Hawaii Trip - a budget recap

As promised, here's the more detailed breakout of our budget & actual expenses. For context, we flew from Bellingham (Washington) direct to Maui on Alaska Airlines. Alaska added the direct flights over the summer, & I snapped up a great deal on the flights as part of their introductory promo. Bellingham is about 90 minutes from our house, but the ticket were almost half the price of flying into & out of Seattle.

We stayed six nights at the Westin Maui Ka'anapli Villas, & rented a two bedroom villa. We easily could have done the one bedroom deluxe room & skipped the second room, so lesson learned for next time.

We went over in some categories (as you can see below), like food. We knew that food on the island would be expensive, but it was more than we expected. Also, we didn't budget nearly enough for drinks & food at the airport/on the plane. I brought snacks, but I'm a huge water drinker & had to buy drinks once we got through security.

We also cancelled our one activity (snorkel trip) before we left, as we weren't entirely sure if the boys would enjoy it for as much as it cost (about $350). We bought snorkel gear at Costco so we can use it again, & then sent the boys to a half day activity/camp at the hotel while the adults went to lunch & happy hour. Very fun time. :-)

There were also about $150/night taxes & fees tacked on to the room rate that I didn't calculate, which is why we were over budget on the hotel. Yikes!

The miscellaneous charges are for postcards & tshirts for the kids. :-) Our hotel package came with a $200 resort credit, & I redeemed Starpoints for an additional $500 off the bill. All told, our budget was $7654, and we ended up spending $7608.

We definitely, definitely want to plan another trip, & I have lots of ideas on ways to cut down on the cost, like renting a smaller room, skipping the kids club, & trimming back the food budget. More to come as we plan for an adventure next year!

Hawaii family trip	Paid	Budget
Flights	1500	1500
Hotel	5164.98	4554
Car	299.73	300
Misc	23.74
Food	1068.68	800
Activities	251.46	500
Total	8308.59	7654
Minus resort credit & starpoints	7608.59