We’ve talked a lot about vacations over the years — how to prepare your workload for a vacation, how many days you get to take vacation, whether you repeat vacations, how to travel solo, etc., etc., — but we haven’t really talked about how you pay for your vacations. Readers were discussing this a bit recently, so let’s get into it!
How do you pay for your vacations, readers — with your bonus or other “found” money, by saving money either in the abstract or belt-tightening in the months leading up to the vacation, by putting it on credit card and paying it off as you can, or some combination thereof? Do you save for the big things like flights and hotels, and then give yourself a daily budget while traveling? Where do you think vacation spending (or vacation saving) falls with your other spending and saving?
(If you’re coupled, how did your vacation goals change once you got married or partnered? For those of you with children — how have your vacation goals changed as they’ve grown?)
How I Pay for Vacations
As I’ve mentioned before, my family and I heavily use automatic savings to save for these kinds of goals — we figure out roughly how much we want to spend on vacations, then divide by 12, and save that amount monthly.
Other friends set aside a big chunk of their bonuses in order to pay for relatively lavish vacations… and I definitely know friends who have chosen to focus on other financial goals and thus don’t travel a lot.
I didn’t travel a ton in my 20s because I didn’t feel that comfortable traveling by myself, and coordinating with friends seemed overly complicated at the time. To be honest, I just kind of assumed there’d be time to travel with my future husband — but other things took priority once I found my guy, such as buying a home and having kids. And since then a lot of the travel budget has gone towards visiting family members so they can spend time with the kids.
Readers, how about you — how do you pay for vacations?
Stock photo via Stencil.
{related: not sure what to do first/next in your personal finance journey? here’s our money roadmap}