HHI 250k—what’s your travel budget?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:HHI is around $500K. Spent $37K on travel in the last 12 months. Plan to spend more on travel once we retire.

Irrelevant.

[Anonymous]

We make around 300K, 2 kids 12 and 15.

We spend around 20-25K/year on travel. We take a week for spring break, 2 weeks in summer and some long weekends skiing.

We do not do luxury travel and try to save where we can.

We do not come from money but do live our day to day lives below our means- bough house well below what we were told we could afford, kids go to OK public schools, drive normal cars/not luxury and drive for at least 10 years, put off renovations like the new kitchen I would love because I would rather spend the money on travel, we also have a sizable saving and paid off student loads years ago.

[Anonymous]

No car payments and we utilize credit card points a lot

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:HHI is around $500K. Spent $37K on travel in the last 12 months. Plan to spend more on travel once we retire.

Thanks for coming out

[Anonymous]

10-20k? We don't do beach houses. We much prefer sightseeing and active vacations.

Some places are cheaper than others. Our kids are little and we love south America. Kids are so welcomed in south America (any country there!). Our kids are well behaved, but a lot of places in the US and Europe really see kids as a huge burden. There's no kid menus, no high chairs and they roll their eyes when you come in to eat dinner. South America is also very inexpensive, so it's fun to be able to do a lot more there. My dh travels to Asia a lot, it's just a longer trip and a bit more foreign for kids, but I'm sure we'll go more when they're a bit older (youngest is 2).

Our biggest hurdle is the awful school calendar. Tons and tons of random days off. I wish they'd just push them together for a full week off. I think schools are just trying to encourage kids to miss school. We're going away in October- kids have Th, F and then the following Tuesday off. WHY? How many kids do you think will miss that Monday?

[Anonymous]

When we were at $250k, our budget was $10k yearly for all travel with 2 babies/toddlers, and we could travel at any time of year.
We are at $350k now, and it's $15k. They are in elementary school, and we only travel during high times (holidays, spring break, and summer).
We are doubling that to $30k in 2025 since our kids are getting older, and we want to travel more in summer.

[Anonymous]

250k with two kids? Hope you are saving for college first.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:250k with two kids? Hope you are saving for college first.

Op here…of course we are, that’s why we haven’t traveled a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:250k with two kids? Hope you are saving for college first.

Op here…of course we are, that’s why we haven’t traveled a lot.

Don’t listen to this person OP. I’m the poster who has taken kids to 70 countries on similar income, and their college funds are well funded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:250k with two kids? Hope you are saving for college first.

You sound not fun.

[Anonymous]

$275k HHI. Vacation budget $7,200 a year. We do alternating years of low-cost driving vacation to National Park and cook our own food and flying vacations with cruise or resort. We do not prioritize travel but have seen and done enough. We are doing a blowout trip to Europe in a month with $15k I inherited from my aunt.

[Anonymous]

200k. We have a 5k travel budget and mostly travel locally, we have other savings priorities right now and travel has become too crowded and too expensive post pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are now at about 300k. We don't do expensive cars, we have reasonable housing costs, public schools etc. But we travel a lot. We don't really budget, just do it. It is what we value.

We're similar. Travel is our one big expense while living frugally with pretty much everything else. I'd estimate about $20k-$25k a year on travel with HHI of about $300k.

same.

I bought a Subaru for $30K, cash. No student loans; kids 529 funded for in state; retirement funded annually to the max (most important), and a bit of extra for emergency savings. Shop for clothing at the cheaper stores, especially the sales racks.

Rest goes to vacations.

We don't do expensive vacations every year, but when we do, it's about $20K for a family of four (teens).

+1 I am splurging on travel now while my kids are not too old and not too young, and while I'm relatively fit and mobile. We have a low mortgage and no other debt so we've been able to save.

Last year we did Canada, Caribbean, Central America, and some weekend + camping trips. I estimate that we spent $12-14K on 2023 travel.

In 2024 we're planning to go to Europe + the U.S. West, so travel will be in the $20K range this year.

[Anonymous]

HHI used to be much lower and now is higher than that, but we've always done about the same thing: One trip a year, either to Europe to see my family and then we do a stopover somewhere else in Europe on the way, or to national parks or a US/Canada road trip. We try to keep it under 7k, manage to do it for less pretty often.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have taken our kids to 70 countries on similar income. All about priorities.

Please tell us more. How much do you spend annually? Do you group a bunch of countries together for trips? What kinds of accommodations do you stay in? Do you eat out the whole time or make food?