Get Me Outta Here!

If you know me, you probably know that I have become a relative expert on traveling without breaking the bank.

Every so often, I hear someone tell me they've never used Priceline.com, for example, and I am shocked.

A friend recently asked me how I decide when to fly and when to drive. How I reached the decision to put thousands of miles on my own car as compared to renting a car.

So I want to tell you about some of the options I considered before I took my last road trip.  In my next post I will talk about the next trip we are planning, and use some actual numbers.

My last trip, which I have mentioned on here a time or two, was a nearly two week long solo road trip from Omaha east, with the farthest destination being Portland, Maine, but with various stops along the way.

The factors I had to consider on that trip were mainly that in one trip I wanted to attend a wedding in Massachusetts and visit friends in that area, as well as visiting friends in Maine and family in New York.  I wanted to do all that while spending the least amount of money, and the least amount of time off work (while still getting adequate time with every person I wanted to see, from friend's new babies to family I had not seen in years.)

The first thing I started doing was shopping airfare.  Priceline, Travelocity, Expedia, Hotwire, not to mention all the individual airlines.  I jotted down a list of "preferred" airports, closest to each of the people I wanted to visit, and I checked airfares from Omaha to each of them, jotting down prices.  Then I started checking car rental rates at each of the airports and jotting that down, as well.  The car rental rates were staggering.

I started checking car rental rates at other airports around the region, since if I had to fly and drive, it really didn't matter where I flew in to.  To save on air fare I started shopping other airports close to home, instead of Omaha.

To shorten the length of the trip, and thus the car expense, I looked into flying into "one end" and flying out at the "other end"  (ie, flying into Portland, Maine and out of Rochester, NY.)  Probably not surprising, this pushed the expenses even higher.

I looked in to renting a car in Omaha and driving for my vacation, then leaving it at the airport and flying home, and into flying into, well, anywhere in the Northeast and renting a car for return to Omaha.

Because of the unique aspects of this trip, it came down to that I HAD to drive it, in order to visit everyone I wanted to visit.   Also, throw into consideration that I rather enjoy long road trips and was pleased with the idea of a bit of time to myself.

Rent a car or drive my own?   Ahhh, a good question.
My own car, a 2003 Pontiaz Aztek with over 100,000 miles on it, is no spring chicken.  Last year I sunk quite a bit of money in to the ol' Aztek, in new tires and in intake gasket repairs, fluid flushes and replacing a leaky fuel pump.  It's fuel mileage is decent, though, well over 20mpg, and the vehicle is reliable.  Also, I am comfortable driving my car, even on long distances.

So, the decision came down to, renting a car or driving my own.

It is easy to quantify costs of renting a car: Easy to quote online, plus shave a bit more off with priceline (I always Priceline my rental cars).

The price of gas can be estimated, both for my car and a theoretical rental car (with better gas mileage), at Mapquest. It's a bit harder to find in the new format, but if you scroll down to the bottom of the screen there's a few buttons, one of which is "Mapquest" and if you select that, you'll find "gas prices" and once you get to that screen there will be an option for "gas calculator."  (Until Mapquest again hides this REALLY WONDERFUL TOOL!)

For my own car, I needed to include the cost of two oil changes.  

Given the age and mileage of my car, and how much I love to drive it (versus a strange rental car that might not have my six-way power seat), I negated the "wear and tear" factory against the "convenience" factor.

If I wasn't a little person who has a hard time driving many cars, I would have probably weighed in favor of getting to "try" a newer car, with newer features (which is the best part of a rental car.)

I also knew I would be doing some shopping while I was traveling and the increased storage capacity of my car also worked in its favor.

So for that trip, driving my own car became the best thing.  

I will mention, though, that one item I underestimated in my plans was the cost of tolls between here and there.  They weren't enough to have made flying the better option, but they did put me closer to maxing out the credit card I was using for trip expenses! (Don't worry, I paid it in full the day of my return!)