S/O vacation thread Budgeting for vacations

DH and I budget, every month, for vacations. It's literally a line item on our spreadsheet. We have a separate bank account that we save the money in, not connected to our checking account, regular savings, etc. I would literally have to go into the bank to get the money. When DH gets his bonus, some of that is added to the travel fund.

When we started traveling, we started small and eventually started doing bigger and nicer trips.


Edited to add: We have a pretty good idea of where/when we will be going by January. Even if we don't know specifically where we are going, I *know* we are going international travel 2x a year - once in Jan/Feb and usually in Sept/Oct.  DH is super busy in the warmer months so we tend to not travel during that time or if we do, its not sure far. 

We plan our trips ourselves, because we focus on food + nicer hotels/resorts and we usually have a good idea of what we want to see/do.  Pinterest has helped a ton in planning - start a board and start researching.

For us it's been setting a budget and trying to put that much away every month. Our past trips have been tied to family or bucket list things that took us years to plan for. I have an interview tomorrow for a position that would mean making more money than in the past. If I get an offer Ive set up a budget that includes travel as a line item, so much per month goes in and if we get any bonuses or windfalls during the year that goes in there too. I've been unemployed for long enough in the short term it's all about saving and getting our emergency fund built back up but once that happens I'm hopeful to take a look at what weve been able to save and plan from there.

Because of 'rona, we haven't done a lot of traveling, which makes me sad. The last time we did a more than one night trip away was to Chicago in 2017. We're also somewhat limited (for now, anyway) because DH doesn't like to fly but so much. We do a lot of Saturday trips (ex., Philadelphia, Baltimore, Gettysburg, etc.).

We do have a bucket in our savings account that's dedicated to vacations, so hopefully we'll get somewhere soon. I also have a decent amount saved in credit card points I could redeem, and I've also looked at rental cars through Costco because they're less expensive than going directly through the rental place.

We plan everything ourselves, and most of our trips are museum/history/that sort of stuff heavy, but I've also been looking at more offbeat things to see on Atlas Obscura.

I can't wait to go somewhere new! (And for more than one night!)

We use our credit card points for airline tickets. We put just about everything we can on our Amex Delta and pay it off each month. It gets us free tickets + frequent upgrades. We have a Hilton timeshare we use for most of our lodging.

If we want to stay somewhere outside of our timeshare network, we either save for it our plan for it with one of our annual bonuses, which have been pretty reliable. We put that on our Amex Delta too to help build up points for future airfare.

We each also get one free companion ticket with our Amex cards. We use those when flying to visit family (we go to California every summer for a family visit).

We have 2 groups we travel with. One group I consider friends, the other is acquaintances.

The friend group has a “leader” who loves to plan great trips. He’s sooo good at it, and the trips are usually 2-3 in continental US each year, and every other year, there’s a big trip (Alaska, Hawaii, Scotland were the last 3.)

We know what his general budget is, so we usually do 1 or 2 of the “smaller trips” and the bigger trip too.

The other group, we tend to meet the same place every year, same general timeframe. There is also a cruising component to this group, and so we sometimes cruise with them. It’s a big enough thing that we always have a conference room.

Otherwise, we travel to visit family, go to concerts and we have a second home in Florida.

I also travel a good deal for work- travel is a huge part of our happiness.

DH and I are primarily cruisers with Royal Caribbean. He's constantly perusing their website for good deals. We like to cruise at least once a year, but if he finds a good deal and the timing lines up, we may cruise twice or three times. We also sometimes work with a travel agent friend of his if he announces a good deal.

DH maintains a travel savings account and puts money there on a regular basis to use for deposits and payments on our cruises. But we also book our cruises well in advance most of the time - like 1.5 to 2 years out when possible. Pricing is generally better that way and we get our pick of cabins. It also allows time to build up the funds for the final payment. He doesn't make any payments on the cruise beyond the deposit until a week or two out from the final due date (in case we have to cancel or reschedule so there's no waiting on a refund from the cruise line). He pays the deposit at the beginning, saves money in the account over time, and then makes the final lump-sum payment at the end.

We're currently planning a trip to Europe in 2026 and then a Transatlantic cruise to get us back home - probably from Barcelona depending on what ships are coming back and from what ports. Those cruises haven't been announced yet, but should be this fall, so he'll be watching for those so we can put a deposit down once they come out and we decide which boat we want to sail on. I have motion sickness, so the bigger the boat, the better for me. Especially in the Atlantic, which can be rough sailing. 

Jen

Any travel funds I have, are separate from >> my regular account, my savings, my petty cash, the money in my purse (which is my day to day cash).

I am not much of a traveler, mostly because of budgetary constraints.

If I do travel, I do my "homework" and research the area and make a list of things I want to do.
I then prioritize my list in order of priority and location. I try not to go back and forth across a city or back and forth between beach towns, because it wastes time. I do whatever I want to do in a general area or in a specific beach town....before moving on to the next area or town. 
I am NOT a foodie, so eating less expensively is fine with me. Last beach vacation I went on, I brought muffins and my electric teakettle and had breakfast and hot tea in my room before heading out for the day. 

I don't care for trinkets and souvenirs, so I usually don't spend any money on that kind of stuff. I do like to get a photo of the sign (and myself) of wherever I am or whatever event I am at.

I am not fancy.....all I need is a clean room to sleep in, it doesn't have to have all the bells and whistles.

Side note: I planned a 3 week trip to Switzerland, Germany and France in 1993 with no internet nor an agent. It was for 4 sisters and one BIL. I was looking at my travel journal the other day and impressed myself that I did that and all went well. I did use a book about traveling on a budget to help me with hotels. Called them all and made the reservations.

My travel budget is most often made with the money I get from using credit cards.

Fortunately we live modestly so we have the money to go where we want to go.

I wish I could say that we budget for it like everyone else here, and put money aside each month. But there always seems to be something that crops up that requires us to spend that money. This year it has been car repairs, big vet bill, new dishwasher etc. all unavoidable.

Instead, when we have had friends invite us to go overseas with them the last two years, we have paid for the flights by using whoever’s credit card has room on it! 😆 For our accommodation, I paid a slightly higher rate (like an extra $10 per day or thereabouts) so that I only had to pay for one night as a deposit, and then I have been saving for the balance since March.

I always book direct with the hotel, as I have found you can usually get a better deal.

One of the friends that we travel with is a super organiser, and between the two of us we google and plan everything in advance. The men just go along with it. DSO has no idea about anything we have planned until we get there.

Depending on where you want to go, it is usually cheaper to book tours when you get there. That’s certainly true for all of SE Asia, which is where we usually travel to.

I really want to be a grown up like the rest of you, and start budgeting properly for holidays. Maybe next year! 😉

Planning:  For most of our marriage, we could not plan actual dates or travel too far ahead because of work. But we did spend a lot of time over the years on the following:

1. Lists of places we would like to go
2. Lists and discussions regarding the kinds of vacations we both like, i.e. beach, city, mountains, busy, low key, etc.  I think this is an underrated topic because so many people have strong feelings and expectations so it’s just good to get on the same page on this.  
3.  Figuring out that we do much better with low key laid back planning vs minute to minute planning.  We typically all come up with ideas of things we want to do, depending on the locale, book a few things ahead of time and then take things day by day for the rest of our plans.  This works REALLY well for us and suits our personalities.  Much less stressful and if we need a down day, we just take it.
4. Start with smaller, shorter trips that were within our means.  Long weekends then a week/7 days.  Sometimes these were places we could drive to.
5. Use hotel, credit card and miles points from work and other sources to help make the trips affordable.
6. Think about what kind of accommodations you prefer.  Hotel, VBRO/ABNB, Bed and Breakfast, Camping all offer very different experiences.

So for example, when we had younger kids, we would take that into consideration on where we would go, what kind of accommodations we would prefer, etc.  We typically would take one family trip a year and then if it worked out we would take a trip just hubs and I.  We were often able to leverage a work related trip for our couples trip that saved us money and allowed us to get to go somewhere together.

On saving, there is great advice on here already.  We mainly focused on selecting locations, accommodations and transportation we thought were financially viable.  Once you do some searching you can get a pretty good idea of what those numbers look like and on accommodations you can really swing up or down on price.

We are both retired as of April, and are currently in Colorado in a house we rented for 3 weeks.  They actually discount stays over 2 weeks so we worked that angle to get a much better price.  We had a few things we wanted to do while here, but have mostly just enjoyed waking up and being in the mountains without an agenda.  We typically cook/eat at the house 2 meals a day so the food costs are not bad at all.  We also drove here, so that cut down on the transportation costs and gives us the freedom to drive anywhere in the area.

Our youngest leaves for college in a month, so we will likely start thinking about traveling more often, but will continue to keep costs in mind.  We both love travel but we also love our home. 

ON traveling abroad, when we have gone, we have used points on most of the trips to cover our flights and then stayed in VBROs.  That has helped us keep the costs down.  With a VBRO, you have a kitchen and have the option to buy food and have snacks.  Last summer we went to Spain and bought fresh bakery bread then picked up butter, cheese and fruit to have for snacking.  Was so nice to not be dependent on always finding a restaurant or spending money on 3 meals a day.

You've got that right! We're dreading the day that we have mobility issues.
Why pay for a 5 star hotel for your suitcases if you're going to be out all day?
Us, too. We saved like misers for years. Now we're spending our kids' inheritance.

We have good friends with whom we take a few trips a year. We go to Jazzfest with them every year and Oktoberfest every other year so we know that's happening and plan accordingly. We also go to see our daughter in Barcelona at least once a year and take side trips from there.

I'm the primary trip planner. I used a travel agent in Asia because things can go sideways, but in Europe I do it on my own. I read up on places we want to go and work out travel arrangements. We don't like highly structured trips because we like to explore on our own.

Savings- we are fortunate to have decent cash flow and healthy savings that we have enough to spend on a big trip here or there. We don't do those often and many times they are combined with visits to family and the grandparents help out.

We have some regular trips we take most years to family. We drive stay with family and have shared meals at the home usually. One frequent location is in the CA Central Valley on property that is basically like glamping (they live in a tiny home and have a variety of accommodations from a second tiny home to tents on the property. The other is a big cabin in the mountains. For both we usually go together with family on both sides and have wonderful memories.

Trips to visit extended family:
We live a 4-14hr flight from my extended family beyond my parents/siblings. Many times (especially the overseas trips) these are with my parents and they help pay for airfare. We stay with family, my overseas family are wonderful hosts and pay for most everything while we are there. We do the same when they visit here.

Now that our kids are teens we have been extending our travels to family more to our style of traveling instead of my parents, which is to hang out with family for 80% of the time. Now we (my SIL and I) plan everything ahead and "do all the touristy things".

While visiting family in Taiwan we (bro's fam and mine) did a side trip to Japan that my parents weren't interested in doing (BTDT). SIL and I did a ton of planning together. I joined a few travel to Japan groups in FB that were a wealth of knowledge. We booked hotel directly and did tours/some transport through Klook or Viatour. The dollar is strong against the Yen right now making it really affordable in Japan. We were also there in the winter/off season which helped with hotel costs too. SIL and I were really proud of ourselves for how well everything went.

Since we have teens that need to work around the school schedule and limited years before they will be off to college we do our best to plan travel. Currently planned:
2024
- July Family Cabin with my Bro's family and friends
- Sept Iowa: DH family wedding
- Oct/Nov MO: my side family wedding
- Dec: Family Cabin after Xmas with ILs, family friends
2025
- Feb: ski week at family cabin with IL and my Bro's fam
-Spring Break GA: visit my cousin's we haven't seen since I was 10 ish, with my parents/bro's fam
- July Yosemite: camping with lots of family on both sides and family friends
- Dec Family Cabin
2026
- college visits? DS will be a senior
- Summer Grand Canyon rafting trip with my bros family
2027
- college visits? DD will be a senior
- Fall maybe Mexican all inclusive 25th anniversary couples trip

I'd love to do a Europe trip. My neighbor is from Scotland and we travel well together. May try to do something with them. Once the kids are in college.

My SIL and I travel well together and enjoy planning trips together. When we can we enjoy doing family trips with the 8 of us.

Lastly my other neighbor is from a boarder city in Mexico. We occasionally go with her to visit her family and have done a casual beach trip to her favorite beach. We've also discussed doing a cruise with them and other friends.

So lots of traveling with/to family and friends! Once our kids are mostly launched we hope do to more destination based vacations. At that point we will need to be more strategic with travel budgeting.

We run a savings account alongside our regular day-to-day bank account, but in reality, between DH's income and our outgoings, we don't really have to 'save up' for vacations.
In general, we do a long weekend somewhere within 4-5 hours driving distance, a longer (week-10 days) trip where we fly, usually within Europe and a trip back to Australia to visit family each year-18 months. The expensive trip is back to Australia, simply due to the cost of the airfares. Except for the Australia trips, we don't plan a long way out. We hadn't planned this year's summer trip before we found out a month ago that it couldn't happen!
We generally plan ourselves. DH books flights, most often through the airlines - we have one preferred airline within Europe and another for Australia - and he also takes are of accommodation bookings. I am the one who trawls the internet for what to do wherever we're going. I use TripAdvisor and local tourism websites for the most part. I will book a few things if I feel it's necessary for the destination (guided tours, museums like The Louvre, etc). for trips back home, I let my family know when we'll be there and let them organize special events or outings, but most of our time is just hanging out.

This year's plans have been totally disrupted, due to medical issues (I need surgery, and then won't be able to fly for at least 3 months) and family issues back home changing our planned time to visit.