Lifestyle

Experts Suggest Four Essential Questions to Plan a Memorable Family Getaway without Incurring Excessive Costs

Published

7 years ago

July 11, 2019

Trips and vacations are becoming an essential way to help family members remain close and maintain interaction with each other.

Between our professional lives and commitments, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s important in life. Children get older and build their own lives. Other family members may move away or have different priorities. And before we know it, we’ve lost touch with each other and sometimes with ourselves.

That’s why we’re seeing an increasing amount of families actively choose to organize vacations with the specific purpose of reconnecting. The multigenerational travel trend won’t likely end soon as it makes for ideal opportunities.

Think of the experiences you’ve had while visiting your favorite destinations. Now you can imagine how enhanced those adventures will be when your family is with you. It’s where all of you will visit new places, introduce yourselves to new environments and surroundings, and rejuvenate mind, body, and spirit. You’ll be reconnected through conversations, and your relationships will grow and strengthen.

You also have abundant destination choices of where to take your family, like on a Bakersfield road trip. Choosing from exotic locations to backpacking in Europe to camping in your favorite national park will require coordinating everyone’s schedule, and possibly budgets. However, in doing so, you’ll ensure a destination that will closely match everyone’s needs and desires.

To help navigate making such an essential decision, here are four questions according to the experts, which you should answer to help you and your family have a carefree, relaxing, and enjoyable getaway while avoiding excessive expenses.

What is Your Destination & What Activities Are Available?

Depending on the ages and personal tastes of everyone involved, it will be mandatory for you to make appropriate plans according to those factors. The more people coming along, the more likely you will have differing choices, which is where you may have to compromise or find common ground. It may be possible to narrow down your choices by taking into account everyone’s opinions.

It may be easier as well as cost-effective for you to choose an all-inclusive resort or cruise.

These vacation options allow for an abundance of activities for all ages at a fixed cost or affordable group rate. They can also make it possible to have access to childcare for those nights when you want to reserve time alone with your partner or spouse.

If that option seems too structured, consider talking to friends and colleagues for ideas. A travel agent can also be helpful in choosing destinations and often provides discounted rates.

How Can You Keep Costs to a Minimum?

Depending on the getaway options being considered, you will likely have some idea of the costs involved. For instance, a family vacation in Hawaii would be considerably more expensive than camping in a national park. The length of the getaway will have a significant impact on expenses, in addition to the experience desired. If you arrive as the average traveler, costs can be kept low. However, if you expect first-class or VIP treatment, expenses could rise exponentially.

When setting a budget for your trip, try to keep extras to a minimum, suggests Patrick Dwyer Merrill Lynch. He also adds “Your priority is to determine what activities are most vital and secondly, to try and minimize amenities that are less important. If you’re not looking to include unnecessary extras, a cruise is often the easiest way to accommodate a large group. Cruises tend to please a wide variety of people given the choices of activities available all in one place.”

Instead of going the traditional route of a hotel or resort, consider renting a home, or multiple homes to accommodate everyone. If your group plans on traveling to several locations, alternatives to hotels can make managing the cost of lodging simple and stress-free.

How Will Expenses be Handled?

A crucial question that should be asked prior to making plans is determining who is paying for various aspects of the trip. Will it be broken up by the individual families? You’ll need to take into account airfare, gas, rental cars, hotels, and admittance to events or parks.

By not taking the time to assess how costs will be covered, you could be creating a recipe for disaster. Money can come between the best of relationships. The last thing you want is for your family getaway to be derailed by a trivial argument about who is paying for meals. Have the conversation about covering costs as early in the planning stages as possible, so the purpose for taking the vacation stays relevant.

Will My Family Get Along?

No family is perfect, and we’ve all experienced times when our family had a disagreement or worse. If some ill feelings are still lingering, they won’t be solved any easier if you’re away from your daily lives.

It may be best to lay down some basic rules before departing. Or, if you feel there will be too much tension, ensure that those parties have separate living quarters and have minimal interaction with each other.

You may also want to have designated days or times where individual families have their own activities to minimize any potential issues or conflicts.

Overall, to help guarantee your family getaway’s success, the focus should be on each other and not where you are or what you’ll be doing. Our time with family and loved ones is our most scarcest commodity as once time is gone, no matter how much we plan or invest, we can’t get it back. Planning more family vacations can help you recognize the importance of spending time together and should be geared towards doing it on a more frequent basis.

Lifestyle

When Seasons Shift: Dr. Leeshe Grimes on Grief, Loneliness, and Finding Light Again

Published

2 hours ago

February 22, 2026

Michelle Langton

Some emotional storms arrive without warning. A sudden change in weather, a holiday approaching, or even a bright sunny day can stir feelings that don’t match the world outside. For many people, the hardest seasons are not defined by temperature; they are defined by what’s happening inside, where grief and loneliness often move quietly.

This is the emotional terrain where Dr. Leeshe Grimes has spent her career doing some of her most meaningful work. As a psychotherapist, registered play therapist, retired U.S. Army combat veteran, and founder of Elevated Minds in the DMV area, she understands how deeply seasonal shifts and unresolved grief can affect people. Her upcoming books explore this very space, guiding readers through the emotional weight that can appear during different times of the year.

What sets Dr. Grimes apart is her ability to see clearly what many people overlook. Seasonal depression, for example, is usually tied to winter months. But she often sees it appear during warm, bright seasons, the times when the world seems happiest. For someone already grieving or feeling disconnected, watching others travel, celebrate, or gather can create its own kind of heaviness. Sunshine doesn’t always lift the mood; sometimes it highlights what feels missing.

The same misunderstanding surrounds grief. Society often treats it as a short-term experience with predictable phases and a clean ending. But in her practice, Dr. Grimes sees how grief keeps evolving. It doesn’t disappear on a timeline. It weaves itself into routines, memories, and milestones. People learn to carry it differently, but they rarely leave it behind completely. And that’s not failure, it’s human.

Her approach to mental health centers on truth rather than pressure. She encourages clients to acknowledge the emotions they try to hide: sadness that lingers longer than expected, moments of joy that feel out of place, and the waves of loneliness that return even when life seems stable. Instead of pushing for quick recovery, she focuses on helping people understand how emotions shift and how to care for themselves through those changes.

Much of her insight comes from her military years, where she witnessed the emotional toll of loss, transition, and constant survival. She saw how people continued functioning while carrying pain that had nowhere to go. That experience shaped her belief that healing requires space, space to feel, to speak, and to move through emotions without judgment.

In her clinical work today at Elevated Minds, she encourages people to build small, steady habits that anchor them during difficult seasons. Journaling helps them recognize patterns and name what feels heavy. Community support breaks the cycle of isolation. Therapy creates a place where emotions don’t have to be minimized or explained away. And intentional routines, daily sunlight, mindful breaks, and calm evenings help rebuild emotional balance.

Her upcoming books expand on these ideas, offering practical guidance for navigating both grief and seasonal depression. She focuses on helping readers understand that healing is not about escaping pain. It’s about learning how to live with it in a healthier way, honoring memories, acknowledging loneliness, and still allowing room for moments of light.

What makes Dr. Leeshe Grimes a compelling voice in mental health is her ability to bring language to experiences that many struggle to explain. She reminds people that emotional seasons don’t always match the weather and that there is no single path through grief. But within those shifts, she believes there is always a way forward.

The seasons will continue to change. And with the right tools, compassion, and support, people can change with them, finding steadiness, softness, and light again, one step at a time.