Booked . . .
I’m feeling a tiny bit boxed in by my own ambitions right now. #UPHOLDERPROBLEMS (tongue in cheek, but also being serious here). On the one hand, I am happy overall! Everything is on schedule. I am delivering my deliverables, as they would say in the business world.
On the other hand, after the drama of Aug/Sept and the hurricane madness of last week, I am feeling like I could really REALLY could use a day of nothingness and I am not seeing a space for that to happen any time soon. I did have a day like that on my calendar — I’m seeing Taylor Swift on Sunday (with A!! and I KNOW!!!!! AHHHH!!!!!) and had designated the Monday after as a Blank Space kind of day (heh heh, pun intended).
BUTTTTTT then we had some hurricanes and I let myself get the tiniest bit behind and so now I think I will need that day to write a substantial amount.
Hmmm.
It’s hard. I love my podcasting / writing / teaching / speaking work! It is so tempting to fill those Tuesday/Thursday days up to the brim with things! Ahh well. Maybe taking even half the day to chill on Monday will feel therapeutic enough.
$ and Making Choices
We decided, after much trepidation, to go back to Big Sky this December, over winter break!! The kids love it, Josh loves it, I love it, and I adore the idea of having a ‘place’ that they remember from multiple vacations and get to know well. For us it seems like that place is turning out to be a ski resort in Montana (well, and also Amelia Island). Who knew!?
I hemmed and hawed mostly because of the cost, especially since this is our SECOND trip there in 2024 (we won’t be skiing this spring — too many gym meets + soccer tourns, plus kids have different spring breaks). It is not an inexpensive vacation, because: a) flights from FL to BZN are $*; b) staying on property (which we prefer) is somewhat $ (though seems much cheaper than other big resorts I looked at, OMGGGG Deer Valley!); c) ski school and lift tickets themselves are $.
But when I thought about the times we had there in the past, it seemed worth it. I know going back to the same place means lost opportunities to visit other places, but I guess I am a creature of habit so that does not bother me! And hey, as the kids get older, it’s a different experience every time! Hoping this will be the year G is ready for ‘real’ lifts 🙂
On my list of “How I Want to Spend”, travel/experiences with family is very very high on that list. Yesterday, I was listening to an About Progress episode featuring Jen Smith, the author of the book Buy What You Love Without Going Broke and felt good about our choice. As a household, I think our spending patterns are a little bit unconventional (very skewed to stuff for the kids / childcare / travel; very skewed against home stuff / our house / cars / actual stuff. I’m fine with never owning a high end designer bag or fancy jewelry; I’m not fine dying without seeing Taylor Swift perform). I think someday on my deathbed, 100-year-old me will be happy with those choices (optimistic, I know).
While our kids are still home, I want to aim for 3 main family trips/year: one ski trip, something over spring break, and something over the summer. I know that even being able to consider this is a privilege and a luxury, I recognize that (and I did not grow up with so much travel, though the trips we DID take are absolutely core memories).
Do you have a typical ‘travel cadence’? Is travel a priority for you, life-wise/finance-wise?
(I know travel also has environmental implications, and that gives me pause too. I hope I can mitigate my impact in other ways. It also feels unfair to be seeking out these experiences when others lack basic necessities. I want these things, AND I still have complicated feelings about my own desires.)
*I did use some hoarded frequent flier miles to cover 2/5 flights and a travel credit from September (bc with our #@(*&!@ going on, I wasn’t able to go on my college friends trip) to cover most of another, so that definitely helped!
38 Comments
Hi Sarah! 1. I think if you think you need the break – you should take it. Because a) you deserve it and b) and it will make catching up go better – more focus, more capacity for handling the stress.
2. For travel cadence – my husband and I are privileged to travel at least twice a year for work together in November and April sometimes we take our daughter, sometimes we don’t – really based on location and commitments during the trip. I also try for a summer vacation and we’re starting a pattern of a February trip. I am with you on prioritizing travel.
I think travel is really important to us as a family, and something we spend on, despite much lower income levels (academic, civil servant in the UK where salaries are lower). We have one older car, a small house, one kid, and now our only childcare expense is wraparound care. We also tend to travel quite frugally, within Europe and try to live like locals (markets versus restaurants) and we’ve started doing home exchanges which means our accommodation costs can be low. Sometimes we tack family travel onto my work travel and may sneak to Paris in January.
This Christmas, we will go to my parents’ in Portugal, maybe somewhere at Easter, then we are planning on two weeks in Amsterdam over the summer holidays. We didn’t get a just the 3 of us holiday last year, and really missed it? We tended to split up a bit, and I feel like we really need some time away just the 3 of us.
I think revisiting a place you love is great! We tend to visit the gulf coast of Florida as a family over spring break. We have been to a few different areas but prefer the long boat key area. I would love to get to a point where we rent the same place each year but fear that is never going to be possible due to hurricanes and such. Beyond a spring break trip, we don’t do any other big trips but we have a toddler…. I know many will travel anywhere with a toddler but that is not for us! We go to my parents lake home in the summer as a family which is a low key but very fun get away for all!!
Whoops I did not mean to respond to Coree’s comment!!
Travel is not a priority for me whatsoever, really. I mean, we do travel a little — we took our first big family vacation to Colorado last summer (from Virginia) although that was with a lot of extended family. But we don’t travel a lot apart from going to see grandparents or going to the Outer Banks with extended family. Our kids are 3,10 and 12, and apart from a quick trip to New York City pre-Covid and a few trips to the Smoky mountains, this was the first real travel we had done, first airplane trip, etc. It was really fun, and it would be great to recreate something like that every year, but we would have to make tradeoffs in our everyday life that don’t feel worth it.
I think my priorities tend to skew more toward making my home and everyday life a place of beauty and restoration. I’d rather skip a big annual vacation if it means my home, every day, is a place I want to be. I do have a dream of renting an RV and driving cross-country (to LA 2028!), and a trip of that magnitude means a lot of saving and preparation.
I also think that while we should be cognizant of our environmental output, beating ourselves up for 3 plane trips a year isn’t really necessary, as well as feeling apologetic for enjoying what we have (i.e. the time, money and motivation to plan lots of family travel). Enjoy the concert on Sunday! (another thing I would never spend money on, lol, but it goes to show that everyone is different!)
TOTALLY love hearing this bc it sounds so valid to me, yet we are so different, and it just emphasizes the fact that this is sooo not one size fits all!!!
I should also say that I HATE planning travel or anything having to do with logistics so so so so much. I find it so stressful and anxiety-provoking, which is one way that I know travel is not something I value highly!
Same!! I wish I didn’t, but I hate it so, so much.
We’re good for about one big trip a year, and a smaller trip somewhere nearby. Travel honestly takes a lot out of me, and there are Reasons why it can be complicated to travel with one of our kids.
We put a lot of time, money, and effort into our home. Work and life are complicated; home is our refuge. When I walk out to my backyard, I am so happy that have a lovely place for calm and restoration (when the neighbors’ dogs aren’t barking, ha!).
Yep! What good is traveling if my home doesn’t feel like a refuge?
We usually travel 3 times per year. Once to visit family on the opposite coast, once to the beach (we drive there, stay in a house and cook most meals) and once to a new to us location. We rack up a lot of miles (with 4 kids in a high COL area) and we use them regularly for flights and lodging. Next year we are taking a big, once in a lifetime type trip to Africa so we are skipping the beach. It is our last summer with all our kids at home and we are all getting excited for the trip.
I would highly recommend taking at least the morning off. Then in the afternoon work if you feel like working. You will be more efficient with some rest. I also often write on weekends to get some rest during the week when it feels more like rest (while my kids are at school).
We definitely prioritise the same things as you do. We underspend on home, cars, etc, but spend a lot of travel and experiences. Our cadence right now (with young kids and a tighter budget) is one big trip (overseas or further away in Australia) every year (last year we travelled to New Zealand and Fiji), next year hoping to travel to Bali, and one to two mini-breaks to either a local resort or visit family interstate. Planning travel, and then anticipating it, honestly gives me so much joy, and then we enjoy the experience SO much, that this feels right for us.
Well, you know we do value traveling! We do not have specifically defined cadences exactly, and although there is a general pattern, it can vary for us, too. Historically we don’t enjoy travel over Christmas holidays, as we like holidays at home and it’s our cozy “enjoy the house with fireplace and decorations up” time. So we don’t typically go away then. Spring break and summer are our biggest travel windows. As a general rule of thumb, we have aimed to do one bigger trip (usually 2 weeks) and one more low key (ideally driving) trip. Through, this varies. Sometimes we’ve done 2 week long national park trips and a shorter flying trip. We generally are not wanting to buy airfare for all of us multiple times per year, so we will try to plan so that we don’t have to do that, if possible. Doesn’t always work out, but that’s the typical goal. Then besides our two main trips, we’ll sometimes have some smaller things sprinkled in- either a 1:1 trip, a couples trip, a work related trip, or sports trips. It really just depends on the year.
We have family in Mexico (I am writing this comment from Mexico!), so we typically plan on a full family trip here at least every other year, if not more. (Currently here for second time this year as a special occasion, but normally we don’t come this often.) But we do have to take the family visits into account when planning our other travels!
I would say we value exploring new locations more than you do, I think, although I can certainly see the appeal to going again and again to the favorite repeat places! We like to return to Panama City Beach, Florida, but we don’t go every year. We’ve been there a bunch of times though.
As a side note, I recently read an interesting article about how “trendy” travel is right now. (I cannot find it now and am mad, bc it was kinda fascinating.) As in, it’s apparently become “cool” for people to be like, “I love to travel!” as sort of a bragging rights type thing, or a big status symbol. The article was saying how some other people are starting to push back on the notion that all time off must be spent traveling, or off to exotic places, etc, and that it can be alienating for people who cannot afford it, etc. I found that really fascinating… and also I cringed a little bc I was like… guilty! Hahaha. I DO love to travel! 🤣 But I can appreciate that sentiment as well, and I can absolutely see how it could become like a rat race in some circles of people trying to one up each other or something… And, like Amy’s comment above, I think it’s important to realize that there is nothing inherently “right” or “better” about traveling. Like, if someone either can’t afford it OR simply doesn’t care to, that doesn’t make it right or wrong at all. (Which I know you know, Sarah, just saying in general, in response to this article I read.)
I liked Amy’s comment about her preferring to prioritize cultivating a really beautiful day to day home/life where she spends the majority of her time all year, vs focusing on just a couple brief periods away traveling each year. Interesting perspective! I can understand that point of view for sure, too. Fun topic!
We have traveled a lot and live overseas, but I have mixed feelings about it. I do enjoy travel and we have great memories, but I don’t know that it is worth all the money we have spent. It is hard to do reasonable vacations with 6 people. I also feel like as expats there is an expectation of travel so I almost feel pressure to go somewhere every school break. My oldest went to college this year and we had to get him a car and my next two are in braces, so we have absolutely cut back. Plus, sometimes my kids sound so obnoxious complaining about having to tour another European old town, so I am kind of done haha.
We ski Deer Valley, but we’re local. Takes us 13 minutes to get there and on the gondola and it’s so darn expensive for our family passes but so worth it to not deal with Park City Mountain traffic and it’s less crowded and no snowboarders! We will ever go back. But we always say if we moved away we’d never be able to ski and justify the cost. We recently found an amazing condo in Puerto Vallarta and we went for spring break last year and are goin again this year for Christmas. My in laws are taking everyone on An Alaska cruise this summer. We do a lot of road trips to the Utah national parks or WY or ID. Lucky we live so close to such beautiful places.
We travelled locally (like…only car trips, though some were very long) until our youngest was 7. I have no regrets about waiting to do international vacations until they were both old enough to be fairly independent and remember the experience. Plus, we didn’t have the money to travel before that.
Now we try to do a couple of “flight” vacations a year. As you know, we try to do it as frugally as possible but I’m also trying to lean in to “it costs what it costs.” I think we fairly intuitively strike a good balance?
A friend was talking to me about how amazing it is for kids to know the basics of managing travel logistics. Like checking in to hotels, flying, navigating airports, adjusting to locations where people don’t speak your native language. I never thought of that before, but it is unique form of education. It can be learned as an adult, but I think of my husband who is one of the most competent travellers I know and he literally couldn’t do his job without those skills. So I also try to look at it as a roundabout form of home-schooling for the kids 🙂 Expensive home-schooling…except away from home.
Absolutely, Elisabeth. T can navigate the Lisbon metro with decent ease, can order in restaurants, interact with non-native speakers, can go to camps in different places, and that feels like such an asset? We live pretty rurally (although 45 minutes bus from the city) and my husband chaperoned a class fieldtrip. He said some kids had barely ever been into the city and were worn out from a day out, which made me quite sad. Which I appreciate our international travel is a privilege, kids travel free on the bus, you could have lots of those experiences closer to home.
That is so great that he can do that! We live in Poland and I feel like everyone just switches to English. My kids have been to camp in Polish and play sports in Polish, but since everyone speaks English they never really have to figure it out. If they don’t understand they just ask in English. My 10yr old went to a 2 week sleepaway basketball camp this summer and I asked if his Polish got better and he said no everyone spoke to me in English 🙄
you know that I am the same as you, prioritize travel, kids stuff, and experiences, and don’t care about brand/cars/everything else. I believe strongly to form those family memories while girls are with us which is not too much left. Every time I go to a trip with them, those leisurely chat, wonder when discovering new things, they are priceless and motivates me to plan for the next one.
we’ve been into one place 3 times (el nido), probably the only place we’ve revisited and we still love it and may go back before we leave Asia. So go for it!
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I adore Big Sky so much. Best skiing on the planet (I say, having been to very few ski places on the planet lol). And I get what you mean about making travel a priority. One of the privileges/challenges of this phase of life is that it seems like a lot of our travel plans have involved going to see our parents. Which is GREAT. But also… doesn’t allow for the kind of travel we’d do if it were just up to our immediate family.
I actually didn’t even count that as travel though obviously it is! We try to see my parents , my sister, and niece in PHL twice a year.
We love to travel but it is soo expensive even domestically (I live in NZ) so we try and be strategic about when and where. Just back from a mini break with just husband and I which was good reminder of why we do need to take the time and budget. Very privileged to have a sister and brother in law with an incredible second home close to Queenstown so have gotten back into skiing in my middle age and introduced my kids to the fun of mountain holidays. What is just as rewarding as the skiing is the time with extended family.
The skit trip sounds fun!
I love travel but in this season we are prioritizing travel to visit family mostly. Both our parents (4 sets) live out of state – mostly in Florida – and it’s been easier to see them traveling with our kiddo anyway. Pro tip: we use baby quip to have baby gear (car seats, pack n play, etc) delivered. Now that she’s four, other travel will be getting easier so we’re looking at meeting our family at some locations instead. Having kids older, I got to travel a lot beforehand, and I just feel so cognizant of the finite time with my parents. It is crazy though – just one visit to each set of parents can really eat up your vacation time and money!
Love the Frugal Friends podcast and their approach to values based spending and looking forward to reading their book. Now that I’m not in my poor college student era like I was when I first found out about frugality, this approach makes more sense when in the privileged situation of not needing to choose between like food and rent, but also not wanting to fritter away your resources
We are in a travel sport era and do big trips for 2 different sports, so we don’t have time for much else. But! We DO try to go to Hilton Head every year— it is our very favorite vacation place. I love a standard vacation or all of the reasons you explain.
I think travel is a great way to spend money! If you have the means and the inclination, it’s a wonderful way to bond with family and to make memories. My kids have great memories of all the trips we did when they were younger.
I find this topic fascinating – I have a mixed relationship with travel. I always marvel at how easy others seem to find family travel.
I find the toll it takes on other aspects of life that I value (work, goals, slower family rhythms, social stuff, regular hobbies) high.
And still I know there are some experiences that have an expiry date, and as a planner, I am often the one spearheading trips.
So I plan travel adventures carefully to make sure they are well spaced out – but I always feel relief when I know we aren’t going anywhere very soon!!
I love being home and finding new things to do nearby ish.
My kids are in year round schools (Triangle area of NC) and it really is fantastic for planning travel! My youngest just entered kindergarten so I feel we have hit the window of being able to really do some epic vacations over the next 5-7 years while my kids are on the same calendar. We have a few trips we do every year for family reasons – visit my grandma and extended family in the Northeast (usually in the summer unless there’s a family event another time of year) for example but last year we also took a week to go out to the midwest to visit family on a farm and see the eclipse in April and this January we are headed down to Disney for a week. I have future grand plans of national park trips in April or October and eventually international trips too. My kids love to travel so that helps too! I will also say our immediate extended family (grandparents and aunts/uncles/cousins all live local so our travel can focus on not family visiting pretty easily. that wasn’t the case when I was a kid – we traveled mostly to see family!)
Living in NC which I think is a great vacation state is also a perk – we have done full weeks in both the mountains and at the beach in both summer and winter and it’s so wonderful and not a long trip! – spring and fall are also great in both.
Pre-kids my husband and I did a few long trips to Europe and this past May to celebrate 15 years we did a week in Puerto Rico, which was a delight. I really enjoy all the aspects of planning a trip so that’s almost as much fun for me as going sometimes!
We took our kids to Germany this summer (from the mid-Atlantic) on their first big international trip. They’re 5 and 8 and we went to visit extended family (also took my parents). Traveling to Europe the last week of July is literally the most expensive time to go and the trip was not cheap. BUT. Core memories made; we all were in tears the day we left because it had just been so special in so many ways (very emotional trip for me to see this bit of family!).
If you can still reach your financial goals despite this type of travel, I’m all for it. Our trip was everything I hoped it would be and more, and I was so pleasantly surprised that my kids handled the flights and the time changes LIKE PROS. I feel like it has opened up a whole new world of places that we could go! I am definitely in the camp of prioritizing travel – both because I love it AND because I do think there’s an educational component that I want my kids to have and get comfortable with. We talked a lot before this trip about different cultures, different food, that not all of our family would speak English, etc. I am so proud of how they handled all the ‘new’ things (but let’s be real – we were just in Germany so it wasn’t THAT different…except for the clothing-optional beaches!). I say go go go if you can.
(but I do hear your point of mindfulness about the environmental impact of flying…I haven’t been able to reconcile this yet for myself!)
You will definitely be glad, on your deathbed (when you’re 100, fingers crossed…) that you prioritized these experiences. And as you mentioned… all three kids won’t be living at home forever. This phase of life goes by WAY too fast, so you might as well lean all in to the family trips. As far as going back to the same place- for me, the phase with younger kids is not the time for exploring too much. Go somewhere you love, where you know everyone will have fun. As you said, it won’t be the same trip because the kids are different every time.
We are very similar to you in that holidays are a priority for us. We do 3 trips a year – 2 big and one more European city or UK-based trip (which is local for us). To give you a sense, we spend 15% of our net income on holidays. We are ok with that because we do that within a very controlled and conscious spending and saving plan.
We have a travel cadence which involves mostly local travel because we live in New England and there is so much to see/do within easy driving distance. Our travel cadence involves annual trips to Cape Cod every August (we rent the same beach house) and weekend trips to NH to ski January-March, and hang out on the lake in the summer. We bought a lake house in NH during covid so that we could get out of the city and have a place to swim. However, it’s been really fun becoming a skiing family and watching my kids become skilled skiers. w/r/t our annual trip to Cape Cod, it’s so nice to have a regular place to return to every year and know where all the good beaches are, where to go grocery shopping, how to get a shell fishing permit, what to do with kids on a rainy day, etc. I love the outer Cape so much and it will be hard to give this up in the future when we turn our time/resources towards international travel because the kids are older and more capable of these more adventurous trips. This past summer, at 11, it seems my oldest is kind of “done” with the beach vacation. We are thinking of sending him to sleepaway camp next August and just going to the Cape without him. LOL.
Great topic! It is always so interesting to see how people fall on this spectrum, and for very good reasons. I am firmly on the side of prioritizing travel over making my home nice 🙂 Before COVID when our kids were still little, we really only traveled to see family each summer (my in-laws live in a beach destination so it was a fantastic place to vacation, and the kids love it so much and have great emotional attachment to it, as does my husband, but it was also almost entirely free because we stayed with family and drove 12 hours each way to get there, so we saved a lot of money in those years). Post-COVID my kids have entered awesome travel ages (currently 10 and 11) that we really try to prioritize going to exciting and varied destinations, while still holding off a bit on the really “big” expensive trips like Europe for a few more years. I honestly get SO much energy and excitement out of both the traveling itself and the trip planning/having something to look forward to! I feel very lucky that we can afford it, but I do also deprioritize things like buying new furniture, a second car (we have one compact car), expensive summer camps, etc. that many other people we know who travel less than we do are doing. Typically our trips break down as one big summer trip at the beginning of the summer (e.g. Utah national parks, Costa Rica, Yellowstone), plus our annual beach trip to my in-laws at the end of summer, and then a shorter driving destination trip or two (last year we did a long weekend in Chicago and another long weekend hiking in Shenandoah National Park for spring break). My husband and I each try to take a solo trip with friends every other year or so because kid-free travel is pretty fun but we don’t have child care to both go away at the same time.
I really appreciate all these thoughtful comments and especially your post Sarah. It was such a good combination of both recognizing that being able to travel a lot is a gift AND it’s ok to enjoy and think about how to use that gift and those resources well. Really appreciate your thoughtfulness.
We love to travel! Especially now that my kids are out of baby/toddler years, it is SO much easier to travel and not haul around tons of stuff. Inflatable booster seats are amazing 🙂 I’m also a big believer in short trips – we just got back from 3 nights in San Diego and fit in so much: the zoo, Legoland, beach. It is just easier to be gone for shorter increments at this phase of life and it allows us to take more trips. We also take a lot of trips with my parents who are retired and traveling a lot– we went to Japan with them last year (it was INCREDIBLE) and are going to Italy in June with them. Those will be longer trips hah 🙂 My husband and I also usually do 1-2 trips away each year for a weekend- I do girls trips with my high school friends, he does something similar with his college friends. We also live in CO so do a lot of skiing weekend trips in the winter. It’s amazing how going just 1.5 hours away can feel like an entirely different place and get that vacation mode feeling for a weekend.
My husband travels a lot for business so his idea of a vacation is to stay home. I am a complete opposite- I don’t travel for work but I travel for leisure. I went to Iceland when the kids where 2 and 4, and continued with two international trips per year. In 2025 I am changing the cadence a bit- instead of going away for the spring break and in the summer, we are staying local in the spring but going to France for a month in the summer. That’s my trade off for not going anywhere in the spring since spring break is only 7 days long. The kids will be 5 and 7 so definitely easier. Why France? We went to Paris last spring (2024) and I can’t get France out of my mind. My youngest stated he wants to move there lol
that is amazing Daria – WOW!!
I prioritize travel, but it has to be affordable, which is why I am not as well-traveled internationally as I would like to be. It’s just so expensive and life is ALREADY expensive so that’s the payoff. I think I could probably travel more (and prob internationally) if I gave up some of my fave things like shopping/food (not giving up FOOD but giving up eating out as much as I do) but I just can’t do it, lol. I try to visit one new U.S. city every year and a cruise, and that’s good enough for me right now.
Having our children see the world is a definite priority for us, and it definitely comes at a sacrifice.