Where do lower to middle class families go on vacation for the summer?

[Anonymous]

Family, camping, cheap hotels far from the beach / attraction and we buy groceries and keep them in a cooler

[Anonymous]

I earn $85k and am a single parent. I don't GO on vacations for the summers. I take my DD on a vacation about once every five years for maybe 3 nights. I'd rather go less frequently and do nicer trips. We only see family if they come to visit here. I haven't seen the bulk of my family in 15 years.

Camping will never happen - I am a city girl who hates nature and also we live in a tiny apartment and don't have room to store gear.

[Anonymous]

Day trips

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We were true MC growing up. We did a long weekend at the beach, or we camped, or occasionally split a very modest beach house with my MC grandparents. (Think 3 bedrooms, window AC units, and several blocks from the beach.)

I was happy and didn’t know any better. But my friends weren’t taking lavish trips either.

MC growing up as well. I think that was the norm back in the day. It was too expensive for the MC to go abroad and to fly in general. Ironically, we did do WDW a couple of times growing up but many MC are now priced out (unless they are FL residents).

[Anonymous]

Car trips to visit family. Camping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We were true MC growing up. We did a long weekend at the beach, or we camped, or occasionally split a very modest beach house with my MC grandparents. (Think 3 bedrooms, window AC units, and several blocks from the beach.)

I was happy and didn’t know any better. But my friends weren’t taking lavish trips either.

NP. My parents, my kids, and I would LOVE that! Alas, I'm middly-class ($130k HHI 1 adult 2 kids) but my parents are poor, so I'd have to foot the bill for the whole very modest house AND fly them into town for it.
In what town could I find one of those, so I can book it now, and invite another middly-class family to split it with us instead?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They go visit their families. (Which my ILs are upset about. They wish we spent all our annual leave visiting them instead of vacations.)

Not to get too off track here -- but I do think that a lot of the conflict over family vacations you see on here is a result of income differences. When I was a kid, we camped or stayed with my Grandparents on vacation. My Grandparents had a lake house (a rustic cabin, not fancy at all) and we spent a ton of time there when I was a kid. Now maybe our parents have the same expectation, and instead we're now off to Europe etc.

But that's the answer to your question -- camp or stay with family. The only time I went to the beach as a kid was when we visited family who lived driving distance away (but not really near) the beach. We'd drive over to the beach for the day. When I was poor and new to DC, we'd drive to Rehoboth for the day. Leave early and get back late, tired and sunburned, but we had a great time.

I completely agree. We have a lot of conflict with DH's family over our vacations. We only get one vacation a year, so it's not like we have tons of annual leave. We spend it how we want. We invite grandparents and only my parents ever come with us. His family wants us to camp with them. They grew up camping with their own grandparents or spending their annual leave on staycations with grandparents.... I don't have the leave for that.

[Anonymous]

They don’t.

- kid who grew up lmc

[Anonymous]

We met that definition growing up. We sometimes went in on a modest beach house with extended family (MD/DE beaches). Did a lot of tent camping. Visited cities where we could stay with relatives at their house. Never flew anywhere, always drove. Honestly, my DH and I are a little better off than our families of origin, but pretty much still vacation the same way for frugality's sake.

[Anonymous]

Nowhere. My family never took summer vacations. We only went to a college's fall/winter home football games two hours away for overnights at Motel 6s. La Quinta or RedRoof Inns were considered too expensive. My parents were older when I was born so I had no living grandparents to visit anyway. No cousins because uncles on both sides were priests.

It was fine I suppose because my friends were all in the same socioeconomic strata and I never realized how the other half lived until college.

[Anonymous]

If you're military, most military bases have a campground and some also have cabins. Sometimes you can stay in a base hotel for cheap as well. Several nice options for military families that might want to visit Virginia Beach for a few days. Makes a very reasonable driving trip.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We were true MC growing up. We did a long weekend at the beach, or we camped, or occasionally split a very modest beach house with my MC grandparents. (Think 3 bedrooms, window AC units, and several blocks from the beach.)

I was happy and didn’t know any better. But my friends weren’t taking lavish trips either.

NP. My parents, my kids, and I would LOVE that! Alas, I'm middly-class ($130k HHI 1 adult 2 kids) but my parents are poor, so I'd have to foot the bill for the whole very modest house AND fly them into town for it.
In what town could I find one of those, so I can book it now, and invite another middly-class family to split it with us instead?

PP here. We went to Sandbridge, VA because we lived in Richmond. You can still find the small unrenovated ones but it’s getting harder as they are getting torn down so the new owner can build a McMansion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They don’t.

- kid who grew up lmc

DH grew up poor and they still went camping each summer. It's cheap if you have the equipment, though the lost time off is what can really hurt.

[Anonymous]

Grew up in Montgomery Co, MD. Right at border of UMC, dad grew up poor. We vacationed only to Wildwood, NJ where we stayed in an efficiency motel for exactly one week. Some longer school breaks we’d stay with my grandparents in Richmond.

[Anonymous]

We're solidly middle class family with one kid one parent. We usually have a vacation budget of about $300. That would cover any one of the following:

"Family camp" at YMCA camp for Memorial Day weekend (stay in a tent)

visit family friends in another city within driving distance

buy season tickets to Six Flags

take commuter rail or the cheap bus and spend the day exploring NYC or Baltimore or another city

I'd add visiting Grandma, but we're lucky and she's close.