Reduce your environmental footprint by vacationing at home and save money
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Holidaying at home is good for the environment and also good for you. You save money, there is less stress and all being well you will not need a holiday to get over the holiday.
In the current economic climate and with the impact the so-called “Credit Crunch” on the finances on the individual, and not the individual alone, and also the rising costs of food and gasoline, taking once vacation at home rather than abroad and may be even very close to home, namely AT home, may be something that will needs to be considered. It is the frugal thing to do the way things stand at present and also the environmental, green and ethical thing to do.
With the rising fuel costs and the increase of the general cost of living, from food to taxes, I am sure that the time has about arrived, if it not indeed is here, where we all are going to be turning the penny around a few times more again before we are going to spend it. Therefore, vacationing at home than abroad may just be the result.
Those that have a nice home and a nice garden I have never been able to understand as to why they would, not only spend the money, but the time and effort, to travel abroad for a for a few weeks holiday and then return more exhausted than when they left.
I must say that I rather have “stay-at-home” holidays where I can do what I want when I want and I can take the occasional outing to here and there. Most places wherever this may be have some kind of areas of local interest and even historical interest, just aside from museums and if that does not suffice then a day trip to a larger city to take in the sights and especially things like history and such, is also a very nice thing to do, and, very often a frugal thing to do, as long as you bring your own packed lunch and drinks. Buying them on location, normally, works our rather costly.
I remember before the times of the package holidays and the cheap flights to all over the world that people vacationed at home, in their own gardens, or those in the urban areas on their allotments, or went for a day or so to the seaside, or into the countryside for hikes. Others, especially the working classes that had the funds had a caravan by the seaside or some hitched up a caravan and went on holiday travelling about. Yet again others went on cycling tours with tent, including with their children. But even caravanning probably is out, nowadays, with the rise of the costs of fuel.
People who could not afford to go away or did not want to, stayed, as said, at home in their own gardens, if they had such, or on their allotments, or went to the local parks and open spaces as much as possible.
Seeing the current economic climate, in the United Kingdom, as much as in the United States and elsewhere, with the rising cost of living, of fuel, of food, of everything else it would seem, it is more and more likely now that with maybe already the very summer of 2008 we may just see a beginning of the “stay at home” holidays again. Not a bad thing either, of that I am sure.
Aside from saving money the local parks and open spaces will, once again, see a real resurgence of and in use and the powers that be might then be more reluctant to even think of getting rid off parks and open spaces. The other good thing of the “stay at home” vacations is the fact that such holidays put less of an impact on the environment (do take your litter home with you from your visit to the park and the woods please) in that there is less fuel used, and that aside from the money that is being saved. This saved money, or at least part of it, can then be spent in the local economy, at home.
Flying to destinations, and even motoring to destinations in France, Spain and elsewhere, put an enormous strain on the environment, as does leaving your litter in the countryside, and the environmental footprint of your package holiday, if you had to actually off-set that (something that may still head our way), could be a rather costly affair. Anyway, I am sure that taking holidays abroad is going to be a thing of the past soon, and it would not surprise me if those people that have already booked their holiday flight to abroad for the summer might suddenly find that they are going to be surcharged because of the increase in the cost of aviation fuel and everything else that goes with it.
If you have one, get your garden organized and take your holiday at home. You will reap many benefits from that, not the least the fact that your vacation will start the very moment you arrive home from work on the last day of work before the holidays and it will end the morning you start your shift again. That is aside from the saving made in other departments.
While we are still being told by the our governments that this is not a recession or a depression but just an little blip and a slight economic downturn, all the signs do point to something much more severe.
I may not be an economist but the way things stand presently with everything on the rise as it is – let us face it, in the UK bread has gone up by a considerable about in just a few weeks and that is just one staple that I would like to quote here – I cannot see that we will not be headed further down for a while before we may, but just may, recover again.
The “Stay-At-Home” Holiday is definitely, in my opinion, a small little answer here to keep our own finances balanced a little more. Any frugal advocate will tell you that you save a great deal by staying home to have your vacation rather going away and that is just for starters. While there are savings in the money department, far greater ones are made in the sanity department.
© M Smith (Veshengro), May 2008
The “Stay-at-Home” Holidays
