Those who have seen Suze Orman on Oprah know that she does great in-depth cost analyses to let people know whether they can afford things like being a stay-at-home mom, sending their kids to private school, having a dream wedding, or taking a vacation. I wish I could get her advice on this one. Brian was tooling around on the internet yesterday and found flights to Ireland for $700, quite a steal.
I guess I should give some background information to help you make your decision.
Before we got married, we set a 5 year plan. One of those things we hoped to do was travel to Ireland. I also promised Brian that once we were out of debt, our next vacation would be to Ireland.
Our financial situation is as follows, we have a 3 month emergency fund and are debt free except the house. We, however, need to save money towards some repairs for our roof, and I'm not certain how much that will cost. The repairs are timely, as we have several leaks. We are putting 15% towards retirement and will have Charlotte's college fund started shortly. I won't disclose our income on my blog (which Suze would want to know), but I think we do alright.
So, many would probably say - sure go ahead! But we have also wanted to remodel our bathroom since we moved in to this house, and money spent on a trip to Ireland would be at least 1/2 of what we'd need for remodeling. And in this economy, we'd be better off with at least a 6 month emergency fund. So, maybe I need to find a path to Suze and get her opinion, but for now I turn to you. How much is a couple allowed to spend on vacations without being irresponsible. Dave Ramsey didn't give us much advice on this!
9 comments:
Better question...would you be able to be away from little "C" for that long?!
I am 100% pro Eire, but after adding up everything we want to do, it starts to not make sense.
sad.
I was talking with Carrie last night and she raised a valid point that we should go when we can afford to not pinch our pennies. That way we can make a real vacation out of it. We don't want to stay in hostels!
There are plenty of amazing places to visit nearby. Pick up a copy of Midwest Living.
As a parent, I can tell you, you probably should have gotten that travel bug out of your system before the baby. My advice, ditch the plans for Ireland and take a weekend trip to Napa.
I agree with Carrie. If you don't decide to go, I say take a portion of the money you were going to spend and hide it out of site for this vacation in the future. That way you are still ahead for your current, more pressing goals, but it will make going on vacation in the future that much easier.
We have a hard time spending on vacations, because we always choose spending on house projects instead. I wish we could spend money easier on vacations, but $100+ per night on hotels?? Do you know how much tile we could get for that?? That's how we think. It's sick, really. You and Brian have to choose what would make you happier and then have a blast with whichever you pick.
I'm not one for vacations, so I would rule it out all together. Montelle and have had similar discussions, but I always have a hard time parting with money and then having nothing to show for it but "memories". I'd rather have a tractor.
That said, I would say don't go due to the lack of stability in ye' ole economy just now. Better to have some more loot socked away for when there are unemployed zombies running up and down the street, eating brains. I'm not going to just "give" Brian a gun you know.
I would go for waiting until Charlie is a little older and you've gotten the house stuff that you want to do/have to do out of the way. Waiting a year or two will only increase the joy when you finally get there under your own terms. I wish I was not being dragged to Germany while trying to finish my basement!
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