Poll:What's your annual vacation/travel budget?

[haha]

I suppose if our family ever does that year round the world vacation I have been thinking of, we may be at least in the $50k-100k category for a year.

Attaboy Sultan Fuego!

Ha

 

[Khan]

Pretty close to zero.

 

[jayc]

$1600 - 2 people - Seattle, Mt Olympus,Hood, Rainier
$1100 - 2 people - Colorado for 8 days, 5 days sking in Breckenridge/Beaver Creek
$950 - 14 days - 1 person - 6 days in Colorado, 6 nights in Yellowstone cabin in Canyon Area
$400 - 5 days - 1 person motorcycle trip in Indiana and Kentucky
$900 - 14 days - 1 person - San Diego (Projected)

Colorado and San Diego lodging is free.

 

[kaudrey]

I don't really keep a budget, but we usually do a winter trip to an island with friends, and then a bigger summer trip. And this doesn't count weekend trips, of which we usually do several a year (although now we just go to our cabin in the mountains...) Let's see:

2010:
St. Martin - 2 people, 1 week - $3000
Napa (1 person, 4 days) - $1000
New England trip (family/friends, 2 people, 10 days) - $1000

2009:
Dominican Republic (2 people, 1 week) - $2000
Yellowstone/GTNP - (2 people, 2 weeks) - $1200 (we camped)
Memphis (1 person, 5 days) - $700

2008:
Costa Rica (2 people, 1 week) - $2000
Alaska - $3000? - 2 weeks, 1 week cruise/1 week camping

 

[rescueme]

Travelling with kids is expensive..........

In reality, kids are expensive (travel or not )...

 

[Independent]

I keep waiting for Prince Charles or the Sultan of Oman to clock in with $100,000+.

What are we, a bunch of pikers?

As for me, the only category that would get me to spend $20,000 /yr would be eternal youth.

Ha

We always postponed travel as "someday, not right now". I could imagine myself buying the Class A motorhome and being a 6 month per year traveler. I think that, including depreciation and repairs, that's more than $20k.

 

[Orchidflower]

The moment I saw this question I thought, "people really take vacations?"
Took a few long trips to L.A., San Francisco, London, but basically worked 7 days a week. No time for vacations before. Maybe now.

 

[Gone4Good]

Our entire budget is now dedicated to what most people call "vacation."

 

[FUEGO]

Our entire budget is now dedicated to what most people call "vacation."

Wiseguy, huh?

 

[Tom57]

So far, I am the only poster who answered the poll between $50K and $100K. My poll answer is not a mistake.
My wife and I are ER'd for about 10 years, in our early 60's, and have strong opinions about traveling now when we physically can. We have seen older people struggle too many times and we want to travel while we still can. I remember my first trip to Europe in 1989 and saw a mother in her 70's with her 2 daughters
in their 30's. Mom died half way through their trip in Switzerland. It was her first (and only) trip to Europe.
When I worked, I had a traveling job and flew over 100,000 miles most years. Been to all 50 states and all the continents except Antartica.
We both are tall people so we buy Business Class airfare on our 2 or 3 annual trips to Europe, first class for 2 annual Hawaii trips, and first class for a few domestic air trips. Of course, we do some driving trips also.
We travel aout 2 to 3 months a year, and we don't do cruises much anymore. Our last cruise was August 2009, a 14 night Alaska cruise from Seattle on the Pacific Princess.
Since you are interested in what we get for our money...advance purchase business class from the US West Coast to Europe is between $3K and $4.5K per person roundtrip depending on the year and specials. The 14 night cruise total cost was about $12,100 in a suite. We stay at 4 star hotels most of the time and they cost about $300 a night.

 

[kramer]

Our entire budget is now dedicated to what most people call "vacation."

Yes, same here. I have lived on 3 different continents for each of the last 3 years.

All of my air fare expenses, including side trips plus to/from airport costs, are typically under $200/month. I am flying Los Angeles to Manila R/T for $940 on a good airline, and that comes with a free date change on the back end and with the option to stay a full year. I never fly business class. I actually figure that the most intensive cost savings thing that I do as a retiree is to not fly business or first class since I save such a great deal of money in a small period of time (and tax free). I bought one-way tickets to/from LAX to Colombia (did not want to lock in my return date until much later) for a total of about $650.

Most of my lodging is typically by the month (at discounted rates) and usually comes to less than $600/month (and sometimes a lot less). That would be much higher in expensive places like Europe.

I know that most people cannot or don't want to live in this manner, preferring a long term USA FIRE-base and shorter vacations. My FIRE budget is less than I ever thought it would be because I don't have a home base as I had originally planned, so my only real fixed expenses are my USA health insurance, Skype phone number, and mail forwarding.

Kramer

 

[WanderALot]

We currently spend about 7500 a year. In general, that's for two vacations of at least 2 weeks each. We travel frugally, but definitely not budget. If you were to look at a Lonely Planet guidebook for our destination, our lodging would be under "Mid Range". Most all of our vacations are overseas and we rarely go at prime time (never July in Europe for instance).

Our last vacation of 22 days only costs us about $2500 for three of us (DW, me and a toddler). That's because we used FF tickets, went to cheaper destinations (Argentina and Chile) and were able to get better rates due to it being a shoulder season. We stayed at nice places and averaged about $70/night.

 

[KanDo]

We are in the just above $10,000-19,000 category (for two of us). We are frugal in most areas, but splurge more on vacations (especially to the French Polynesian islands).

 

[KM]

Until kids left home, most of our "vacation" money was going away to sporting events (theirs....not ours....), then spent on taking them to look at colleges, and then spent on visiting them there, taking them to or from, and/or visiting them there.

Now that that is over - we are spending it on ourselves.

Current budget is $5200. We generally take a 2 week cruise, but we don't feel the need to do it with a balcony and we don't drink much, so we can usually do this at a reasonable price. The rest is generally spent on 3 trips to go visit DD and 1 trip for her and SO to come visit us. (OK, so I guess we are still spending some of it chasing our kids, but I wouldnt have it any other way.)

Any other small things we do that cost >$100 (day trips, admissions, etc) also come out of this fund. We've done pretty well staying close to this, with the exception of the Alaska trip where we splurged on a couple of pricey excursions.

Not yet retired. Vacation funding in our retirement budget is currently set at $10,000. We expect most of that will be spent traveling the USA in our RV.

 

[fisherman]

$3600 per year gets us one five or six week camping trip plus several smaller ones and two weeks in south FL each year.

This does not include any other costs for the travel trailer so is low but that is the vacation line item amount we use.

We also have the lake house where we spend from 80 - 120 days per year over the last seven years. We could take some serious trips with that money but its not what we want.

If we included all the cost for the travel trailer and lake house but not dollars invested it would be around $12000 per year.

We have been to 49 of the 50 states and eight foreign countries. We have not been to NJ yet! I realize many people have done much more but for us Europe was fun to see but I definitely understood why my forefathers came here and I am not interested in returning to Europe at this time. I do enjoy hearing about other peoples European and Asia trips however.

 

[FUEGO]

We both are tall people so we buy Business Class airfare on our 2 or 3 annual trips to Europe, first class for 2 annual Hawaii trips, and first class for a few domestic air trips. Of course, we do some driving trips also.
We travel aout 2 to 3 months a year, and we don't do cruises much anymore. Our last cruise was August 2009, a 14 night Alaska cruise from Seattle on the Pacific Princess.
Since you are interested in what we get for our money...advance purchase business class from the US West Coast to Europe is between $3K and $4.5K per person roundtrip depending on the year and specials. The 14 night cruise total cost was about $12,100 in a suite. We stay at 4 star hotels most of the time and they cost about $300 a night.

I figured there were at least some people on here that typically fly business or first for international trips. That will obviously rack up the dollar amounts (as you have shown!). Hey, if you can afford it, why not travel in luxury! Being a cheapskate, I'll continue to suffer through steerage class, er I mean economy...

So far you are Mr. Sultan on here when it comes to traveling!

 

[GoodSense]

Our travel budget is typically $3K - $5K, although this year it's closer to $7K due to our trip to Europe.

As for how we spend the money, usually I take a solo trip to Central America/ Caribbean in the winter ($1 - 2K). In the summer DH and I take a couple of week-long trips in the US, which costs on average $1,000 per week. Yes, we are cheap people. We camp or stay with friends as much as we can.

 

[av8er]

Our annual budget is $3,000 for travel/vacations. We're a military family and move frequently (generally no more than two years in any one place). We try to make the most of it by seeing the sights and exploring the local area around each new duty station as much as possible...it's kind of like vacationing on the Army's dime. Generally our budgeted amount is enough for us (family of 6), but that also usually consists of us driving to places to see things rather than flying or going on cruises. Admittedly, though, when we've been stationed overseas we've had to increase our budgeted amount to compensate for the higher cost of travel. It still generally did not go above $5k-$8k/year.

 

[obgyn65]

I guess the travel budget is higher than average for me. Since I volunteer as a clinician abroad on a regular basis, sometimes I buy additional supplies and meds to give my patients when I get there....

 

[Gone4Good]

Being a cheapskate, I'll continue to suffer through steerage class, er I mean economy...

My days of flying economy will be over if the airlines adopt these new seats.

My goal will be to never fly, and when I have to, I'll pay for a more expensive seat and just stay at my destination for much longer.

 

[FUEGO]

My days of flying economy will be over if the airlines adopt these new seats.

My goal will be to never fly, and when I have to, I'll pay for a more expensive seat and just stay at my destination for much longer.

I'll stay in coach, and just stand by the lavatory the whole flight.

 

[HFWR]

No travel budget, per se, but average around $1000/yr as a w*rking stiff. May travel a bit more in retirement, or not.

 

[Moemg]

We usually spend about $5,000 to $ 6,000 on travel but next year will be a budget buster . I am treating my Daughter ,SIL & Grandson to Disney World . The opportunity to see Disney through his eyes is priceless . We are also going to Alaska and I'll take a late fall trip to visit daughter ,SIL & grandson .

 

[Rambler]

I voted 50-99k due to having company provided home leave in business class, up to a certain budget amount that was 1 trip per year, but increased by the same amount that the kids' international school fees had cost until they graduated from HS. Kids are now off to university, so we use some of our home leave allowance to go see them, and some to go to our California home. Also, when we find a round-the-world fare that is the same price as going home to Cali, we will go to Cali first, then continue on to London or Paris before winding our way back to Tokyo. It would be pretty typical for us to burn about $5-6k each major trip (5 so far and 1 to go), not counting the airfare. Hotel and rental car total about 3k, and the rest is restaurants, DW's gifts for her Japanese friends, and admittedly perhaps not "real" vacation expense, we spend on things we cannot so easily find in Japan (I just bought 2 pair of running shoes in Hawaii, for example, along with some elder Tang - Metamucil, ibuprofen, Tylenol, running shorts and shirt for DW, and a business suit for me). A short weekend jaunt to Hong Kong might only set us back 1500 or so, plus the tax on the FF miles tickets.

This kind of spending cannot survive for us into retirement. We both know that, so we always try to piggy back a trip for DW via the round the world scheme or on FF miles when I have to go to a "new to her" location for my business, tag on a couple days or a weekend at the end, and cross another trip off the bucket list.

For our FIRE budget, we are looking at 12000 per year plus another 4-12k for RV depreciation, insurance and maintenance, plus an extra 3000 for the gas to power it. The 4-12k range is simply because we don't know if we will get a trailer or an RV, so up to 27k in retirement.

R

 

[W2R]

I probably spend less than $1,000/year on travel. In a typical year we would drive to Missouri 2-3 times and we share the costs.

A trip up there usually takes four days including driving time. Gas, food, and motel come to about $800, so I spend about $400 per trip. But then, if I subtract out the expenses that would also be incurred at home (such as eating out), these trips really come to about $300 or less.

Obviously if my travel expenses covered an entire family they would be higher.