Travel budget and HHI
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Anonymous
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How much do you spend on trace per year and what’s your hhi? Also, how many trips do you take with that budget and any details would be appreciated (I.e do you fly or drive, hotel resort or rental, domestic or international, etc).
We have small children so between that and covid haven’t really established regular annual travel but want to start that this year and next with our oldest starting K and having more time off school. Our hhi is 350k and I’ve been doing some research on various vacation ideas and Im really surprised at how expensive even a seemingly basic trip and hotel stay seems! Like is 500 per night now the budget rate for a hotel room??! |
Anonymous
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Even pre Covid we’d mostly stopped staying in hotels unless necessary because the logistics of small kids and bedtime and sharing hotel rooms never appealed to me. We mostly do air bnbs and I’ve never paid $500 a night for that.
Our HHI is between $350-400. We are mostly limited by vacation time and needing to visit a set of long distance parents each and days off to cover school days off. In a normal year we take one long distance flight to ILs, that trip with 4 cross country flights and a rental car typically runs us $3-$5k depending on how $$ flights are that year. The drive to my parents is nominal cost-wise, but it does take up our vacation time. Then we usually manage one actual family vacation per year and we’ve mostly stayed domestic to date since our youngest was not even 5 when Covid shut everything down. We’ve done Maine, Boston, Williamsburg, and FL. This year we plan to do Chicago. Those trips have ranged from $2k (Williamsburg) to $6k (Boston). So around $10k annually. If we ever manage to get to an international trip, I’d expect to spend closer to $20k on travel those years. |
Anonymous
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How can you make so much and know so little?
sorry |
Anonymous
| We have a similar HHI and older children. I guess your travel budget depends on your fix expenses and disposable income. Our kids are older teens, pre covid we traveled with them 2 to 3 times per year and spent between 5K to 12K per trip, probably totaling 20K-30K per year, depending on the year. I do try to use hotel, credit card and miles to help offset costs. |
Anonymous
| 250k family of 4 and we try to keep it under 5k for the year. It usually works out to a week at a beach we can drive to and a few long weekends. |
Anonymous
| We budget about $10,000 per year and this has stayed consistent whether we were making $250,000 or $450,000. Family of 4. |
Anonymous
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Our HHI varies but is typically around 700k. FWIW we don’t have a mortgage. Our NW is around 5M excluding our house but including ~ 700k in college funds that we intend to spend. House is probably worth 500k. We have 3 kids who are 14, 12, and 10 and are in our early forties. We don’t live in DC.
We spend between 50-70k in travel so 10% of gross income. I’m not sure if that is too much. Since we don’t have a big mortgage, we feel ok about it. I splurge on nice accommodations (we need at least 2 rooms but prefer more to spread out) and experiences while we’re there. We’re going skiing in CO next week and, in addition to lift tickets, I paid for private snow mobile and dogsledding tours because they seemed like cool experiences that the kids will enjoy and remember. That kind of thing. Our travel schedule typically follows the same pattern due to school: short ski trip to Vermont over Christmas break, short ski trip to Vermont over MLK, week long ski trip to out west over Feb break, week long trip to Disney or Caribbean over April break, a week in Europe or a national park in July, and a week at an east coast beach in August. The week long trips are all in the 10-15k range, 20k if it’s a special “splurge” trip. Short ski trips are 5k ish. |
Anonymous
Inflation plus pent up demand for travel |
Anonymous
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Until our youngest was 5 we mainly traveled to see family. As family was in florida and UK, that wasn't too much of an ordeal. Main expense was flights.
Pre-covid we would do a big summer trip - Europe, Asia, out West etc. We would probably spend 10-12K on that. Often using points, and staying in a variety of places, sometimes $100 hotels, sometimes $600. Then we would do one other trip at Christmas or Thanksgiving, either UK or somewhere like Mexico. This probably cost another 5-8K. HHI 400K. |
Anonymous
"House is probably worth 500k. We have 3 kids who are 14, 12, and 10 . . . We don’t live in DC." You don't say. Kidding aside, we make about $530k, and this is what we would spend if we didn't have a mortgage payment. As it is, we spend about $15k. Our mortgage is ~$50k each year. |
Anonymous
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Our HHI is under $200K but we’ll spend $$$ to travel. Only 1 child (9).
In 2021 we spent more than usual making up for 2020: - $6K month long rental on the beach - a one-time splurge since we were working from home and why not - $3K flights to europe for 2022 (deferred expense) - $4K give or take for various midrange airbnbs - eastern shore, shenandoah, Maine, etc We live in DC and lucked out with a low mortgage + You only live once |
Anonymous
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HHI is 225k. Three young kids.
Travel budget is about 3000/yr. One week away (driving distance) and a long weekend usually. Wish we could do more but we want to pay for college. |
Anonymous
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We also have a combined income of about $350K and travel is my vice!!
Lately I have been liking VRBOs for more space for my family of 5, and I truthfully don’t enjoy eating out 3 meals a day. I like having the kitchen and doing easy meals 2x a day and eating out once a day. I don’t have a set budget for anything which is bad - I know!!! Here is something of what we like to do. I try to take 4 full weeks off of work. One week at winter break, one week at spring break, and a week at the beginning and the end of the summer. Sometimes we travel for all of those but this year I’m picking a staycation for one of the summer weeks. My in laws live in Miami and I often like to go for a week - but stay with them 3-4 nights and go somewhere like the Keys or Disney for 3-4 nights. They also let us borrow on of their cars when we are there. I try to do at least one long weekend ski trip in the winter. Here was 2020: winter break - drive to FL, ski wknd at snowshoe, spring break - drive to HHI with house rental in sea pines, summer - one week in OBX, one week in St John (adults only for my 40th & 15th anniversary) 2021: winter break - skiing in snowshoe, spring break - visiting ILs in Miami, summer - one week staycation, one week Royal Caribbean cruise using a credit I had from a pandemic canceled cruise |
Anonymous
| $270k and transitioning to traveling with a baby. 2 trips a year, one domestic to family our west for a few weeks (we both can WFH) for maybe $2k including groceries but stay with family and typically drive so it’s part road trip and another international for about 5k. |
Anonymous
| Hhi 320. And we spend at least $15k a year. Two little kids with one napper so need an extra room. I also prize convenience and direct flights and staying near beach/destination so limited driving on vacation unless its a fun daytrip destination. We are renting a house on the cape for $8k this summer. But splitting it with another family. Its a minute walk from the beach and in high season. Doing a carribean trip with just DH and I in april and then something in Florida with grandparents for a week at a rental house. Once the kids are older we will do a ski trip with ski-in-out places and European destinations/SA as well. Our PITI is sub $3k and once the nanny expense ends we will have a little more room for travel budget. |