Just depends so much on priorities. No kids here but I probably spent 15-20% of my income on travel.
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If you have kids, you have to travel during peak times when everything is super expensive. $2000 to Paris in July and $600 in September fuck you very much.
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Yeah, and life situation.
I spent more than 3x as much when my income was less than half. But we were traveling the world with no kids.
Traveling with young kids is super anxiety-producing for me so we do it less (even pre-COVID). They’re no longer that young, so we’re going to have to bite the bullet and start doing it. We’ll probably dip our toe into the water first with Canada before we try more interesting and further international destinations.
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This is why I do all my travel in May and September
Like everything else financal I’d say it completely depends on your situation. Kids, monthy spend, your income, how secure you already are financially, when you want to retire etc.
Once you meet you savings goals and account for non-discretionary spending, then spend as much of the remainder as you want to IMO. Some people value vacation/travel over other things and some don’t.
I think this is the key. The reason rules of thumb for housing, retirement savings, etc. exist is because people need to be prodded to do those things before they blow their limited resources on vacations. The correct amount of money to spend on vacations is whatever you have left after taking care of important stuff.
Another way to look at this is to have a model/plan for when you can retire and then see how much it changes if you take your expensive vacation.
15% or so. Having to plan around obvious tourist times like spring break sucks not only because it’s expensive but also crowded.
I’ve been spending like a drunk since the covid vaccines came out. It feels like the world is going to be considerably worse in the future with fascism/climate change/water drought so might as well just live for the moment.
I really need to take a page out of the XLB book. The other day I booked an AIRBNB for a few days to save an amount of money that really shouldn’t matter to me at all. The expensive option was nicer and had a better location. I should have just shelled out the cash, but that just goes against my natural tendencies.
It takes a lot of money to be rich in San Francisco.
Lol a net worth of $3 million is nowhere near rich in San Francisco or NYC.
I tried to think about it, but it was too hard. My first thought was that I had been spending around 3% of my wife and I’s pre-tax earnings, but I think I’m undercounting. The big chunks (airfare/lodging/car rental type stuff) are easy to count, but then you get into the ancillary stuff like the difference between how much you spend on food traveling vs. what you would normally, etc. it gets tricky unless you have much more rigorous accounting practices than I do.
But anyhow, it’s more than 3%, less than 10% is my guess. DINKs, etc.
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okay boglehead
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Yeah, this. I’m not even sure 3 million gets you to upper middle class.
3 million is rich in NYC after you cross a bridge.
Everybody is rich and nobody is rich, the end.
Unless you’re a typical Boglehead, in which case 3 million isn’t rich anywhere. Or at least anywhere in the US.
We budget approximately 10% of our pretax income to travel. I feel like it’s a lot, but we have no debt (besides house) and it’s our #1 spending priority after taking care of non-discretionary spending and savings.
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