Consider pet-sitting

“For our family trips, we get free lodging by house- or pet-sitting. Using TrustedHouseSitters.com (which costs about $10 a month), we’re able to watch other people’s pets and houses while they travel. Last summer we watched a pig in Seattle for two weeks. We drove there and back, camping along the way. And two years ago we spent a month watching a cat in a luxury apartment in Panama City—it would have cost us thousands to stay in a hotel!” —Kyle Kranz, Rapid City, SD