What vacation $$ amount makes you squirm?

[ruadisneyfan2]

That's what does us in too - a high schooler and a super-involved middle schooler don't make for a lot of flexibility in when we travel. We're also somewhat weather inflexible - we're not interested in off season travel if it means dealing with a lot of cold or rain. I look forward to it being just DH and I and having just one crazy schedule to work around, but that's a long way off still.

Not being able to do much with rewards doesn't help either. We don't use credit much and even if we put every dime of spending in places that take credit on a reward card, at 1-2% back it wouldn't add up to free airfare for 5 or anything like that. We don't spend much to begin with and too much of our spending is in places that don't take credit cards (including two utility bills and property taxes, all of which charge a 3% "convenience fee" on credit payments).

Have you ever looked into the Southwest Airlines card? We can't charge utilities or property taxes either and really are not big spenders. We pack our lunches for work, drink regular coffee at home, rarely eat out, etc. we only charge groceries, gas, cable bill, cell bill and misc shopping and we still get roughly equivalent to a free one way seat to Orlando every 1.5- 2 months. SW has a very flexible point system for rewards with no black out dates.
Of course it's all worthless if you don't/can't fly SW. Our annual fee is locked in at $59 but I think now it's $69. Higher for the premium card. We easily get our money's worth every year. We are a family of 4 and even if we don't all fly free it's nice when we only have to pay for one way or 1-2 ppl RT

 

[DPickering]

Have you ever looked into the Southwest Airlines card? We can't charge utilities or property taxes either and really are not big spenders. We pack our lunches for work, drink regular coffee at home, rarely eat out, etc. we only charge groceries, gas, cable bill, cell bill and misc shopping and we still get roughly equivalent to a free one way seat to Orlando every 1.5- 2 months. SW has a very flexible point system for rewards with no black out dates. Of course it's all worthless if you don't/can't fly SW. Our annual fee is locked in at $59 but I think now it's $69. Higher for the premium card. We easily get our money's worth every year. We are a family of 4 and even if we don't all fly free it's nice when we only have to pay for one way or 1-2 ppl RT

I so wish that card was available to Canadians. Awesome card! I've seen their booth at the airport in Seattle sometimes where they have an extra 10k on the regular very generous sign up offers. We'd get two each if we could. Maybe someday!

 

[IceSkatingPrincess]

$5500 was my absolute biggest ever 9 night offsite honeymoon splurge. Disney, of course. I wish we could afford to do that every year but there is just no way.

Now, we do mostly weekend/long weekend disney trips, driving since we live close. I like to keep it around $800 if I can. I have an AP, DH does not but we use military tickets and discounts. Hoping to go in October for our anniversary.

 

[crisi]

That's what does us in too - a high schooler and a super-involved middle schooler don't make for a lot of flexibility in when we travel. We're also somewhat weather inflexible - we're not interested in off season travel if it means dealing with a lot of cold or rain. I look forward to it being just DH and I and having just one crazy schedule to work around, but that's a long way off still.

Not being able to do much with rewards doesn't help either. We don't use credit much and even if we put every dime of spending in places that take credit on a reward card, at 1-2% back it wouldn't add up to free airfare for 5 or anything like that. We don't spend much to begin with and too much of our spending is in places that don't take credit cards (including two utility bills and property taxes, all of which charge a 3% "convenience fee" on credit payments).

We got lucky and for the last fourteen months my husband has been traveling to China on business - so we have a lot of frequent flyer miles. However, my husband is also a generous soul - we've flown our family once - and his aunt once, and friends twice and a cousin once and suddenly, no more frequent flyer miles.

 

[mindy32]

As an Australian I'm finding this thread really interesting since I'm assuming most of you are in the US? I thought it might be interesting to hear an Aussie perspective on this!

For us, domestic travel is expensive. It's cheaper to go to Asia as although the flights are more, once their everything is so much cheaper, accommodation included.

Most other overseas trips cost us a LOT. After reading through this thread I feel like our holidays have been ridiculously extravagant but really they haven't been: not super fancy accommodation or expensive meals or anything for the most part. It just costs a lot and is such a long flight to get anywhere that it's hard to justify flying so far for only a couple of weeks in our opinion. Although in saying that any future trips we manage to make overseas will probably be shorter as we just don't have the same budget/lack of responsibility as we previously did.

In the last six years DH and I have had three big trips + a couple of little nights away here and there.

2009's trip was my first overseas, we travelled around Europe for 6 weeks. Stayed in very basic accommodation, then did a basic tour, cheapest flights we could get, a week of the trip we stayed with family, very little shopping etc but we atill spent close to $30,000. Faintworthy right?

2012's trip was 6 weeks to the US (LA, San Diego, Vegas, Grand Canyon, New York, WDW), Cuba and Mexico. We stayed in nicer places ( ie a moderate at WDW etc) for a lot of this, but we shared with a friend. We splurged on a few things and probably did about a $1000 worth shopping (soooo much cheaper than in Aus) but nothing crazy and still spent $25k. Flights alone were around $7000 all up I believe.

2014 we did a Sth Pacific cruise for 14 nights with friends. Just the cruise fares alone were $2500 per person so all up I think we spent about $8000.

For us, we thought our Europe and US trips might be the only times we ever made it that far (28 hour in transit to get home from Orlando for us as an eg) so we made the most of it whilst childfree. We sacrificed a lot to get there though, we spent very little money day to day and had low rent as DH is military. We are by no means well off, I hope these amounts don't make it seem so. We saved every cent for years to make it happen. We have just bought a modest three bedroom house way out in the suburbs, have older cars, etc. we just prioritized travel whilst we could (we are lucky we could do this though, I realise that!).

What a novel haha!