Vacationing on the Cheap

I have a friend who is really cheap. He's the kind of guy that always buys the round after the last call. He's so cheap that the last time I saw him pull a dollar out of his wallet, George Washington was wearing sunglasses. I hadn't seen Cheap Charlie in a few years, and when I ran into him I was surprised when he told me that he and his wife had just come back from a vacation out on the West Coast. I thought maybe he had changed his miserly ways until his wife told me that they had swapped houses with another family from Seattle and had stayed in the couple's house in Seattle for free in exchange for letting the other family stay in their house during the same period.


It seems as if this is a growing trend, and organizations like HouseSwappers.comand HomeExchange.com have stepped in to provide a service for prospective house swappers. These type of sites maintain a database of people interested in exchanging their home for your's usually to save lots of money on hotels and car rentals while on vacation. There are quite a few things to keep in mind when considering this type of arrangement, so it would pay to do some research to find out the details of how it all works. Many of the sites out there charge for access to the database but from what I hear, it's well worth the cost, not just for the contacts, but to get a lot of good information from people who have been doing this for a while.

An excellent source of information on Home Exchange Travel is Home Exchange Travel Blog

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