I got a comment on a recent post that intrigued me. The reader wrote:
You headline begs the question, have you ever even taken taken your kids to a foreign country?
I was really interested in your blog initially but after reading only one plane trip and one train trip that you took your kids on, you’ve really convinced more than ever that travel with a ton of kids is a total whip and really hard to accomplish. Your blog is not much distinguished from many others because you don’t travel very much with your brood. Unless of course, you count being super cheap as a distinction 🙂
Travel Babbo is unique because 99% of his travel is with his kids.
I will say that since you have shown me that traveling with lots of kids is really hard I’ve decided to stop at 2 kids.Thanks for the birth control!
Besides the LOL at the “thanks for the birth control”, I was interested by the comment – I think that some self-introspection is always good so I thought I’d ponder on the question for a bit
Am I traveling “enough”?
So am I traveling “enough”? Besides the fact that the amount any one person travels is totally up to them,
So I’m not trying to “defend” myself, or somehow prove to someone? (anyone?) that I’m traveling “enough”, but like I said, I do like to ponder about things. I definitely feel like we as a family are traveling more since I started getting into travel hacking. After all, the reason I started this whole thing was trying to get to a family reunion in Lake Tahoe that we might not have otherwise been able to attend. 170,000 Southwest Rapid Rewards points later, we had a great time!
Now it is true that some of our 2015 travel involved just my wife and I, and the logistics of taking our whole family of 8 anywhere for an extended period of time does get a bit tricky, probably even more so than the cost. Everyone’s in school, and activities and all the trapping of your “typical” middle-class suburban life…
A few things we do have going for us is that we are starting to homeschool some of our kids (which increases flexibility), and the career I have (computer programmer) does lend itself to the potential of working remotely. But we’ve decided as a family that we don’t want to make drastic changes to our lives (like selling everything to travel around the world full-time).
Some plans for 2016
2015 was a great year for us – from trips to Yellowstone, London, Rome, Puerto Rico and several points in between.
Even though it’s only January, we’ve already started making plans for 2016. Here are a few of the places that we’re looking at going
- Family trip down to North Carolina to visit family. We’re driving down and we booked our last Club Carlson Bonus nights before that benefit went away
- Train trip to Seattle and flying back on Delta (READ: The worst usage of 100,000 Skymiles EVER?).
- We’re still trying to figure out a way to get in an around the world trip in first class – just the 2 of us
- I also have work training in Seattle (if I had known that, we might have booked our train trip somewhere else!)
- We’ll be attending 2 family reunions – one in Missouri and one with location TBD.
- We do have another secret family destination that will remain nameless until we know if it’s a “go”
How to involve the kids more
One thing that we are doing in our family for 2016 is the addition of having regular “dates” with our kids. This is something that we’ve done off and on before (spending individual time with each of our kids), but now we are trying to formalize the plan, so that each kid gets at least one “date” each month with either mom or dad. These don’t have to be anything huge – some of the ones we’ve done have been just hanging out at the library, or go to a local HS basketball game, or stop by Wendy’s for some Frostys and hanging out. So far it’s working well for us!
The other thing that we’re trying in 2016 is to do a “large travel date” with each kid – one on one with a parent. We’ve started working on talking where the kids want to go – here are my son’s travel bucket list (including glamorous Lincoln, Nebraska) and my daughter’s bucket list (pictured right).
My son and I already did one late last year when the 2 of us went to Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon and (many!) places in between
(SEE ALSO: 3 tricks to visit Hoover Dam for free)
So what are your tricks for traveling with kids / family? Let us know in the comments!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Thanks OP! TravelBabbo is way more interesting in than this blog. Can’t believe I didn’t come accross that blog sooner. Whats the point in exotic travel when you can’t share it with the people that mean the most to you? Don’t worry Dan, your blog will still be in my reader, its worth every penny paid!
Thanks – I offer a 100% money back guarantee!! 🙂
Dan, I enjoy your perspective on things and would be very disappointed if you changed your outlook or your trip planning strategy because your life and/or blog isn’t “as exciting” as someone else’s. At the end of the day, for at least some children, it’s more destructive than beneficial to be constantly pulled out of school/routine to travel – as much as I think travel adds important value and education to their lives. A couple times per year was the right balance for me, as a child of travel-hungry parents, many years ago (and as I got older and was able to communicate that to them, they scaled back their travel plans with me). So, you can count me as one reader for whom your perspective is more useful in crafting my own plans than the blog of a “mega-parent-traveller” would be. I’m sure there are MANY others out there who would stay the same.
The optimal travel v. home balance is different for every family, but if you continue to take and act on feedback from your kids, you will be doing your best parenting, and by consequence, your blog will take its most useful form. You can (and probably will, as they get older) have different interests than your kids, and that is why it IS absolutely valuable to travel without them at times – what you want out of life shouldn’t have to dictate their experiences, nor vice-versa. In short, stay the course if it make you guys happy.
Thanks for the kind words. I will definitely say that there is a bit of an unfulfilled personal fantasy reading about some of these families that travel all around together. But for us right now, it’s not the right thing, and I think gradually expanding our kids’ horizons and traveling is going to be lots of fun!
*say the same, not stay the same. sorry!
This is something I’ve been thinking about lately. I have just 3 kids and I haven’t been able to find availability for all 5 to fly together using points. Even though I have top status with the airline I use for work and close to 600,000 points.
I subscribed to your site because I thought I’d learn a few tricks on how to make that happen, but that’s not been the case. What I’ve learned is that even you don’t really travel with family other than a road trips by car. I’m not sure it’s actually possible.
Thanks for mentioning TravelBaboo, I’d never heard of it but will read a bit now.
I think that you and travel babbo are offering two very different perspectives on travel for two very different markets. From what I have read of each of your travels and budgets, I would guess that he spends more on travel than your entire budget. He stays at many luxury hotels that aren’t available on points, pays for enough flights to be a 1K on United and stays in rental places that also are not available on points. His is very much a travel site, not nearly so much a travel hacking website. He also does far more solo traveling and traveling with one child than he does traveling with all of his children. And, of course, 3 children is a lot easier than 6.
We have 4 children and have only recently gotten into travel hacking. Our budget is evidently somewhere between yours and his, so we have been able to take our 4 children to London, France, and Germany, Montreal, Greece, Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey, and Costa Rica and New York. This year we will be going to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Japan, and Beijing, as well as a planned trip to Panama. Any of these have been far less expensive than our first trip to New York before we discovered travel hacking. We don’t like to leave our children with (impose our children on?) other people for very long, so our couple trips have been to New York, New Orleans, and Belize.
While I do not get a lot of information out of any one blog, I pick up tips from all blogs and have to assimilate the information to be able to make it work for our situation. I get a little information and a lot of entertainment from your blog, even though our destinations are far different. Keep up the good work and don’t worry about those that are looking for a far different experience than you offer. They are not likely to find a blog that fits their situation perfectly anyway.
I agree. I actually think for us, it’s not so much a matter of budget as it is logistics. As much fun as it would be to just pull the kids out of school and travel full-time, I don’t think it would be the right thing for our family. We are gradually moving towards doing more travel for a variety of reasons, but we are doing it at our own pace, and really I am not super concerned about if other people travel differently!
I read your blog regularly and had not heard of the other blog. So I reviewed the other blog and as a family travel enthusiast, I will read the other in the future, also. But that said they are two entirely different blogs. Babbo is a travel writer….if you review his site in depth you will see some of the trips, or pieces of his trips are provided by the travel industry in exchange for writing. Nothing wrong with that in my book, but you have to build followers before you can get “free trips”. Readers need to understand it takes time to build a business. Babbo has been at it for much longer with a totally different perspective. This an apples to oranges comparison. While it is always good to evaluate the critiques, stay true to yourself and your mission and readers will continue to read.
Thanks – I agree that likely many of his travels are paid for. I didn’t realize until recently that many (most?) travel bloggers get a lot of their travel paid for by the different destinations so that they will write about them. I agree that he and I have different types of blogs and IMO both are worth reading
Personally, I get more out of “real world” family travel blogs then the “I’m only here with my entire family because most of it is comp’d” family travel blogs. This blog teaches more about travel hacking for a family vs simple luxury travel.
I love reading about aspirational trips for sure but I do end up getting more out of a blog that takes normal life into account. That is my life, the average American suburban (with 2 kids) life. I work full time and my kids are school aged. I have 4 weeks of vaca time a year so we travel 2 weeks in the summer, 1 week during spring break, several days for Christmas and 1 weekend trip. That’s in a good year. Travel hacking makes that possible. Without it, financially, I wouldn’t do it. Not that much anyway.
I like this blog because I feel like it’s growing at my speed. Unfortunately I can’t go from traveling a few times a year to flying my whole family first class across the globe while staying in top luxury hotels all year long. Like you and your family, we’re slowly ramping up our traveling so I can relate to this blog. Everytime you have a post I read it.
And may I add that I love the FAMILY aspect of his blog. Most blogs focus way more on impressing the readers with big trip reports. I feel like this blog focuses more on a family that happens to have a dad that travel hacks in order to expose his family to as much of the world as he can (ex: kids bucket lists). I think that’s awesome!
Thanks TravMom! Since I figured out that places sometime comp travel trips to people, I’ve tried to do some of that but I must not be doing it right because I don’t seem to be very successful… 🙂 I’ve had a few but nothing compared to some folks!
Clarification: nothing wrong with comp’d trips! It’s just usually a little unrealistic for most readers. Always good to have big (travel) goals though!
Yes I agree. My motto is “if it’s free, it’s for me” 🙂
One more thing, I wish we could travel by train! We live in the south with no trains available. If we lived on the east coast or in the Pacific NW I would definitely take advantage of trains. I used to think the only travel that really mattered was overseas travel but now I’ve grown to see the beauty and awesomeness of America too! 🙂
I enjoy your blog because it’s a reflection of reality. Our family travels domestically, as does a large percentage of folks. I appreciate your realistic approach to real life travel. Keep it real. Is FT4RL in your 2016 plan?
Yes – I am planning on being there in Orlando in march for FT4RL!
This has sparked a good discussion. First, let me say that I do like and read your site. I’ve been a subscriber to your RSS feed for a long time so get everything you read and enjoy most of it. I don’t live in the US so some content isn’t applicable to me, but most is valuable.
Now, what I meant to say in my previous comment is that what I’ve been trying to learn is how to use all those points to do family travel. I do a lot of travel for work and therefore have top status in Virgin Australia and HHonors and a lot of points with both plus Qantas. It would be easy to fly first class and suites by myself or with just my wife using those points. But what I really want is to take my entire family of 5 with me. I don’t care too much about flying business/first really. It’s about taking the kids with us.
Your site is called Points with a Crew after all. It’s a great name BTW. And implies it’s about travelling using points with your whole crew. Which is what I want to learn more about.
And that’s what I’m still struggling with. How to get the most out of a huge pile of points for family travel?
I echo Kathy’s comment above. You have to always deal with the reality of your own life and choices. If I was single and able to work remotely much of the time, I might constantly travel the world. Simply ditching the costs of an apartment and utilities would let me live out of hotels in many areas of the world pretty easily.
Fact is, however, I am happily married, and my wife likes our house and small-town life (as do I), so traveling like that is less of an option. I do have some of the job flexibility mentioned above, though, and still managed to be away from home for ~60 nights in 2015, and my wife ~40 nights.
Heading into 2016, we are planning on adopting 2 children from Costa Rica, which will change our situation drastically. I know our ability to travel will be impacted (although I still do plan to take our kids places), but I simply wouldn’t have life any other way.