room. Normally our family would need a suite or 2 rooms, but that increases the costs a lot more so we made it work. The kids fit great on the floor since they were little! We just asked for extra pillows and blankets. We even went to Target in New York to buy a cheap mattress pad for the kids to sleep on while on the floor. It was only $30 and we are still using it a year later.

When we visited Europe in August, we were very flexible with our dates and most of our locations. The biggest bucket list item was Paris so we made sure to go there. Since we were driving, I used google flights to research dates and destinations that would be the cheapest for us to fly across the ocean. It was surprising, but it was cheaper to fly from Boston than New York. Then it was cheaper to fly to London than to Paris. This helped us get flights for 7 people, one way for $1280, Boston to London! Using this same method, it was cheapest to fly back to Boston from Copenhagen and Reykjavik.

Guest Post- a silly picture of the whole family making funny faces at the camera

OTHER MONEY SAVING TIPS

We love to travel and because we are constantly researching the best prices on travel and accommodations we save quite a bit of money. We also save money when we eat. We cook at home as much as possible. We try to always have at least a few new items from each place we are in, but we also try to share meals as much as possible. While in Paris, we would buy two giant crepes from street vendors for around $20 and everyone would dig in to enjoy it. No one was totally full this way but at least we all had tried crepes! And yes, they were awesome!

We also enjoy cheap fun! In Copenhagen, we stayed in an Airbnb outside of the main city, but near a beach! It was the perfect little getaway. It was a small town and we only spent money on the train to get there. The beach was enough activity for almost the entire time, even though it was cooling off at the end of August. In Hawaii, it was the same. We spent most of our days at the beach, exploring and having fun! Both of these were free so they saved quite a bit of money.