When someone is brave enough to ask, “How can your family afford to travel for three months?” I am happy to share the truth: with advance planning, extended family travel can be as affordable as a shorter vacation. Honestly, I know of friends who spend the same costs on five days at Walt Disney World as our family spends on three months in France! Because I get asked fairly often about how we can pay for such a long trip, I want to share three tips that have helped us afford the cost of our three-month stays in France:

*Cramming into tiny cars is not one of our affordable family travel tips. (Wink.)*

1. Buy the airline tickets when they’re cheap.

*Three of our five children on the flight home. Yes, seven plane tickets can add up quickly, so we have to buy them at a great price!*

Last January I spotted $300 round-trip Air France/Delta tickets to Lyon, France, via our hometown airport, PDX, leaving in July. I spent a few days deciding whether or not to buy them since France’s borders weren’t open to Americans at that time. Unfortunately, the price jumped up before I had made a decision, and I still regret not taking a leap of faith to believe that France’s borders would indeed open to Americans by summer. Still, our family got a decent deal ($500 each) when ticket prices dropped again in May. Getting great airfare deals isn’t as hard as you might think! We’re honestly living in the age of the best airfare deals ever, but few people realize this, and fewer still know how to find those deals.

I begin searching for flight deals as much as nine months before a trip, but one of the best ways I learn about unadvertised airfare sales is from fellow Oregonian Scott Keyes. He’s just written a book on it (and it's an insightful read). If you're flying from any city in the US, I recommend that you sign up to receive cheap airfare alerts from him and his team at Going.com (formerly ScottsCheapFlights). It's free, but you can pay for a membership and they’ll send even more deals to you. (I paid $25 for an annual membership this past February.) Airfare pricing is constantly changing, but the best sales aren't advertised. Take advantage of the best airfare deal you can get. I’m learning not to hesitate when the best prices arrive.

2. Pay local housing rental rates, not tourist rates.

I prefer not to use global rental sites such as Airbnb or HomeAway because large companies that cater to tourists charge tourist rates, which are always significantly higher than local rental rates. In 2020, I used SeLoger, a French real estate site (in French) to find an apartment rental, and then I negotiated a rate with the owners for our multi-month stay. Admittedly, many apartment owners are looking for annual contracts only, but a few will accept short term rentals, so these are the gems that you want to find to avoid tourist pricing. After our travel plans fell through in 2020 (due to closed borders), I did resort back to searching for apartments via Airbnb in 2021, but I used their messaging option to negotiate a rate with the owner of the apartment that I wanted, and this saved us 50% off the posted rate.

*My children walking the cobblestone streets near our neighborhood in Lyon, France*

3. Determine your highest expenses in advance, and plan for them over time.

*Making a cauliflower and chèvre pizza crust in our French apartment*

Our three-month stays in France only happen every three years because we save money for those expenses over time. Still, we plan our extended trips in a way that minimizes the most expensive parts of our stay. For example, we never stay more than 7-10 days in Paris because it’s one of the most expensive cities in the world for housing (plus the apartments in our budget there are tiny for our large family). However, this past year we were able to do a home exchange in Paris using HomeExchange.com points, so we didn’t have to pay anything for our amazing homestay there! Spending less (or nothing!) on housing allows us to focus our lesser expenses on valuable cultural activities like museum and monument admission. And whether traveling or at home, we prepare all of our meals at home (or picnic in a park), which leaves funds for special treats like summer ice cream cones or after school crêpes. Weekly meal planning both at home and abroad also helps keep our grocery costs manageable.

*Our preschooler enjoying a powdered sugar waffle as a special* goûter treat

With these simple strategies for affordable airfare, housing, and meals, our stays in France enable us to live like locals rather than spending like short-term tourists. This most recent trip was our most expensive one for a few reasons, including the fact that our children are older, and prices have risen with inflation. Still, it’s encouraging to confirm once again that living elsewhere in the world doesn’t have to cost more than living wherever we call home.

Where can you see yourself living for a few months? What does that place offer that would delight you? What is the cheapest trip you’ve taken that you thoroughly enjoyed?