For us the nadir of joining our parents was after we were married and before kids. We had money but not tons of vacation time so we did our own thing. Now that grandkids are in the picture, family oriented vacations are becoming more of a priority.

It's still not perfect. My parents are traveling a lot-but not the kind of trip I can drop everything to join them on. We did all (parents and both siblings' families) meet up in Canada for a cousin's wedding 2 years ago and shared a rented house for a few days. They'll all be visiting DC this summer. My parents typically pay for the hotel rooms for these trips. They have tons of frequent flier miles, but it's never worked out for me to use them. They are covering tickets for my sister and her kids this summer-she couldn't afford it otherwise.

My in laws put a lot of pressure on us to join them on vacation, but they plan their own vacation and then invite us and its inevitably awkward timing of awkward location. Then they get really offended and harp on it for months. It's really annoying because I'd love to spend a week at the beach-just not in a twin bed, in a house that's a 10 hour drive away , and in April when the water is too cold to swim.

My kids are in high school - I have started anticipating fewer family trips as they move on into independence, but hope we can sometimes travel together.

I'm 50 and in the last five years, I have been taking my parents with us on family vacations. My son is 13 and my parents are in their 80s but still very active. We all have a blast together. I usually pay for the airfare and accommodations, they pick up some meals and all their own additional expenses.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We stopped family vacations after graduating college. I grew up wealthy and most of our family vacations were cross country or international. When I graduated at 22 I didn't have money to be able to go with everyone else so I stopped. I didn't have enough money to fly home for Christmas either.

Now that I'm older and married I travel with my parents often. We normally do a big trip with them once a year, but we pay for ourselves. My siblings don't have the money so they don't come with us.

WHy didn't your parents pay when you were just getting on your own feet?
WHy don't they pay occasionally for your siblings to go now?

Yeah I think that's weird for wealthy parents to essentially exclude people who can't afford it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We stopped family vacations after graduating college. I grew up wealthy and most of our family vacations were cross country or international. When I graduated at 22 I didn't have money to be able to go with everyone else so I stopped. I didn't have enough money to fly home for Christmas either.

Now that I'm older and married I travel with my parents often. We normally do a big trip with them once a year, but we pay for ourselves. My siblings don't have the money so they don't come with us.

WHy didn't your parents pay when you were just getting on your own feet?
WHy don't they pay occasionally for your siblings to go now?

Yeah I think that's weird for wealthy parents to essentially exclude people who can't afford it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We stopped family vacations after graduating college. I grew up wealthy and most of our family vacations were cross country or international. When I graduated at 22 I didn't have money to be able to go with everyone else so I stopped. I didn't have enough money to fly home for Christmas either.

Now that I'm older and married I travel with my parents often. We normally do a big trip with them once a year, but we pay for ourselves. My siblings don't have the money so they don't come with us.

WHy didn't your parents pay when you were just getting on your own feet?
WHy don't they pay occasionally for your siblings to go now?

Because they are adults and their parents treat them like adults?

Anonymous wrote:We stopped family vacations after graduating college. I grew up wealthy and most of our family vacations were cross country or international. When I graduated at 22 I didn't have money to be able to go with everyone else so I stopped. I didn't have enough money to fly home for Christmas either.

Now that I'm older and married I travel with my parents often. We normally do a big trip with them once a year, but we pay for ourselves. My siblings don't have the money so they don't come with us.

WHy didn't your parents pay when you were just getting on your own feet?
WHy don't they pay occasionally for your siblings to go now?

Once they are in college - what happens is you spend much more time traveling to them. You get to know the areas of the country where they are in college. You find things to do - besides spending time w/them since they are busy.

We don't expect our college students to come on vacation with us. Sometimes the timing "works" as it looks to them - such as traveling 2 days to spend 1 day somewhere lol, so we may have trips that overlap but don't coincide very well. I insist they visit their Grandparents annually. They attend out of state so they enjoy seeing friends when they are home - prefer seeing friends - to leaving home and going somewhere else so unless it's for Grandparents or another very very significant event, it's feels inconsiderate of us to make plans for their school breaks. Regarding travel as an educational experience - at this point I no longer feel that this is my responsibility. We try to help w/$$ if we can, but it's mostly on their own.

One thing I do is make sure my kids spend time together. Their college breaks often don't match-up. I don't want them, at this age, to go more than 6 months without seeing each other. I insist/pay/arrange for each to fly to visit the other - in part to make sure that each has seen where the other goes to college.

One thing my parents did was rent a big house at a nearby ski resort when I was in college. I was allowed to invite a few friends to come along, as were my siblings. Nobody turns down a free ski house when you're in college, so my parents had a chance to get to know my college friends.

Once we outgrew college friends, my parents would still occasionally rent a beach house and we came with our spouses/significant others. Again, it was a nice way for my parents to get to know the SOs.

Now we will vacation every other year or so with the spouses and kids.

Hell, we still do family vacations. But during college and grad school, I definitely went on family trips. I like vacationing with my parents--they are fun travel partners.

I'm 34 and our family vacation is in a few weeks (my parents, siblings, their significant others and children). My grandparents went when we were younger but stopped when they hit 70. I can't imagine not going, we all look forward to it every summer! I'm sure my parents will stop going at some point but their retirement plan is to buy a beach house where we vacation, so if they're living there year round they won't have to stop!

Anonymous wrote:
i was 11. But we never went on cool trips, only crappy camping trips with an hour or two of home. It was miserable. I mean really really miserable. Man it was freeing when I threw a big fit and my mom let me stay home alone (with same aged friend) for a weekend.

What is wrong with family camping trips? My daughter loves camping trips. It's my wife who's a tough sell.

Lately my mom would rather go to her favorite casino, where she gets comped everything including concert tickets and can hang out with her adult friends. We invite her, offer to pay for her airline ticket, she declines. Then when the date rolls up, she gets depressed and passive aggressive and says she doesn't see us and the grandkids enough. She lives in a place that is like a living hell to visit in summer.

We stopped when we went to college. Many of my 30 something friends still do. My family has now started discussing doing it again, but.. here is my observation...

For my friends who still do, the parents still paid for the trips through college and the early work years. They would rent out amazing beach houses for the week, go to Europe for a week, etc. These were not small trips and in no way could the 22 year old friend afford the vacation. She might pay for her meals or spending, but not the bulk. The friends did not really start paying fully until they were truly capable. But since family vacations have always been the norm, and since there is sort of an expectation that it will continue, they still try to go on these vacations. Sometimes they cant, and that is fine, but for the most part they still do. And I think the parents still pay for more than an equal share- but that is pure speculation.

For me, I spent many years only being able to afford a weekend here or there to not so fancy places. I did not go to Europe and did not spend a full week at a fancy beach house. That is completely fine, I enjoyed the experiences I did get to have immensely, and learned a lot from the idea that fancy vacations took a lot of hard work to really enjoy. I think I learned valuable lessons my friends did not. And I am now at a place where I can afford vacations on my own, but that independence and the years of only being able to afford what I could has made me less flexible with my vacations. I have spent the last 15 years working hard to be able to go wherever I want to on vacation, and I don't particularly want to use that time and money to go on a trip planned by my parents who have different ideas of what is fun. If I can only spend XYZ this year on vacation, I don't particularly want to join my in-laws for a lake house vacation when I could spend it in the Bahamas.

Does that make sense. I guess, it seems like those that still had their late teens and 20s paid for are more invested in the idea of a family vacay and are thus more amenable to the idea in their 30s. For those that did not have this, its sort of hard to start back up once it has stopped.

Never.


Young 30-something here and now our 'family trips' just involve our kids and us and my parents. I find a trip longer than 4ish days with our kids and no 'reinforcements' to be more tiring than regular life