Like in a typical year--not a once in a life time trip, but a yearly summer vacation (or whenever)... what do plan to spend?
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Assuming it's a week long, in the range of $4,000
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We have a time share, so we pay for that all year. Typically we go somewhere like Hawaii or Mexico. So including airfare about 5k for 7-10 days.
For a local trip less than 2k for a week.
This includes food, eating out, having the dogs cared for, etc.
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We went in march for a week at an AI and it was over $5k when it was all said and done...
We want to go away for a week this summer but just rent a condo on the beach so hopefully around $3k
So maybe $10k a year because we do other smaller weekend trips as well.
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If we are looking at a local lake within driving distance for a week, like $2000 for lodging and probably $500 for food. I look for a lake house that has an association so we have access to a private beach, club, pool, rec center, etc. That cuts down costs for fun stuff and they usually come with coolers and water toys and all that.
For something like Hawaii (we fly from West Coast) it would be like $5,000 for budget-friendly, $7,000 for a fancier resort situation.
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I guess we do "budget-friendly" vacations haha. We usually drive, spend 2-3 days somewhere, and bring a lot of snacks/food so we don't have to buy out. So including gas, lodging, food, activities we probably spend $400-500 on a 2-3 day vacation. Maybe one day we will do fancier and farther vacations but right now this is what works with out budget and when the kids are young.
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@mrs.kiwi: You are not alone! I'm looking at some of these budgets like
but my husband and I are teachers so it's to be expected. We probably spend 1k or so but we live in California so we are close to some really awesome places.
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We mostly do flying to visit family.. about $2000 or so and mostly on flights because we live far away.
This coming year we will go to Mexico. It'll be around $6k I think. (2 adults, 2 kids, and a baby, for an event.)
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@Coral: haha glad to hear I'm not alone! We are in ca too in a hcol area. I feel like there are so many awesome places within driving distance I've never even explored so driving and cheapo it is for now! I grew up not going on nice vacations so i don't feel my kids aren't missing out. Also we are big on nature and exploring which is usually more budget-friendly. Although as they get older I'd love to take them plces to experience cultures/foods/etc...
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$100 per person a month. We usually take a mix of 3 short and long vacations a year. We do big stuff so we supplement with miles and travel deals.
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If we do a week long trip, we aim for lodging around $1,000, then $100 a day for food/activities. I'm sure this is going up now that LO is older.
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Gosh, it's hard to say...I am a huge fan of the Costco vacation packages, with flights, hotel, sometimes a car, theme park tickets, we are looking at around $3,000 for a week. That doesn't include food, which can easily be an additional $500-700. That vacation happens every year.
Every other year we go abroad to visit my husband's family and the flights alone are about $3,000.
Part of the problem is that when my husband is on vacation, he doesn't like to "economize." As an example, I would totally aim to keep costs down by eating breakfast in our room. I would pack food in the suitcase if we're going to a resort, or I would find a local supermarket. I like that kind of challenge. My husband, on the other hand, requires Starbucks every morning, lol.
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@mrs.kiwi: @Coral: not alone! We do not spend anywhere near 5K on a vacation! (I'm a teacher too!) between daycare and saving for college/retirement, we don't have large chunks of extra money right now. When we travel, we almost always fly on miles so airfare doesn't cost. My husband is extremely frugal and we haven't taken a longer trip that didn't involve staying with someone we know in a while. But we've done a bunch of driving long weekends that have been nice. I do think we need to start planning a budget for trips so that we can take a longer one with the kids next year.
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I do the whole travel hacking thing so it's usually just budgeting for food, transportation, and activities. But the budget totally depends on the destination. We're going to Hawaii for a week next year and flights/resort are covered by miles/points, so I'll probably budget $1500 or so for everything else.
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We usually do a "long weekend" so 4 days or so, and we usually plan around $1,200 when it's all said and done. This is driving though, we have yet to fly with both kids. We will plan on 5-7K when we do a bigger/longer trip. I'm waiting until we are done with naps and diapers for this though.
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@looch: I am like your husband, and my husband is like you! I hate worrying about budgets on vacation.
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@lawbee11: hmmm maybe I need to look into travel hacking!?
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My vacation budget depends entirely on where we are going and what we are doing. This year we drove to a mountain resort in NH. So we spent a fraction of our most expensive vacation which was two weeks in southern Africa including a week of safari.
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@ElbieKay: Hahaha! Marital bliss while vacationing, right?
My husband and I couldn't be more different in terms of our vacationing habits. He didn't grow up going to fancy places, they camped. We didn't vacation much at all. But we both did a lot of business travel and IMO that kind of ruins your expectations.
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We don't fly much so we don't have miles. I am a social worker and my husband is a civil designer, so with daycare, mortgage, student loans, etc, our budget is stretched pretty thin. If we do fly, it's to Florida to see my parents and they cover our flights and we stay at their house. Otherwise, we take short (3-4 nights) trips within driving distance, research the hell out of finding a place that we can bring food and make at least breakfast if not lunch in our room/condo, and use coupons and deals for eating out and activities.
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We haven't (and probably wont for a while) do a real vacation with the kids. We live in FL so there are a ton of great places nearby. Our leave from work sucks right now after dealing with sick daycare babies and maternity leave for the past 5 years. So we dont often take off an entire week at a time.
We do 3-4 day trips and that works for us.
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@Mrs. Champagne: I'll post the blog links I used to get started on your wall
We definitely could not afford to take some of the vacations we do without it!
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I try to cover flights or hotels with miles, but it doesn't always happen. I also am not real budget-friendly on vacation; that stuff is for real life lol not fun vacation life.
4k a week sounds about what we spend, assuming traveling in the US.
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Probably around $1500 at the max. I aim to keep our lodging right around $500 or less, then gas. We either rent a car or drive ours and we only eat out one meal a day. I try to find hotels with breakfast included and also hotels that don't have "outside rooms" as my husband is extremely picky about that.
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@lawbee11: um me too!!! I don't know what this is, travel hacking… but I think I need to know!
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@avivoca: outside rooms? Do you mean a motel, where the doors to the room go straight outside?
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@looch: Those, and also any hotel in a chain that has rooms that open to the outside. So some Choice hotels are okay because they have inside rooms and some are not. He's still mad about the time that we stayed in a Best Western in Florida that had outside rooms (that opened to a courtyard, so not a sidewalk). He stays in a lot of hotels for work and is super picky.
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@avivoca: Yes, business travel ruins people! I always say that.
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@lawbee11: I'd love to see the links too.
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Before kids, we aimed for $100ish a day. Now with kids, it's about $150ish a day. We mainly do car trips + motels + national/state park hiking + city exploring; or fly to.visit family and friends and stay with them and do local things.
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It's hard to say. It depends on where we go, but we've typically done a "big" vacation (2-3 weeks) once a year with shorter visits/vacations/long weekends throughout the year. We try to use points/miles when we can to help offset costs. But we enjoy traveling and don't do so many pricey activities or spend much on entertainment in our day to day lives, so we are more loose with the budget when in vacation mode. We took a fairly expensive vacation to Asia last year, but the rationale was that our oldest was starting school, and it would be the last time we could take advantage of off-peak travel for the next 15 years or so.
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We usually aim for $500 - $1500 per trip for travel and lodging (food is extra), but we might take 2-3 trips per year. With our daughter, we've only done regional driving trips so far, but we did do a couple's trip to Las Vegas earlier this year.
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We usually do one actual vacation a year - a week in the Outer Banks. We rent a 3-bedroom house for around $1500, then budget about $80/day for food (breakfast is usually fruit and cereal, lunch is sandwiches, then dinner out.) So around $2000 for food and lodging, then with gas and random activities (entrance fees, mini golf, ice cream, etc.), we usually plan to spend a total of $2500.
Our other "vacations" are to visit family, and we stay with them, so they're a lot cheaper. (And not as relaxing, ha.)
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When we aren't using miles or visiting family I think $2-5k for a vacation is reasonable depending on where we're going.
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@travellingbee: Well, I was multiplying what we spend by 7 days, but we have never taken a full week trip. With kids I find 3 nights/4 days to be the point at which we get the best results in terms of their cooperativeness, parental exhaustion, and getting the kids back on a routine when we get home. We usually spend the bulk of our vacation money on visiting family. We stay with my ILs for Christmas every other year and those flights cost like $1500 with a lap infant. My parents are in LA (we are in NorCal) but we can't stay with them so we have to get a hotel - so those trips home end up costing like $2000. This past year we had to do Christmas in Michigan and go home in May for my brothers wedding (with wedding gift money and outfits, etc) so we are pretty broke for vacations this year.
We are doing a long weekend in San Jose at the end of July because DH has a work conference. We ended up spending like $1800 for a VRBO bc the Bay Area is so expensive and because we got a much bigger rental to accommodate some friends who are going to tag along to help me wrangle the kids while DH is at the conference. We are probably packing a lot of food and snacks in the van and our expenses will be like admission to the children's museum or Happy Hollow Zoo. And luckily my husband can deduct a lot of the lodging as a business expense so it ended up being not too bad.
We aren't going to be able to take a long fun beach vacation for a while - DS2 is 13 months and DH doesn't want to go to Hawaii again until the kids are 3 and able to use drop-in child care at a resort.
He thinks it's a waste of money otherwise and not worth the hassle.
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I find it interesting nobody budgets for travel the way I do. I budget what I deem appropriate to save per month and put it in a travel account. (Just a separate block on my spreadsheet.) I take from that. The balance determines what vacation I will take and how much to spend. Comparing round numbers with different sized families might not be helpful to determine how much or how little or how often. Looking at how much disposable (or necessary income-depending on how you look at classifying a vacation) per month would be a factor. If I had a car loan I wouldn't vacation as much for my budgeting purposes.
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@808love: I think plenty of us save the way you describe it's just a matter of how that money is apportioned. For instance, we have a travel/holiday budget that includes all travel and gifts and holidays and it's a massive line item in our budget. But if it's a bad year for lots of holidays where we need to travel for family visits or if someone has a major birthday or wedding, or if you're on maternity, things get shifted around. Just because I saved and budgeted $5,000 for travel doesn't mean I get a $5,000 vacation that year. Some years I save that much and go nowhere.
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@808love: I think we kind of do that...on the years when we do our trip to visit family in December, we do a smaller vacation as a family that year. We have a general idea how much the airfare will be and we just make the assumption that we will only do one family vacation that year and the budget for that is usually in the same ballpark year over year (or at least it has been, considering we did the same kind of trips). We do tend to choose a destination, and then I'll see what it costs in the timeframe that we want to go. I usually downgrade rather than upgrade and then I make it work in the budget.
Vacations are important to me. I have worked hard, I am going to play now too. There were plenty of years where I didn't go anywhere.
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I feel weird saying this but we don't generally have a budget. We tend to pick a trip, and then I try to get the best deals I can on it. For example, this year we are going to Disney and I got a great deal on our resort and tickets, and we will pay approximately 50% for our flights by using credit card points.
In the past, I used to budget down to the last dollar (like, I'd say we can spend exactly $500 on this and no more) and we saved money but it drove DH crazy. We had a few miserable vacations before he said no more. So now we only book trips that we know we can afford at full price, and I get my "budgeting" fix out of the way by looking for discounts in other ways.
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@gingerbebe: Oh! I thought I was the only one.
I have to save per month otherwise I would go off track and make all kinds of luxurious decisions that would offset other things. Also taking multiple trips makes things a little more costly if we go over on each one.
@catlady: Yes, I have to account for DH decisions in my budget. (He's so predictable and can be expensive when it comes to food.) lol
@looch: So glad you prioritize the rest time! It is so important!I also think of it like, what percentage when looking at overall annual spending budget, is reasonable to allot for vacations. That's how I justify it.
but my husband and I are teachers so it's to be expected. 
We definitely could not afford to take some of the vacations we do without it!
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