Overtired Mama's Travel Tips and Tricks

Welcome back!  As I've said before, there's nothing I love talking about more than travel.  Particularly Disney travel!  Started Part 1 of this post with tips on accommodations and rental cars.  Missed that post?  Check it out here: http://www.overtiredmama.com/2016/02/disney-on-budget-2016-part-1.html

In today's post, I'm going to discuss airline tickets.
My daughter on the airplane.

Airfare is always a challenge.   Not everyone likes to hunt for good airfare prices, but I actually do!  So the tips I'm going to share are from my own experience.  You may have a different experience or different tips, so please feel free to share your comments!
I'm a "plan ahead" kind of person.  With airfare, there is such a thing as booking too soon.  Generally, with my accommodations, I have booked as far out as a year.  It's not always necessary to book that far in advance, depending on the property you're planning on staying at.  With the first rental prope…

I had originally planned to write a post today about saving money on travel, but given that it's World Cancer Day, and cancer is a cause close to my heart, I thought I would share my experience in hopes of raising some awareness.

As a young adult, still pretty fresh from my university studies, I took a job with the Canadian Cancer Society.  My dad had worked in non-profit my whole life, and that was an area of interest for me, so it seemed meant to be.  Little did I know how much this work would affect me.

Growing up, I knew that my dad's parents had both succumbed to cancer before I was born.  And I knew of other family friends, acquaintances and members of my own extended family that had their own cancer experiences.  I knew, even at  a young age, that cancer affects many.

When I began working at the Canadian Cancer Society, I knew that 2 out of 5 people would be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime.  I knew that it also meant that each diagnosis was life changing for th…

Yes, I've written a post about heading to Disney on a budget before, but I thought I would post an updated version.  Why?  Because I love Disney!


We've traveled to Florida for the last few years.  When I told friends we were heading back to Florida this year, they asked how we could do it with the Canadian dollar being so low.  There are a few things to keep in mind: 1 - We save hard, we don't travel any other time of the year, we save for this trip the whole year.  2 - We limit gift giving (Christmas/birthdays, etc) in favour of this - I love the idea of giving "experiences" instead of "stuff".  We've embraced this concept wholeheartedly.
When we started our trip planning, we began by identifying a few different vacation destinations, and I kept a running spreadsheet, and compared prices between all of them.  
One piece of my planning that I found very helpful was signing up for travel alert emails.  Some people find this annoying because you get e…