Do you have a second/vacation home?

[Atlas722]

No.

 

[Aliceacc]

Kind of.

It's in a dorm in a suburb of Philly, where my son goes to rest.

The rest of us? Nope.

 

[Marchand63]

Well kind of. The benefit of a 2nd marriage. My house near Cape, his house near Cape Ann.

 

[Sleepy425]

My grandparents have a single wide trailer on a great piece of land in Vermont. They gave it to my parents, and I hope one day it will be mine (my sister doesn't like it). The taxes and insurance are about $2500 and the utilities are next to nothing, so it isn't a huge expense to keep up with. We would like to renovate it, but it isn't top on our list right now.
It is about 5 hours from our house, so we don't get there much at this point in our lives (our twins are difficult to keep in a car that long). But as they get older we will be there more. And once my parents retire I hope they will keep the kids there for a couple weeks at a time in the summer so they can have the same memories I had with my grandparents.

 

[AustinMommyofThree]

We own a beach house in Port Aransas, about three and a half hours away. We use it primarily for weekends about twice a month, but our vacations are spent elsewhere (I can't remember the last time we spent more than a long weekend there).

We make the house available for renting through a rental company when it's not in use by us, and since we're vacationing elsewhere during the times when the property demands the highest price and is most in demand (spring break, summers, other holidays) we usually have it rented enough to come somewhat close to covering the annual carrying costs after all the fees that the rental company charges. We enjoy having a place to get away to where the kids can brings friends and we can relax and unwind when we get a free weekend, and while we don't think we'll ever make money on it, as there is too much supply down there for prices to go up, it's not costing us more than we can afford.

 

[J'aime Paris]

Yes.
We bought a lake house about an hour away from our primary residence.
We own 2 beachfront condos in Orange Beach, AL. We vacation at them a couple times a year, and rent them out for income the rest of the year.

 

[TchrLady]

We own a lake house about 4 hours away from our current suburban home. We bought it from my in-laws estate when none of DH's siblings wanted to keep it. We intend to eventually sell our house in the city and retire to the lake for the summer months and probably go somewhere south for the winter months.

It is a pain to be far away but we make it work. I am a teacher and DH can work anywhere so we spend a lot of time there in the summer. It is much smaller than our city house so it's much easier to maintain. We do have a family policy that we do a little work or maintenance each morning but the rest of the day is for fun stuff. We also have year round neighbors that keep an eye on the place for us when we are gone and they have a key if needed.

We do vacation in other places too a few times a year (going to WDW in 3 weeks!). You just have to budget and plan to make it work. We could rent it out in the summer to offset some costs, but that's when we use it the most so no desire to do that right now!

 

[DawnM]

No, we like being flexible to go wherever we want, and we only need a place 2-4 weeks per year. We go to the mountains, the beach, Disney, etc.....if we had a 2nd home we would feel like we needed to only go there.

 

[emma'smom]

Yes...we have a family cottage on a lake up in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate NY. My retired parents spend about 4-5 months a year up there. We go for about 3 weeks in the summer when all the aunts/uncles and cousins from all generations seem to come and go. Then we gather back up there for Thanksgiving to close it up for the winter. It's about 8 hours away from where we live, so you have to commit to going for at least a week at a time to make the drive worth it. It's a beautiful spot and the cottage and guest house have been renovated over the years into a beautiful space that accommodates lots of guests. It's the one place where the whole family has shared memories....with everyone having moved around for careers over the years---it's as close to "home" as anything. I still have memories of my grandmother sitting in the corner watching the action of all the cousins when we were young adults. Our daughter was baptized up there, we've had weddings, reunions in memory of lost loved ones---welcomed new babies.....hosted friends upon friends....it's a place full of history!

That being said...we always plan other vacations to other places every year.....it's a landing spot, but it doesn't keep up from spreading our wings!

 

[nancygirl1]

No. Just working to pay bills and buy food. We do love Florida, Ft. Lauderdale area and plan to move in the next year or so. We don't own now, so no biggy to up and move. Our kids still live with us so need for them to get steady, decent paying jobs and we're out of here.

Not 2 houses, but a new living experience. Thank God! We're so over snow!

 

[scrapquitler]

Yes. We have a cabin in Vermont, near a ski area (but we don't ski) in a place that has great year round activities. It's about two hours from home, so it's easy to go back and forth. We started out thinking it would be for summers and vacations, then found ourselves going every.single.weekend and vacation week that we could. Now that our oldest is in college and our youngest is still home schooled (and DH can work remotely from anywhere) we find ourselves spending just as much time at our cabin as at 'home'. When we are there we all feel more relaxed and happy.

We still go on vacation other places (mostly Disney). In a couple of years we are probably going to sell our house and live in the cabin full time. But now DH is starting to think that he might rather move to Florida, so anything is possible, as long as he has an internet connection and a phone line, he can work.

 

[eeyoresmom]

Yes, we have a place in coastal Maryland with a beautiful view of the bay. It can be a lot of work sometimes, but it's really our happy place. bright, airy, peaceful. We spend long weekends, holidays and most of the summer there....My DH and I had talked about a "beach house" since we were in our late teens, so we feel pretty blessed to see that dream become a reality 20+ years later.

We have a house on Cape Cod and use it weekends all year long. Our work schedules can be somewhat flexible so we spend about half the week there during the summer. Our second home does not derail our travel however. This year we have done WDW twice, Italy, France and Mexico. Scaling back a bit on the travel next year, that was a bit much. We are seriously blessed but have worked very hard our whole lives. Been married 32 years and had our first mortgage when we were kids. We just lived below our means and kept building assets over the years.