Summer time is upon us!

With summer just around the corner, many of you may be starting to plan your vacation.  Before you buy the plane tickets, before you book the hotels or the campground determine how much you can afford to spend on a vacation!

You do not want to put yourself in the position of worrying for months and months after coming home how you are going to pay the credit card bills.  Ideally you will have saved the money so that you can pay for the vacation before you go or immediately after coming back.  If not, you should re-think those vacation plans.

What do you need  to consider when determining the cost for a vacation?  Obviously the cost of travel – plane, bus or train tickets, or the cost of gasoline if you are driving.  Where are you staying – hotel costs, campgrounds costs or if you lucky with friends or family who might just need to be repaid with a meal out.  With hotels, be sure to factor in hotel taxes which can add $30 or $40 a night to a hotel stay in some cases.  What about the cost of food – will you be eating out every meal or will there be facilities for you to cook where you are staying?  Does the hotel offer a continental breakfast that you can have?  And then what are you going to be doing while on vacation – park entrance fees, museum fees, sight seeing tours, beach fees, theater tickets and everything else?

And then all those extras people may not think of.  New clothes to go on vacation.  Cost of boarding an animal while away.  Cost of souveniors.  Is time off from work unpaid?  Cost of checking luggage on the plane.  Parking expenses while leaving a car at the airport or parking at the hotel.  Cost of getting a car ready to go on a long trip.  What about the interest that you will have to pay if you are going into debt for this vacation?  And the list can go on and on.

Now that you have come up with  that total cost, can you afford to go?  How many hours of work will you need  to do to pay for this vacation?  Can you dedicate that pay to a vacation or are you going to be perpetually in debt every year because of a vacation?

It is time for a change.  If you are planning on going on vacation in 3 months, can you save that much more to be able to go?  If not, maybe you should not go.  I know that will hurt some of you.  You think, I work hard all year and I deserve this vacation.  Guess what, no one deserves anything that they cannot pay for without harmining their family’s security.

If your intent is to spend this money you need to know that you can afford to do it.  If this is what you want available to spend on vacation each year, you need to be putting money away each month towards being able to pay for it.  If you cannot put that money away, then you cannot afford this vacation.  Maybe you need to look at a less expensive vacation.  Maybe you need to consider this type of vacation every other year.  Maybe you need to agree to take on a second job or start a small business to raise extra income to be used for a vacation.

You need to get over the fact that you deserve a vacation.  You only deserve one that you can pay for.  I know that sounds harsh, but that is reality!

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