I haven’t been in this situation. All i can say is that I’ve been planning our trip in May 2020 for about a year and I am starting to book it now, so i can imagine what would happen if, come March, something happened that would make it financially difficult for us to go. As was stated, it is a very personal decision, but we don’t go into debt for anything, except a mortgage. If we don’t have the cash to do it, we don’t do it.
That being said, it definitely sounds like you need something, anything. You need a vacation with your family. So i would do what others suggest- if your heart is set on Disney, try to scale back in whatever ways necessary to make it happen. And if not, be flexible and try some place other than Disney. You can still get in quality family time and a memorable vacation at other, less expensive places. Your kids would probably even love a stay at one of those hotels with a water park inside. And try for Disney again the following year or two.
Not to jump ship on the support wagon here, but I actually feel I can take less risks because it comes down to just me being able to bail myself out. Should things go sideways, I have absolutely no one else’s income I can rely on.
So while families have other considerations, they also have other options as well.
(the rest I agree with though Especially the
part. And even more especially after a rough year, as was described. )
But then, I work with a group in Detroit providing tutoring/mentoring for a group of kids where a vast majority of them will NEVER step outside their own zip code, let alone cross a state line.
My family can have a great time together without going into any kind of debt to do it.
@sanstitre_has_left_the_building Money is not cheap to borrow in the US. If you’re lucky you can get a 0% for a short period of time, but that’s far and few between. More than likely, paying 10-20% in interest in much more typical. Interest adds up fast when financing thousands of dollars on a vacation.
I can make family memories taking a long walk together (FREE) or going for family ice cream night ($20 at most). It doesn’t need to involve a $2,000-$10,000 vacation.
I get that, but at the same time, you’d probably be willing, or at least able, to do things that might not be reasonable if you were responsible for other people. Like live out of your car for a month.
I implore you to please please please please do not go into debt to pay for a Disney vacation. Rebuild your emergency fund and then save like mad for the postponed trip. While I agree that vacations are important for mental health, I would argue that the stress created by debt offsets the benefit of the vacation by a large margin.
My 2 cents… I can see both sides. When my boys were young, we did a lot of camping as a family. We also took 2 WDW vacations and it’s funny that their fondest memories (and mine) were from the camping trips…totally stress free!
Which is why I’m arguing for a compromise position. Take the vacation but pare it down as much as possible and minimise any borrowing required. By minimise I mean, a thousand dollars or less. Assuming that’s a credible amount.
I think this is very true in my own experience. But also, if I look back at my own parents.
So, while I was growing up, my parents weren’t the BEST at handling money. But we did family vacations well. I loved those trips. But what I didn’t realize until I was older was that those family trips were costing my dad (in particularly) dearly, as well as the family time that could have come out of things.
See, we would do two- to three-week vacations as a family. Great times. And it was one of the few times we got to spend quality time with my dad directly. Because, the problem was, we’d come back from these vacations more indebted than when we left. This resulted in my dad having to work longer hours (usually 10-12 hours/day) just to keep our heads above water. Of course, as a kid, I didn’t know any of this. But the result was that my dad, even when he WAS home from work was exhausted. Which meant vacations were the only real time with my dad.
Even up to today, my parents never got into the practice of living on their income without going into debt, which has left them in a perpetual state of stress about finances even now that they are in their 80s.
But if I could go back, I’d give up those family vacations if it meant there was more time that my dad could just be with us on a daily basis. He could take us down to the lake, or play catch with us, etc. Those are memories I don’t have.
When I was first married, I was kind of following in my parents’ footsteps. But many years ago, I decided to go the debt-free route and start paying for vacations ahead of time. If we didn’t have the money, we didn’t do it. And as a result, I’m utterly amazed at how much better I feel during our trips. And even my wife and kids can tell how much nicer our time is together knowing their dad isn’t stressed about finances.
So, yeah. I think vacations are important. But not so important that it justifies being financially stressed as a result!
I’m not convinced that the kids won’t have any memories of the trip. It depends on the kid. One of mine remembers stuff from when he was one. It just depends. I like the idea of postponing and substituting a cheaper trip in that time slot. That minimizes the let down of not having a trip there. You don’t have to wait a whole year before going to Disney. Think about other times of year you could go. I do all the vacation planning for my family and often try to balance out cheap vacations (driving, less expensive hotels by location / hotel type, cost of food and activities) with the expensive ones like Disney.
I think it says in the kids section of the Unofficial Guide that, according to a survey, kids said their favourite part of a WDW vacation was the hotel pool.
Holidays for the kids are maybe more about being holidays for the parents. It’s not the kids’ memory of Disney World, but the parents’ memory of the kids at Disney World. And the parents assumption that the kids are thinking and feeling what the parents are.
It’s like funerals. (Whoa! Dark turn.) They’re not about the dead. They’re about the living.
There’s a guy in the UK called Martin Lewis and he does TV shows all about saving money.
One of his particular bugbears is Christmas, when he says so much money is wasted. To prove his point, he got a group of six year old kids and gave them all empty boxes wrapped up as presents. Literally empty boxes.
The kids had a blast! Totally loved it. Used their imaginations and creativity. Best day ever.
I wouldn’t make the blanket statement of never financing a vacay with debt. I’d bet some people in this comment section are doing it but don’t think they are.
Because it depends on how much other debt one has, and we don’t know. this about the OP. I mean, honestly we shouldn’t. have gone this year either because we spent a boatload on a new car (two within the past year, actually), are still putting kids through college, and are remodeling the new house, the latter of which we a partially covering with a home line of credit from the old house. Now, that loan would be smaller if we hadn’t gone to Disney. And also if we hadn’t bought two new cars, didn’t send our kid to college- or took out loans to cover any of those things, which we didn’t.
It’s all a bit of a shell game, carrying debt in different places doesn’t necessarily make it “better” debt to have. It all has to be paid. In particular, college loans are a lot like vacation loans- there’s no collateral. In fact they’re worse because you can’t ever get out of them. So unless all the folks commenting here have NONE of these things going on, we had better not be throwing stones from inside our glass houses. Which are probably mortgaged!
A lot depends on how fast you can pay it back, too. For us it was more of a cash flow problem with everything hitting at once. We also have other sources of cash to tap in a dire emergency, and extreme job security. All of these things matter, and we don’t know enough about the OP to really say.
What I would say is that if you are worried about it, don’t do it. That is the only thing that matters. That’s telling me the rest of the story.
This is true. To our shock, in fact, just a few weeks ago my DS9 told my wife that he didn’t want to make a list of Christmas gift ideas this year. When we asked why his response was that it is too much pressure to get a lot of presents. And what if I don’t even like the present? I feel bad about not wanting to play with the toys! Who knew that getting presents for our DS would be stress inducing for him!
Look at all the fine print of everything you booked. If something can’t be cancelled without a penalty that would be a huge consideration. For example, we’re military and our tix expire mid Dec so we can’t move to next year.
One year I actually wrote to my students’ parents asking them not to give me bottles of wine for Christmas. I’d typically get up to a dozen and I don’t drink wine. It’s just a waste of money. The parents pay me enough anyway.
I’m very hard to buy presents for. If there’s something I want, I’ve probably already got it. And I’m very picky about what I like and don’t like.
Martin Lewis’s point is that Christmas gifts end up creating an obligation where I buy you something you don’t really want or need and then you buy me something I don’t really want or need. We both waste money.
There is a difference between secured loans, though, and pure debt loans. Cars and homes that are financed are done in a way that if you can’t make you’re payment, you have a way out. You give the car/home back to the bank. You are free and clear. (Well, I mean that’s a gross over simplification.)
Credit card debt and student loans have no collateral as you mentioned. Those are the kind of debts that are most problematic. (Neither my wife nor I had student loans because we worked our way through school, and we greatly discourage our kids from paying for college through student loans…as a result, they graduate debt-free…paying their own way.)
Now, if I could go back in time knowing what I know now about debt and spending, I’d make many different choices. I’m passing that wisdom to my kids, and for those who care.
Especially the