This Mom Has the Best Travel Tips for Your Family

Monet Hambrick didn’t let parenthood hinder her globetrotting ways. Quite the opposite, she parlayed her zeal for exploring the planet into a full-time career, even with her kids in tow. You might want to sit up and take note of this mom has the best travel tips for your family – she’s ready to share her secrets with our readers.

Monet Hambrick had an early passion for exploration. She was the first American child of Jamaican parents, and she and her family made regular trips back and forth between the United States and Jamaica. The family from New York State frequently traveled up and down the East Coast on-road excursions. “We would go to Boston,” she says. We frequently visited Philadelphia. We planned to visit Myrtle Beach.

Hambrick’s passion for travel was solidified during a high school trip to Botswana. The young man received funding to participate in Experiments in International Living. According to Hambrick, “living with a host family was just an amazing, unique experience.”

She met her future husband during their time as undergraduates at the University of Florida, and the two of them later spent a semester in Beijing. Following graduation, Hambrick began a career in human resources as a recruiter. She started out in New York City recruiting architects and interior designers and eventually relocated to Florida to focus on the cruise ship industry.

She kept on traveling all the way, even though she was expecting her first kid. I intend to continue to travel even after having a child. In fact, it didn’t. Before her daughter turned two, her family had already traveled to Jamaica, Italy, Greece, and on a cruise.

In 2016, while on maternity leave after having her second daughter, Hambrick’s friend suggested she use Instagram to document her travels. “I was all, ‘That’s stupid,'” she says. Who could possibly care about that? They will see this as an attempt on our part to impress ourselves. Wow, look at this beautiful picture of my loved ones and me. Take a good look around, And her response was a firm “No.” Consider how many times you were told you couldn’t travel because of your children, and here you are. And there are a lot of folks out there who want to have kids someday but don’t think they can have a life like this.”

Hambrick heeded her friend’s advice and launched The Traveling Child, an Instagram account and subsequent website where she blogs about frugal travel, destination notes, and other helpful information for families enjoying trips across the world.

The now-famous digital artist has 244,000 Instagram followers and writes the children’s book series The Traveling Child Goes To… Her website proclaims, “My motto is, ‘If kids live there, kids can visit,’ and you’ll often find our family exploring destinations most don’t consider ‘kid-friendly.'”

Some of her most useful advice for cutting costs and having more fun on your next trip is provided below.

Pick Locations That Are Familiar and Cozy

Hambrick suggests that first-time travelers pick a destination that is not too dissimilar to their regular environment.

The location doesn’t need to be far away from you; it can be anywhere in the world where English is widely spoken.

If you’re comfortable with public transportation, Hambrick suggests choosing a location where you can easily hop on the subway or a bus or where you can rent a car and easily install your child’s car seat.

Focus on the Transaction, Not the Final Result

Hambrick warns that it can be difficult to locate a good deal if you already have a fixed destination and travel dates in mind.

She suggests that you shop for the best price and let it determine your final destination. Skyscanner is a useful app for Hambrick. You can “enter your home airport, and then, you could put everywhere as the destination and select the dates,” she says. The cheapest places to travel during spring break, for example, can be found by entering the airport closest to your home, everywhere as a destination, and the dates of spring break.

Using a flight searches tool like Skyscanner or Google Flights might help you identify the most cost-effective times to fly if you have some leeway in your departure and arrival dates.

“Last year, for Thanksgiving,” Hambrick recalls, “we actually went to Guatemala.” We were able to purchase those tickets for around $150 each way, which is a steal.

She also swears by paying for monthly necessities like groceries and gas with a travel credit card. The single mother of two children claims that this method of earning points is “essential to being able to fly and get hotels at cheaper costs.”

Learn the Facts

One essential piece of advice from Hambrick: check the reviews. The mother of two says she won’t book a holiday rental without first reading the reviews. I refuse to serve as a guinea pig. I refuse to compel myself to act in that manner. I check to see that they have a decent number of reviews (10 is ideal), with the vast majority being very recent. As in, “Sorry, probably not someplace I want to stay in their last review was over a year ago.”

That’s crucial because if the lodgings you’ve booked for your family turn out to be subpar, it can ruin your vacation plans.

In a similar vein, she suggests double-checking all of your bookings. For instance, if you’re renting a car for a family vacation, you’ll want to double-check that you can get the car seat you’ll need along with the car.

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