Where is travel listed in your priorities/budget?

Vacations are a high priority for us. However, we have been blessed with an otherwise frugal life which allows for travel. Well, this frugal life is a mix of blessings and active choices on our part.

We set up a separate account, much like you, and when we have the funding available, off we go!

We do place travel above home improvements but not above home repair. Things like sealing the driveway and saving for roof replacement have to come first. Not only because we need a safe and clean home, but because our home is an investment, and I won't potentially lose money for travel.
 
It has gone up and down for us. Now I don't consider trips to relatives vacations so I have to count those out. We always budget for some type of vacation or staycation but some years the budget is more generous than others.

When we moved out of our smaller house I wanted my house built so that was my priority for a few years. For the first 3 years in the new house it was very small local vacations. Jersey shore, Washington dc, Philly.

When my dh started his business there was a stretch where we definitely didn't think of travelling. when my kids where in 9,10 and 11th grade the budget was definitely more generous. I was getting nice bonuses and nothing broke (which for me is amazing!!)

Now coming up in the next few years I'm planning major changes (I'm thinking of retiring, buying a condo in the city and going back to school) so most likely most vacations will be to wdw because we are dvc members and can do Disney really cheap.

It also helps that I'm the type of person that doesn't have to go to Disney for a vacation. We have great vacations no matter where we go even if we spend 2 days in Philly
 
I should say, even though it is less important to DH than it is to me, he still lets it be pretty high on the list. Unfortunately medical stuff is higher and that's been taking a large chunk of what would otherwise be discretionary for a few years.
 

Travel ranks high on my list. I just can't seem to get to it as often as I'd like. First comes the house, car, bills, and bills and then whatever is left goes into my vacation savings account and my emergency savings.

One account is for things like nearby travel and the other is saved up for big money travel.
 
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I would take a vacation once a month if I could, lol.

We travel on vacation at least once a year, so yes, it is a pretty high priority.

Growing up we always went away for at least a week. Not always some place exotic. Camping upstate or at the bungalows, anything, to be away from it all. My husband on the other hand never went anywhere when he was young. That changed when he met me! I like to vacation, to take a break from reality for at least a week. We save money when we can and bonuses pay for the vacation. Of course, some years are better than other (10 day trip including a cruise) and some are extended road trips to historical sites.

We budget for the trips. Like most, a roof over our heads, living expenses, school tuition bills, than vacation. We live modestly and I have no credit card bills, so outside of monthly living expenses, I have no other costs. As long as nothing in the house needs extensive repairs, vacation here we come!!

For me its a necessity. I work long hours and this gives me completely dedicated one on one time with my family. No thoughts of work, no thoughts of life issues, just my kids and having a good time.
 
Most of our vacations when our kids were growing up were camping trips. There are really cool spots that would just not be the same experience if you are in the local chain hotels.
One of our favorite family trips was camping in Assateague Island, tenting amongst the wild ponies with the ocean just over the sand dunes. Another was camping in Amish Country on the edge of an Amish farm.
You can keep your budget down when camping by cooking on the grill rather than eating out.
 
1. Necessities (housing, food, insurance, clothing, utilities, medical expenses, necessary repairs on the house or car, etc.)

2. Savings for emergencies and long term savings for things like car replacements, appliance replacements, etc.

3. Retirement savings

4. Travel. If and only if all of the above is fully funded.

5. Home upgrades/remodels.

6. Everything else

We live very frugally in category number one which means that we have no trouble funding numbers 2 and 3. With whatever money is leftover, we travel. Home upgrades are nice, but not essential so we only do those when we have extra money. And #6 doesn't encompass much because we buy very little "stuff" beyond the things we need.
 
For us, travel ranks pretty high. We drive old cars, live in a much more economical house than we could probably afford and pinch pennies everywhere we can so that we can afford to travel. My friends think we have WAY more money than we do because they only see where we go, they don't see the tight budgeting in the rest of our lives to make it possible for that to happen.

This is it for us. No, we don't place travel above the mortgage payment, but we have made a choice about how much mortgage we can "afford" with a mind towards how much we want to spend on travel.
 
I suppose we have some regular luxuries we place a higher priority on, or we'd cancel them to fund more vacations -- my car, our cable, iphones, etc.

The ability to travel to UGA football games also ranks pretty high for me. If I gave all my football money over to vacations, that would make a difference. But football is my bonding time with my mom and that's something I'm not willing to cut back.

Right now we are focused on debt elimination and retirement savings, so almost every spare cent we have in our budget goes to those goals. When we are done with the debt, vacation will get a larger chunk of our pie.

Right now I put a token $1 per month in our vacation budget category, but we are never going to Disney at that rate! :rotfl2:
 
Travel is very high on our priority list. It has been since we started having children. I wanted them to well traveled and comfortable doing so. They've been flying alone since they were 13, so it was a success! We go to Disney at least once a year, usually do another big trip, as well as numerous weekend getaways through out the year. They have been to about 45 of the 50 states. Not bad for 16/22.

My baby will graduate high school in two years, and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Once they are both grown, I just plan to travel to be with my grandbabies! :rotfl:
 
We have put off projects around the house that need to be done in favor of vacations many times. But we don't put anything on credit that can't be paid off by the end of the month. So no impulse vacations bought with credit cards. All trips have to be carefully planned out. I do the math before we book. I couldn't possibly enjoy myself if I knew I overpaid for the trip.

Vacations are a must for us and pretty high on the list but it does come after saving for retirement, Christmas fund, and anything else we are currently saving for.
 
1. Home (Mortgage,Insurance,Taxes,Basic Utilities)
2. Education (private school for our boys)
3. Savings - Emergency, Retirement,College,Home/Auto Repairs, and Vacation!
4. Groceries & Gas
5. Everything else

I think setting up auto deposits to a savings account for vacations or whatever is a good way to get a base built up. Even just a few dollars from each paycheck is not missed and it does add up. When you think of a vacation costing $1,000's of dollars, it can be very overwhelming and discouraging. I find that I am better to set myself some goals.. maybe one nice vacation every year or so and with a few "frugal" vacations tossed in to keep our spirts up. One year, we took a staycation - we stayed at home but pretended to be tourists. We took advantage of seeing and doing things in our local town that we normally go right by because we are in a hurry with our daily life.

DH & I live in a small brick ranch that we bought 17 years ago, we drive our cars into the ground. We don't buy tons of high end products or clothes. While we keep up with mainteance and repairs to our house, while things look nice, nothing is "high end" We are fine with this as we prefer to use our extra $ on trips (long or short) to anywhere!
 
Its hard to quantify. I won't go on vacation until I can "afford" it, and there are things that take priority, but then it just depends on how I'm feeling about where I have and haven't spent money.

For instance, we really should recarpet our house. But we haven't - so obviously that is lower priority than my husband's car or vacation - same with finishing the basement. But we did put a deck on the house and do a bunch of landscaping - so when it NEEDS to get done, its a higher prioirty.

However, retirement savings, regular entertainment (i.e. being able to eat out or go see Cirque and Wicked this fall), college savings for the kids, making sure the bills get paid and there is ample savings for the next needed car...all those come first. If there is money in the savings account when that's been accounted for, then vacations, new carpet, et. al. come into consideration.
 
This! My carpets totally need replacing and the wallpaper in our master bath screams 1997---but bring on the cruise ships and mickey bars! Seriously, the carpets can always be replaced later--but memories can't be replaced. We've started to encourage my aging parents to travel with us so we can guide them along and assist them as needed. Pictures/videos with grandparents and grandchildren can't wait....and who knows what the future brings.

Ha, ha. We have been saying for about 3 years we need to replace the carpet but then we think of a vacation and decide we can live with it another year.

When it's payday I just put money aside, vacation, retirement, education, rainy day. We have about 7 accounts on the go.
 
We love to travel too. We always go for a week in the Outer Banks every summer and we try and do a lot of weekend trips within driving distance throughout the year. Disney is a thing we do only once every few years or so because we are a big family and we have to fly.

Tips for having a budget-friendly trip:

-figure out location or activity. We get museum, zoo and aquarium memberships in our area and some offer reciprocal memberships to participating museums etc all across the US. I'll try posting a link below and hopefully it'll work! (If the link doesn't work, just google "astc membership reciprocal" and it should pop up). We live in CT and have gotten into some spectacular places all along the east coast for next to nothing with our memberships. Sometimes we get half price family memberships on groupon or living social.

http://www.astc.org/members/pdf/PassPubMay_2013.pdf

-make it within driving distance
-use Priceline for inexpensive hotels
-pack a cooler of food from home
-look on groupon or living social for deal on activities or restaurants at your destination
-check local news for your destination on any free fairs or festivals or outdoor concerts that may be going on

Good luck!
 
Travel is a priority for us and we do it a lot (usually a trip every two or 3 months) but we don't spend much money. We try to go off season, maximize all our reward programs, I check for deals online everyday, get freebies thru things like myvegas and are always flexible with our preferences. So ultimately our travel budget is pretty low. And we are doing all this from Canada where the reward programs are tighter and departure costs are higher than the US. If you live in the US and do your homework and have good credit you should have a lot of options.
 
For us, the only luxury expense that comes above travel is my girls' tuition. Repairs come before vacation but not upgrades or remodels, even though we're in an older home that could certainly use it. The way we see it, our ugly bathroom will still be ugly in a few years, but our options for traveling with the children will only disappear as time goes by.

My oldest is in high school now and that's cramping our style - football and band rule out about 2/3 of the summer and most weekends from Aug to Nov. Once my middle child gets to high school we may not have any time at all that works for everyone, because she's a multi-sport athlete, in band, and planning on a very rigorous academic program besides. So we do make it a high priority to travel as much as possible now, knowing that there will soon come a day when all the money in the world wouldn't allow us to get away as a family.

For us, travel ranks pretty high. We drive old cars, live in a much more economical house than we could probably afford and pinch pennies everywhere we can so that we can afford to travel. My friends think we have WAY more money than we do because they only see where we go, they don't see the tight budgeting in the rest of our lives to make it possible for that to happen.

I could have written both these posts myself! The only thing I will add is that when the economy hit the skids back in 2008/2009 I went out and got additional part time work so we could still have a travel budget. Last year I got an even better part time job because we have some expensive trips coming up that I wanted to fund (Hawaii & Grand Canyon). My husband's family did not make vacations and travel a priority when he was growing up because money was always tight. My family didn't have much money either but we always traveled a couple times a year (mostly camping, first in a tent then in a travel trailer, and finally in a timeshare). Even now DH could skip the travel but since it's important to me I find a way to pay for it. It also helps that I own a timeshare. My mom used some of my small inheritance from my great grandma to buy it for me when I was a freshman in college so I'd never have to go without a vacation when I got married. She is a very smart lady! We pay that maintenance fee bill every January so for many of our trips our lodging is prepaid. If we don't travel we lose the money. Thanks for thinking ahead for me mom!!!:love:

ETA: Oh yeah...for me it's not the ugly bathroom but the ugly carpet! It will have to last a few more years.
 

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