Vacation blues - a vent

My husband and I won't put a vacation on a credit card, if we can't afford to pay cash, we don't go. We've had many a year of staycations and wonder sometimes how other people do it.

This year we had a pipe burst due to freezing. The repairs were covered by insurance. We planned on doing some renovation work next year at this time but since the contractors were here we accelerated our schedule. So, the money for a vacation is gone. We also made the last tuition payment for our son and paid off his college debt.

Good luck with that down payment.

You aren't alone!
We've never been on a big family vacation. When our two oldest girls were little, we went camping a few times. But then I started grad school and had no vacation time and worked almost every weekend, too, so that was out. We had a spot we liked to drive to, so sometimes I'd make salads the night before, and DH would pack a picnic dinner and pick me up from work, and we'd drive ~45 minutes to a beach and we'd eat and swim until the sun went down.
But then we moved here and there's no good places around here to do stuff like that at. (I won't go to overcrowded tourist places).

OP I hear you. Our last family vacation was in 2003. Times are tough for us. We just finished putting DS through college, but with the crazy raising cost of health insurance we still aren't able to go on a vacation. Our biggest "problem" is that DH is insistent on paying the house off as fast as possible. It isn't how I'd do it, but he lost both his parent to Alzheimer’s, nursing his mother when he was a college student himself, and to him paying the house off is security-I get that. So I let it go. Our house will be paid off in 3 years, it's worth 450,000.00.  We just got lucky. We bought it 19 years ago for 220,000.00. It's because of where it is. We have no other debt, not even any credit cards.

Now mind you, I'd much rather have gone on vacations every year. But marriage is a compromise, and because of DH's history, I don't say anything. 3 years will pass quickly. In the meantime, we live very close to the Chesapeake Bay. It's about less than a mile down the street. I have a small sailboat that I haven't put in the water in years (I had a chronic illness for 10 years). I was hoping to put it in the water this year-but the trailer the boat sits on needs new tires. Hopefully I can swing paying for those.

It is very difficult to hear all those other people talking about where they are going this year, and especially those folks saying they go on more than one vacation a year. I just stop listening and think to myself about what I have, that they are probably using credit cards to pay for those trips, and that even though I am 55 I plan to live to be 99 and I have plenty of time left for lots and lots of travel Always look on the bright side, I say.

Debbie in MD.

You know I've been to the Cayman islands and the best part of it was the rum cake. Yes I know there are beaches and sunsets but you know what, the sun sets everywhere and everything was incredibly expensive. Why not treat yourself to a Caribbean theme meal, something you can make at home for a lower cost. I know it may not be cocktails on a beach but one of my favorite parts of travel is trying local food. I bet with some searching on the internet and creativity you could be traveling via dinner, which you have to eat anyway!

My "recipe" for rum cake is to make a chocolate bundt cake a few days before I want to eat it and then poke holes in it and sorely drizzle a cup of Malibu coconut rum on it over the course of an hour, eg put some on, go do something, come back in 15 min and repeat until the cup is empty. Let it age under plastic wrap in the pan for a day or two and you'll have a very moist coconut rum cake when you unmold it. That plus a rum drink at sunset and you're half way to the Cayman's.