How Do You Pay for Family Vacations? (And: Where Do You Go?)
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Over at Corporette today, readers are talking about paying for vacations, and we’re putting a spin on it for CorporetteMoms: How have your strategies for paying for vacations changed since you become a parent — as well as the vacations themselves? What are your best tips on how to pay for family vacations?
Regarding vacations with your kid(s) vs. solo trips or pre-kid vacations with your partner, how are they different, financially and otherwise? As a parent, do you take more trips or fewer trips than you used to? More/fewer sightseeing trips or more/fewer trips to see family? Do you do a couple of big vacations a year or more frequent smaller ones? How about destinations — how have those decisions changed for you since having kids?
{related: what kind of family vacation is right for you?}
Also, have you taken any vacations that you would have never considered before kids? Waterparks? All-in-one resorts? Cruises? Disneyland/Disney World/Universal Studios? Are you waiting until your kid(s) reach a certain age to do a certain kind of trip? And regarding types of lodging — hotels, B&Bs, Airbnb, and so on — how have those decisions changed?
How about vacation funds in general? If you’re spending LESS on travel now, where are you directing the extra funds — and does the money go toward everyday/immediate costs, or toward something like a 529? If you’re spending MORE on travel now, what’s the main reason for those increased costs?
{related: 3 baby gear rental companies for family travel}
On the sentimental side, Kat just shared a sobering fact with me: 75% of the time we spend with our kids will be spent by age 12 (source: 1000 Hours Outside). When trying to find the original source, I came across another stat in which the 75% is replaced by 75-95% and 12 years old is replaced by 18 years old, but no matter the correct numbers, it makes you think. With that in mind, are there certain vacations/destinations that you’re determined to share with your kids before they reach their teenage years or college age?
My husband and I traveled extensively (as cheaply as possible when we were younger/still dating) and because of this, we have always traveled internationally with our children, even when they were “too young to remember it”. Our kids have now been to over 25 countries–Latin America, Asia, Africa, Europe, etc.– and now that we’re financially comfortable, we spend about $30-$40K traveling a year, which is usually one big international trip that costs about $20-$30K and a bunch of domestic ones. We don’t regret spending a penny of that money to have the time and the opportunity to explore the world together as a family. Now that the kids are in their late teens, they have a broader perspective of the world, they’ve interacted with so many different people, learned about all kinds of cultures, and understand that they’re part of the global fabric that connects us all.
vacations are a definite priority for us while our two kids are in the sweet spot of elementary school. realistically we spend 15-30k per year, including three ski trips in the rockies, a winter break trip, spring break (sometimes to see family internationally), and a two week trip over the summer, and shorter weekends. other than skiing our priorities are seeing family, seeing wildlife, and visiting national parks. while this is a high total, it does not work out to that much per person per day. we save the luxurious hotels with fancy pools for the occasional one night which we turn into a full weekend of fun. we stay in three star or lower places, have ikon passes, no ski-in-ski-out, cheap airbnbs with friends whenever we can, cook a lot of our own food, i do a lot of travel hacking for flights, and we do timeshare demos when we can. i will spend serious cash only on truly unique experiences and ski school.
We don’t save specifically for travel. We have retirement and college savings taken out of our paychecks and spend most of the rest on various things, including vacations. We spend a lot more on travel than we did pre-kid, both because of the extra person we have to pay for and because we have more financial stability than we did before we had a child (we paid off our mortgage during early Covid ).
My parents are local and my in-laws are a short, cheap flight away, so we’re lucky to not need to spend much time or money visiting family. Most of our trips are to places we want to go. We’ve taken our 5 year old all over the US, Europe and the Caribbean so far. We haven’t gone further than Europe yet, but have big plans for more exotic travel in the elementary school years. We’re currently planning Turkey for next summer and South Africa for the summer after that. For relaxation with young kids, it’s hard to top an all-inclusive beach resort. We especially love doing those as multi-generational trips with my parents, so we can spend a lot of time as a family but the adults also get a break. I try to aim for one kid-free trip every year, but I’m more passionate about travel than my husband so those trips aren’t always with him – sometimes I go solo, with friends or with my mom.
DH & I are both emphatically not Disney people and hope to avoid that, although we’ll see how long we hold out. DD has already started hearing about Disney World from friends. Otherwise we like to involve her in travel planning, and will give increasing weight to her destination & itinerary preferences as she gets older. I would even like to turn planning for some trips completely over to her (with budget and safety constraints, of course) once she reaches a certain age. I think that would be a really good exercise in managing money and keeping track of information.
We used to try to set aside about $10,000 per year for vacations, but we use a lot of that money for family travel and little weekend vacations like waterparks or visits to nearby cities. A friend just came back from Korea with her family and I’m trying to wrap my head around a trip of that size; she said the flight alone was $10,000.