I went through a period of underemployment and had to curtail my travel obsession. During that time, we visited family and friends. We have a decent number of loved ones within a day's drive. My kids LOVED visiting my aunt who has a working family farm.

Anonymous wrote:When we were just married we saved for one trip every other year or so. Now we can afford 2 Euro trips a year if we set flight price alerts. We also only have one kid and are sticking it out in our modest but comfortable condo to have plenty of money to travel freely rather than sizing up.

Oh also we love our travel rewards credit card points!!

When we were just married we saved for one trip every other year or so. Now we can afford 2 Euro trips a year if we set flight price alerts. We also only have one kid and are sticking it out in our modest but comfortable condo to have plenty of money to travel freely rather than sizing up.

Anonymous wrote:2 questions

1. What did you do when you couldn't afford international travel? Just stay at home or travel more locally/domestic?

2. How often are you traveling (if you have kids)?

1- odd question. is the option really travel internationally or not at all? We travel domestically.
2- 2 kids- we take two vacations a year- spring break and then a summer 1-2 week vacation. Also a few trips/short flight to visit family and local weekends to ski.

I’ve played the credit card churn game for over 30 years. Now we can afford flights etc as we’re retired, but when our kids were young and money was tight we’d both get as many credit cards as we could with low spend just for the points - airlines and hotels, then put the cards away, cancel them and do it again and again. We had all kinds of vacations, and never spent much. Even though we can much more easily pay for flights now, it’s hard to give up the free points (plus it allows for so much more flexibility) so we keep at it but at a slower pace now than we used to.

School off* days

We use credit card reward night for hotels, something like walking distance beach hotel ( also nyc and Orlando hotels) can be couple of hundreds per night in summer, so you could save hundreds to thousands. Book flights on off peak season, we usually avoid book flight domestic and international during spring break and winter break ( we do travel during summer break by flight sometimes), use school of days instead ( we also use thanksgiving week). Use google flight so you can see price and choose the best for you. We heard about budget European flight but haven’t had chance to try, it could save some money too. We also book via Expedia for package ( flight + car or hotel if both) to save. If you can then drive instead domestically, road trip can be fun and you can also visit a lot of places.

Anonymous wrote:We travel quite a bit, as we own properties in a couple of countries. Children were in boarding school in another country so would visit them as well. It's a fair combo of domestic/international for us, and most of the time we are traveling 30-some weeks of the year. We do tend to spend more like 6 months in one location and then more or less time in others. Children are older and they meet up with us when they feel like it.

Why have children if you’re going to send them away to school in another country from a young age?

1. Save up and go do a major trip once every 2 years maybe? You don't always have yo do international. Or go do stuff in off season even for a long weekend if possible? Be creative. We have the budget to do international trips but don't go annually as there's perfectly amazing destinations domestically. But you should go where you all want to go and not worry so much about whether you "should" go or not.

If you're going just to get out and about there's even more local driving adventures as options. If you are going to open your eyes to explore an interesting place - really there's a world full of them and you can prob find one that could fit your budget even if it's a goal you need to save up for. It's not just Paris, Venice or Madrid that's amazing. Go off the beaten path.

2. We used to do 1 major summer, 1 spring domestic trip and a Dec island trip with 2 kids. Post Covid with insane prices and teens we skip the Dec holiday trip altogether and do 1 major summer, 1 spring and maybe another long weekend trip to beach or local over summer as well. Instead of the islands, we hit Costa Rica or Belize as we find the pricing better and you get the same quality beaches even if a different kind of vibe and look. We also do a lot of trips out west to combine with national parks as the resorts are more interesting than those here on east. When the kids were younger we would do more local beach trips. I can't say enough about seeing the US even though I'm very well travelled. The idea is you go where you can go and appreciate the beauty, experience and a different perspective or culture and even in the US that exists

2questions

1. What did you do when you couldn't afford international travel? Just stay at home or travel more locally/domestic? [b]Saved up and went when I saved enough money. About 3very 2 1/2 years when I was single or married without children.

2. How often are you traveling (if you have kids)? We did one international trip when the kids were growing up, if you don’t count Canada. However, we did quite a few national parks and big cities. It just was a better bang for our buck.

When our kids were little, we didn't think it was a great idea to spend money on vacations they wouldn't remember and might not enjoy very much.

We followed similar strategies to a lot of posters above.

1) Week in the Adirondacks
2) National Parks (Rockies, Yellowstone, Acadia)
3) Canada (driving)
4) Mexico (flying / 1st flight - Cancun, Chichen Itza)

Then Europe.

Our first vacation trip to Europe was to Italy: Venice-Florence-Rome. Kids roughly 12 and 10.

Second trip was cancelled due to Covid. Covid prevented us from traveling during the more convenient middle school years. My DH regrets that. But I think it's okay. Our kids have been to a lot of places, parks, and cities. We've had fun in these big cities. Next on our list will be LA.

Atlanta
New Orleans
Nashville
Chicago
Washington, DC
NYC

We prioritize travel and scrimp elsewhere.

You can drive to Canada. Use points for hotels.

We constantly look for cheap deals, book as soon as we find an unbelievable rate or package, and adjust other spending accordingly to save.

Anonymous wrote:We travel quite a bit, as we own properties in a couple of countries. Children were in boarding school in another country so would visit them as well. It's a fair combo of domestic/international for us, and most of the time we are traveling 30-some weeks of the year. We do tend to spend more like 6 months in one location and then more or less time in others. Children are older and they meet up with us when they feel like it.

Well. That was relevant. Lol.

And probably fiction.

Go where family is that we could drive to when the kids were little and we had no money. Rochester, with a day trip to Niagra Falls. We also had grandparents in FL, and would leave after lunch, make a stop at a random playground on the way down, stop somewhere for dinner then drive through. Another set of grandparents in NYC, when really young, would have an early dinner, put the kids in their PJs in the car, and as it got darker and darker I'd be playing soft, quiet music and they'd fall asleep.

As they got older, tweens, they just play on their phones in the car, and we visited Chicago, Acadia National Park, and other drivable places. Eventually, as older teens, we started flying with the kids and took them to fun places, Costa Rica, Europe, Iceland, and Yellowstone and Denver

I'm low on money, so we go camping within X hours of our house. We shoot for 2-3 hours initially but will go further if there's stuff to do along the way for the kids.

Or we combine camping and hotels if we're on a road trip. But cheap hotels -- like Super 8 or Motel 6.