How do people afford the countless vacations?

[Anonymous]

We're wealthy. That's how.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know a lot of people who vacation a lot and none of them make anywhere close to what OP makes (and most of them are below 100K--most are not in DC area).

Two things: 1. vacations are put on credit cards and 2. grandparents paying for the vacation. That accounts for most of it.

Who are these grandparents paying for vacation?!?!? I wish I had some of those! lol.

I agree that people are either using credit cards OR using their savings for vacations...which is a perfectly great way to use savings! I'd hate to use all my money for end of life care instead of vacations. There has to be balance. We can't afford vacations often. Maybe a few weekends away each year, or, one plane trip away. If I had a HHI of 400k, I would DEFINITELY travel more.

[Anonymous]

I'm a first gen immigrant working for everything we have, including taking care of the folks. There is no college fund or inheritance to look forward to but we are healthy, earn more than most, and very thankful. Always feels great to earn and be in position to share. I have friends with wealthy parents paying college tuitions or at least paying half in many cases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. We do max out retirement (59k for me 20k or so for dh), we use public schools, and put away 15k or more for college between the two kids. Even with that, we worry about falling short when it is time to send them off. Last year, the flop vacation was really expensive. It involved car rentals and several hotels. That scared us enough to really trying to do the Grand Canyon this year on a tight budget.

Still don't understand where the rest of your money is going that you can't vacation often or decently well. I take time to price our trips for max value. It's also a huge priority for me. I hope you find some way to spend relaxed family time together. Yes having college paid for will help, but to have thoSe memories and that time spent together is invaluable.

$79K is not maxing out retirement, it's more like maxing out retirement plus saving another ~30-40 grand in after tax investment accounts and calling it "retirement".

Good for you for saving aggressively, but seriously, begrudging other people their vacations because you "can't afford" them? You're being totally ridiculous OP.

That's really not true. I do $59k a year as well, and DH does $53k all in tax deferred retirement accounts, plus an HSA that we use for retirement savings. We could actually do more on a tax deferred basis if we wanted to look at some other plans but haven't done that yet. So that's $120k and we aren't technically "maxing".

That being said, I agree that the OP could easily afford to take a decent vacation or two, even one that involves "car rentals" without breaking the bank or jeopardizing retirement and college savings.

OK, forget about the OP. HOW are you doing it? Specifically, the tax deferred part? 401K is 17.5K per person, catch up contribution is 5K, and if you have 401K i believe there is an income ceiling for traditional IRA contributions. Which means there is a huge gaping hole in what I know about taxes and retirement, so please do tell how you do $59K per year per person? The difference cannot be HSA simply because it would be to the tune of $30K.

This is potentially the most useful thread on DCUM ever!!

401k is $18k, over 50 catch up is $6k and $35k profit share (from my own business). You can also do a SEP for $53k. HSA for family is $6,750 and we do not use it for current health care expenses. You can also do fancy things like defined benefit plans to set aside more but there are higher administrative costs for those and I haven't done it yet.

Looks like you are using 2014 numbers for 401k and catch up so definitely bring it up to at least 2015/16 levels.

[Anonymous]

This is why I don't post anything like this on Facebook. If it's not going to make the people who see it feel good about themselves (and it's not), why would I post it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm listening to Diane Rehm right now and she is talking to an expert on Alzheimer's. She asked him what people should do to prepare for the possibility that oneself or a loved one might get Alzheimer's. The answer: save as much money as you can now. He said many people are not saving enough.

End of life care is very expensive. A vacation now might be nice, but being able to provide for your own care in retirement is priceless, as they say. My husband and I do not want to be burdens on our children, so we save our money now so that we can be sure of good health care in the future. We feel that this is our responsibility and we do not want to have to rely on others.

So our priorities are college for our kids and then retirement savings for ourselves. Vacations are low on the priority list.

On the flip side - you could die at 40 like a friend of mine. That in itself made me re-prioritize traveling and experiencing life. I'm not going crazy but I am planning trips instead of just putting them off.

Sure, that could happen, but statistically it is unlikely. I have a neighbor whose elderly father recently passed away. His mother is still alive and the adult children have been helping her to adjust. In going over her finances with her, they found out that she not only has no money, but she is seriously in debt. The kids thought the parents were wealthy: they had lived in a large beautiful house in a great school district, college had been fully paid for with no student loans, and the family had gone on multiple vacations every year growing up. It turns out that at some point some investments had gone bad but the parents had gone on living the same way for years, taking out equity lines of credit and using credit cards. The kids were shocked. They all said they would have been happy to give up all the vacations and live in a smaller house if they had only known. Their mother will now have to live a few months each year in each child's house because she cannot afford her own place, but this is not the way she had expected to live her retirement years.

Maybe this is an extreme example, but I'd rather save my money now for the far future. My kids know that we are prioritizing their educations and our care in our old age. They will all graduate from college without loans and even get help with graduate school from us and they will not have to worry about our housing and care when we grow old.

I'd rather find a balance between saving for the future and enjoying the present.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know a lot of people who vacation a lot and none of them make anywhere close to what OP makes (and most of them are below 100K--most are not in DC area).

Two things: 1. vacations are put on credit cards and 2. grandparents paying for the vacation. That accounts for most of it.

I can't imagine making my parents pay for my vacations. Do the grandparents also accompany your friends on these vacations or just pay for it? What kind of people are these?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have plenty of friends (grown adults in their 30's) with parents who pay for their many vacations. "Let's all go to Disney!" courtesy of Grandma and Grandpa.

Having free vacations sounds wonderful in theory, but sharing all my time off with my parents? ...*shudder*

LOL. Well I got the short end of that stick. We pay our own way AND vacation with my parents. We enjoy it immensely though! Love spending time with my parents on vacation. What I hate is wasting my annual leave visiting my inlaws in their own house and not doing anything.

My stick is shorter - we took a Disney cruise with my in-laws and we paid their way.

Eeek. Disney cruises are pricey too. We just booked a 4 night one to the Bahamas for 5 people for the week following next Easter. $7k something and that is before the 2 nights at a Disney hotel and 2 days at the MK and airefare. It'll be well over 10k all in. LOL.

That's nothing to laugh at. Absurd actually. Instead of a fake $$$ trip like that, you could go so many other places.

[Anonymous]

I love how people here think their teavel is NOT luxurious, when most Americans can't even afford one decent vacatiom each year. This whole thread is bourgeois entitlement run amok.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is why I don't post anything like this on Facebook. If it's not going to make the people who see it feel good about themselves (and it's not), why would I post it?

That's dumb. I don't think about making ppl feel good about themselves re: social media posts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know a lot of people who vacation a lot and none of them make anywhere close to what OP makes (and most of them are below 100K--most are not in DC area).

Two things: 1. vacations are put on credit cards and 2. grandparents paying for the vacation. That accounts for most of it.

I can't imagine making my parents pay for my vacations. Do the grandparents also accompany your friends on these vacations or just pay for it? What kind of people are these?!

My parents pay for 1 big vacation a year. They have three kids, three grandchildren and spouses. These vacations range from Europe (haven't done since grandkids were born) to skiing out west, to mexico. My parents are rich. They are retired, almost 70 years old, and love spending time with their children and grands. They easily spend $50k a year travelling, so spending $30k for a family of 10 to take a trip once a year really isn't going to drastically change things. They also own a second home at the beach. People who know where I vacation and how much might think - man they go on vacation a lot - but as a family of 4 we shell out for one family trip. The rest is the vacation with my folks and our time at their beach house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm listening to Diane Rehm right now and she is talking to an expert on Alzheimer's. She asked him what people should do to prepare for the possibility that oneself or a loved one might get Alzheimer's. The answer: save as much money as you can now. He said many people are not saving enough.

End of life care is very expensive. A vacation now might be nice, but being able to provide for your own care in retirement is priceless, as they say. My husband and I do not want to be burdens on our children, so we save our money now so that we can be sure of good health care in the future. We feel that this is our responsibility and we do not want to have to rely on others.

So our priorities are college for our kids and then retirement savings for ourselves. Vacations are low on the priority list.

On the flip side - you could die at 40 like a friend of mine. That in itself made me re-prioritize traveling and experiencing life. I'm not going crazy but I am planning trips instead of just putting them off.

Sure, that could happen, but statistically it is unlikely. I have a neighbor whose elderly father recently passed away. His mother is still alive and the adult children have been helping her to adjust. In going over her finances with her, they found out that she not only has no money, but she is seriously in debt. The kids thought the parents were wealthy: they had lived in a large beautiful house in a great school district, college had been fully paid for with no student loans, and the family had gone on multiple vacations every year growing up. It turns out that at some point some investments had gone bad but the parents had gone on living the same way for years, taking out equity lines of credit and using credit cards. The kids were shocked. They all said they would have been happy to give up all the vacations and live in a smaller house if they had only known. Their mother will now have to live a few months each year in each child's house because she cannot afford her own place, but this is not the way she had expected to live her retirement years.

Maybe this is an extreme example, but I'd rather save my money now for the far future. My kids know that we are prioritizing their educations and our care in our old age. They will all graduate from college without loans and even get help with graduate school from us and they will not have to worry about our housing and care when we grow old.

I'd rather find a balance between saving for the future and enjoying the present.

Would you be okay with being dependent on others for care for the last ten to twenty years of your life? It is already more and more common for people to live into their eighties and nineties and will become even more common in the future. What if you can't afford to live the way you would like to during those years?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm listening to Diane Rehm right now and she is talking to an expert on Alzheimer's. She asked him what people should do to prepare for the possibility that oneself or a loved one might get Alzheimer's. The answer: save as much money as you can now. He said many people are not saving enough.

End of life care is very expensive. A vacation now might be nice, but being able to provide for your own care in retirement is priceless, as they say. My husband and I do not want to be burdens on our children, so we save our money now so that we can be sure of good health care in the future. We feel that this is our responsibility and we do not want to have to rely on others.

So our priorities are college for our kids and then retirement savings for ourselves. Vacations are low on the priority list.

On the flip side - you could die at 40 like a friend of mine. That in itself made me re-prioritize traveling and experiencing life. I'm not going crazy but I am planning trips instead of just putting them off.

Sure, that could happen, but statistically it is unlikely. I have a neighbor whose elderly father recently passed away. His mother is still alive and the adult children have been helping her to adjust. In going over her finances with her, they found out that she not only has no money, but she is seriously in debt. The kids thought the parents were wealthy: they had lived in a large beautiful house in a great school district, college had been fully paid for with no student loans, and the family had gone on multiple vacations every year growing up. It turns out that at some point some investments had gone bad but the parents had gone on living the same way for years, taking out equity lines of credit and using credit cards. The kids were shocked. They all said they would have been happy to give up all the vacations and live in a smaller house if they had only known. Their mother will now have to live a few months each year in each child's house because she cannot afford her own place, but this is not the way she had expected to live her retirement years.

Maybe this is an extreme example, but I'd rather save my money now for the far future. My kids know that we are prioritizing their educations and our care in our old age. They will all graduate from college without loans and even get help with graduate school from us and they will not have to worry about our housing and care when we grow old.

I'd rather find a balance between saving for the future and enjoying the present.

Would you be okay with being dependent on others for care for the last ten to twenty years of your life? It is already more and more common for people to live into their eighties and nineties and will become even more common in the future. What if you can't afford to live the way you would like to during those years?

NP, but making my life a joyless slog in the meantime, and not giving my kids the experiences I can currently afford, are not things I want either. There can be a balance. I think a lot people get wrapped up in this sever anxiety about the future. Yes, saving is important, but so is LIVING life, experiencing it. We only get one of these lives. So i am not going to pinch my pennies like Ebenezer Scrooge and hoard it all for a future that may never come. I prepare for the worst, but I don't let that preparation overwhelm the fact that there is a present, either.

OP-you can afford the vacations. You don't want them. That's okay. Just make sure your life has other meaningful experiences for your kids so everything balances out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I love how people here think their teavel is NOT luxurious, when most Americans can't even afford one decent vacatiom each year. This whole thread is bourgeois entitlement run amok.

It's because of social media accounts like rich kids of instagram. People start to get the idea that if you're not traveling on a huge yacht, you're not actually rich.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love how people here think their teavel is NOT luxurious, when most Americans can't even afford one decent vacatiom each year. This whole thread is bourgeois entitlement run amok.

It's because of social media accounts like rich kids of instagram. People start to get the idea that if you're not traveling on a huge yacht, you're not actually rich.

Yea, but when Obama and the rest of the left start up with their class warfare rhetoric against "the rich", it's exactly this type of imagery that they invoke in the minds of their supporters. Private jets, Bentley coupes, penthouse/presidential suites, 100ft yacht, and an entourage of assistants.

That's not me, I am not that kind of "rich".