If you are like me, you are watching your travel budget carefully, asking where you can go that’s interesting but affordable. One strong possibility for your summer travel plans is Southern California. There you will find theme parks, beaches, great weather and a lot more.

Hawaii would be another option. Although those warm beaches are hard to resist, there’s not as much variety in vacation options as California. Check this out for a brief comparison between Southern California vacations and vacations in Hawaii. Keep in mind that there are way fewer underwater rocks to worry about in the California surf, and the humidity and sun intensity are a little easier to handle in the summer. You’ll find the ocean water to be warmer in the Aloha State, but the cooler California water might actually seem more inviting on a hot summer day.

A Hawaiian vacation does offer beautiful subtropical vegetation and fascinating Polynesian cultural experiences. On the other hand, there are many different cultures to be experienced in the Southern California melting pot.

The beach is not the only attraction in Southern California. There are a half-dozen major theme parks to be visited. Don’t forget about the seven world-class theme parks waiting for your visit. You will find world-class thrill rides at Knott’s Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain; the Six Flags roller coasters are particularly plentiful. You’ll discover many intimidating coasters and thrill rides at Knott’s and Six Flags. You won’t find as many true thrill rides at Disneyland as at the other parks, although Space Mountain and the Matterhorn Bobsleds certainly qualify.

You won’t find many roller coasters in Hawaii, although surfing on the North Shore of Oahu in winter would qualify as a thrill ride. It may be that California offers more ways to trim the budget, but sometimes there are great Hawaii vacation packages to be found on the internet or in the newspaper Travel section.

I’ve noticed that a lot of the free stuff offered online is successful in leading you to make a purchase. There would be no other motivation by those companies to offer the freebies stuff than to attract potential buyers of other items. So the free chocolate samples are great, but the hope is that you’ll buy a couple pounds of peanut brittle after you taste it.

The offers for free money making kits are likely to follow up with additional services and products. The free recipe toolbar will discretely present ads on your computer for advertised items for sale. Obviously this approach must work since so many companies offer free goodies.

Another example would be where you can get free insurance quotes online. These are legitimate companies that apparently have the ability to analyze your situation and give you a quote—sometimes from several competing companies—in a matter of minutes.

A final area that I’ve noticed is with some computer software. It is often the case where the free software is useful, but not as good as the full paid version. So the better paid is made available if you realize that the free version is not as good as you thought. If you want to convert files to pdf format, you can purchase Adobe Acrobat, one of the most popular programs for this purpose. That will cost you.

However the Reader package by Adobe is free, and allows you do save, send and read pdf files; you can’t write them or change them. There are a lot more examples where offers of free stuff lead to purchases.