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I’ve decided to spend more money on vacations when my kids are little before our summer is filled up with other activities. Here’s why.
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This summer, I’m planning to spend three times as much on vacations as I did last year. My family will be heading out on vacation several times per month, and I expect my bank account to take a big hit.
Here’s why I’m absolutely OK with breaking out the credit cards to spend a small fortune on summer travel.
I want to take advantage of the opportunity to travel while my kids are at good ages
The single biggest reason why I decided to dramatically increase my travel spending this year is that my kids are at a perfect age to travel with.
My son will be almost 4 years old and my daughter will be about 15 months old this summer. These are really fun ages, as my son is getting past his difficult “threenager” stage where he is defiant all the time, and my daughter is old enough to be mobile, to explore, and to be interested in doing activities.
My kids are also not old enough that they’re involved in summer sports or other activities that would prevent us from being able to take them on vacation with us. And, obviously, they still want to travel with us since they’re at those magical ages where playing with Mom and Dad is their favorite activity.
Since we’re at these ideal ages, I want to take tons of fun family trips to the beach and amusement parks to make core memories for them and for us. I don’t mind spending the extra money to do this since I know one day soon we’ll be busy with other activities as they get older and we may not be able to go away as much as we can this year.
I budgeted for the costs associated with my trips
Tripling my vacation spending and taking tons of vacations this year will obviously mean I have to make some changes to my budget in order to afford all of the trips we’re going on. I don’t want to go into debt in order to go on vacation, so I have made plans throughout the year to ensure I don’t have to.
Since I knew I wanted to spend a lot more on vacations this summer, I made cuts during the winter months and spent less on things that were not as important to me. We basically gave up eating out while we were at home so we could save that money for vacations since I value taking trips with my kids more than going to restaurants.
I also took steps to increase my income over the course of the year so I could save a lot of extra cash for summer vacations. And I both opened a dedicated savings account and booked and prepaid for many trips so I wouldn’t have to come up with the money all at once when we started traveling.
Since I prepared throughout the year, I can afford to triple my spending without financial worries, meaning we can take our vacations guilt-free.
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