I love a good bargain, always have, somehow I can manage to sniff them out no matter how well they are hidden. I time my visits to the supermarket just as they are reducing the price of the stock on the shelves, I shop for clothes in the sales and in factory outlet stores and will even hunt down the cheapest holiday bargain that I can. I know it drives my husband mad, but if he tried to do everything without using my thrifty skills he would soon find his wallet empty before the fridge had been filled. I think it started as coupon snipping, looking for money off vouchers in magazines and newspapers, then it spread to looking for voucher codes on the internet. Now I won’t buy anything without seeing if I can get it cheaper anywhere else first.

This Year’s Holiday

Have you ever tried looking for cheap Portugal holidays? I wasn’t sure where to start. After a lot of searching around the internet I did come up with a couple of money saving options. I have to admit that there were some sites online offering deals that were so good they couldn’t possibly be for real, something like that always has a hidden catch to it somewhere, and I was right. A little bit more searching about these so called incredible bargain offers and I discovered that they were indeed scams; one thing about being a good bargain hunter is that you have to be able to tell the real deal from a fake, otherwise you could end up in a whole heap of trouble.

Finding the Right Accommodation

There are so many things to take into account when you are looking at ways to save money on your holiday. There is the cost of the flight, the accommodation, the cost of hiring a car if you need to and the cost of entry to the parks that the kids had set their hearts on. Add to that list your holiday clothes and essentials, money for food and living expenses and the spending money for all of those non essentials but all the same ‘must have’ items and the figures can look more like a mortgage application that a holiday list.

Using my keen bargain hunting skills I managed to save on the flights and the parks and what is even better is that there will be no big hotel to pay for either. I managed to acquire one of those fabulous villas in Portugal to rent for the time we are there. I know you will want to know how, but here it is, I asked a friend to ask her friends etc. if anyone knew of anyone with a property close to the water parks. It turns out one of the mums at my son’s school has a house there, and she is willing to let me have is cheaper so long as I go during a specific time period, and hey, that’s a small sacrifice to make, after all the water park will still be there whichever week we go. So that’s all of the main things sorted for a fraction of the cost.