Jessica at Life As Mom has a great post up on how to pay for a big trip with kids without going into debt. Here’s a snippet:
Back in our credit-card toting, debt-defying days, we took a few vacations. We flew to Minnesota to visit family. We drove to New Mexico for a conference once. We spent a weekend in Saint Louis just to say we had done it.
But, we always used credit cards. Typically I felt pretty guilty about it. It wasn’t our money we had spent. And we’d be paying for it long after the laundry was finally washed, and the kids couldn’t even remember the voyage. That was a little disheartening.
In 2009 we paid off the last of our consumer debts. A year later we decided to take our first, bonafide vacation. We drove up the coast, stopping in Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez, San Luis Obispo, and Monterey. We visited the Aquarium, slept in a funky hotel on the beach, and ate pizza at a place we’d never ever heard of. It was fabulous to get out in the world with our kids.
Even better was knowing that it was paid for.
There was no nagging feeling about how to strategize to pay for it nor any worry about whether or not we should or could buy something or do something. There was freedom and a lot of joy.
So, how do you pay for a trip? And how do you swing it with a family?
We just paid for a trip to Germany for our family of four in cash. We spent nine months saving and ended up with way more than we needed, but it was nice to know we could go out to eat and not even think about it because we had such a nice cushion. When we got home we put the leftover 1k into our savings to sit alongside our emergency fund until we plan another vacation (probably something much closer to home…) or need it for a rainy day. It felt great to come home and know all we had brought back with us were photos, souvenirs, and memories. No debt.
Thanks for sharing my post!