As I read the following post,Conversations About Money: Vacations by Dana Twight, I began to think about my desire to take my family on a vacation. I thought, ‘ This vacation will be worth every penny I spend for my family!‘ However, I haven’t really planned anything yet. It’s just something I said that I wanted to do some time next year.
Yet, there is so much planning to do for such a trip and I have not really thought about the When, Where, How factors of the trip. Although I have family and friends worldwide, I really don’t want to inconvenience anyone. Also, I will definitely need to think about where I will want to take my family. I would need to coordinate a time frame where all of us can travel at the same time. So, I ask myself,’ Will it be an international or domestic trip? What type of transportation: car, train, plane or cruise?’ Then I think, ‘there is the shopping and eating and other activities we will want to experience: how much should be budgeted for the trip?
WOW! Decisions, decisions, decisions! 🙂
Well, whatever we decide to do for our vacation, it will definitely be worth every penny we spend! What quality time we will have with one another! I guess I should get to working on the overall plans of this trip. 🙂
ER: Have fun planning the vacation! Did you know most people spend more time planning their vacations than thinking about retirement? (Not saying that is you, of course!) I have read that one benchmark is $2000/week for international and $1000/week for domestic!
Good morning, Dana! Thanks for the benchmarks…is that per person? As for retirement, yes. I have been planning but only executed some of that plan. Next year, I get to do more towards it. I haven’t had to chance to go through your blog fully. Do you have any posts on retirement? I saw this link on your blogroll section http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/ I am going review it over the weekend!.
ER: benchmarks, the $1000 and $2000 per week. Good question. I have always thought about it for a family, But let’s talk about $142 per day for a family…($1000/7) Maybe that should just be for lodging! and leaving out air fare…
These numbers do give you a way to allocate a beginning amount to set aside. Maybe you have mileage for the air fare and can estimate from there.
Hi Dana! Hopefully your Thanksgiving holiday was wonderful! In regards to $142 per day a family, I am not sure that would work for me…big family! 🙂 More like 8 adults and 1 child if all come go on the trip