Travel Tips: Sat-Nav Savings

So for our current trip to the UK, I decided to rent a GPS unit to go along with our car rental.  We did it on our last trip over there and although it did tell us to turn into a field at one point and at another point wasted forty minutes of our taking us to a restaurant that didn't exist, for the most part I was pleased with it.  It gave us the freedom to just turn down a road we wanted to explore without concern of becoming dreadfully lost.

Last trip it was a last minute add-on, so I didn't really account for how much it was going to cost.  This time, I booked it at the time of the car rental and was shocked how much it cost. It was 79 GBP for 8 days of car rental.  Ten pounds a day doesn't sound too bad when you're booking but that comes out to be $126 for the trip. Gross!!  


So this set up my first travel tip here:


Tip:  Borrow a GPS (if you don't have one)
My discovery was to borrow a GPS from someone and buy the maps for it.  I updated my father in law's TomTom XL with new maps of the UK and Ireland for $50.  


Why this works:  Its a win-win situation.
I saved $76 on this trip and even more when we go back in the future.  My father in law gets free added value to his GPS, so as long as he gets his unit back why not!


We leave for England in three days, so stay tuned here for highlights very soon.