Aloha Reader, Something funny happened last week. Within a few days, several different people reached out and asked me basically the same thing: "Marcie, can you just look at my itinerary and tell me if it's good?" So I built a service for exactly that. Starting now, you can submit your Hawaii itinerary for a full review. I'll go through it, flag anything that concerns me, answer your itinerary-specific questions, and send it back to you within 48 hours. It's $50. This is a great fit for you...

Aloha Reader! I'm just going to be upfront with you: Hawaii is not cheap, and the numbers have gone up. If you've been Googling "how much does a Hawaii trip cost" and getting estimates that feel surprisingly low, it's probably because those articles are using old data. Here's what the realistic picture looks like for a family of four in summer 2026. Flights This is where a lot of families get sticker shock. The old benchmark of $450 to $900 per person roundtrip that you'll still see in a lot...

Aloha Reader! I got a version of this question a lot in February: "We have 10 days in Hawaii. Should we do one island or two?" Sometimes it's "should we do Maui or Oahu for our first trip." Sometimes it's "we really want to see both but we're not sure we have enough time." The wording changes but the underlying question is the same. How do we make sure we're making the right call on something this big? Here's the honest answer: it depends, and the things it depends on are really specific to...