Family, Resources

Travel With A Plan

I love the beach.

When I retire, I want to live where 50 degrees is considered “cold weather” – and I can rock flip-flops 300 days a year.

As it stands right now, a couple of trips to the beach each summer will have to do, seeing as how my wife and I have jobs, three kids, a mortgage, and are both years from retirement.

So, when we do get a chance to go the beach – we want our trips to be memorable, relaxing, and awesome.

I was doing some research on travel and came across a great article from Trent over at The Simple Dollar.  He has some excellent thoughts about vacation planning.  He writes about the “peak-end rule” – a concept that I had never really considered  – but one that makes a lot of sense.

The idea behind the “peak-end” rule is that when you think back to a past event, you generally have the strongest recollections and feelings about two elements of that event: the “peak” and the “end.”

I won’t spoil the article with much more commentary, but it’s a great read – and it really got me to thinking.  Instead of spending a lot of money on a lot of vacation-type-events, none of which are really all that memorable, I’m going to do a better job of creating a few, very memorable, vacation-moments.  Man, summer needs to get here, fast!