Sholom Bayis Blog with Rabbi Daniel Schonbuch. Question #4: My wife really wants to go on vacation but our budget is sort of limited. Do you think it's a necessity?

Question #4: We sent our kids to overnight camp (and paid the full amount) and we stayed in the city. My wife really wants to go on vacation but our budget is sort of limited. Do you think it's a necessity?

Rabbi Daniel Schonbuch's reply:

As far as I am concerned, vacations are a necessity, not a luxury. But where I see so many people take a wrong turn is when they spend money for a luxury vacation that they can’t afford. Especially in Crown Heights where many families have a hard time making ends meet, people need to have a realistic plan on how they will spend money on a vacation they can’t afford.

While I think one of the best things you can do for yourself, your family, and yes, the quality of your work, is to take a break every now and then to recharge the batteries, it makes absolutely no sense to book a vacation that will blow your bank account. You end up spending one week enjoying yourself, and the other 51 weeks of the year stressing over the huge new load of debt you racked up by putting the plane tickets, hotel, and restaurant bills on a credit card you have no way of paying off any time in the foreseeable future.

Or even worse, you think it’s totally okay to pile up the credit card balance for your vacation, because you think you deserve to indulge yourself given how hard you work!

That’s the story I got the other day from a friend of mine. He told me he had just paid for a vacation for him and his wife and their 3 children that cost him $3,500. Now this is someone who is probably lucky to make $15 or so an hour! He then assured me he’s got it all under control; he just put it on his low-rate credit card, like all his other vacations. Turns out he thinks 16 percent is low, and seemed unconcerned about the $35,000 balance he’d rung up so far. Worse, he privately admitted to me that the number one stress in his marriage was their financial situation.

As a good friend (and marital therapist) I remained calm and simply asked him if he could do it all over again, would he try and take less expensive vacations. I was expecting a moment of revelation when she would see the danger of what she was doing. Instead, here’s what I got:

“Daniel, we work so hard during the year trying to pay our mortgage, food bills and tuition and we deserve to treat ourselves to a great vacation. I don’t care what it costs.” I asked him if he ever worried about the hole he was digging and he told me, “Only when I think about it. So I just don’t go there or I would get too stressed out.”

That approach concerns me. As a marriage therapist I understand that everyone deserves a vacation but here’s what you also really need: a secure life where you aren’t buried in credit card or home equity debt, and the confidence that you are on course to fulfill the basic obligations of raising a family in New York.

If your vacation spending is compromising any of your financial Yishuv HaDas I am sorry to say that the damage inflicted by the rising debt is greater than the Menuchas Hanefesh you will receive from a 10 day trip to Florida.

The bottom line is that if you will need to pay interest to finance the vacation—meaning if you can’t pay off the whole credit card charge when it comes in—the hard truth is that you can’t afford the vacation.

Instead, try looking at your glass as being half full and take advantage of living within close proximity to some of the most fantastic tourist sites around. For example, if you live in New York there are so many great one-day trips you can take with your family. Here are some possible suggestions:

New York Aquarium / Boardwalk / Astroland on Coney Island
New York Botanic Gardens and/or Bronx Zoo in the Bronx
Boston visit using Amtrak trains and explore the JFK Library
Brooklyn Botanic Gardens
Hudson River Valley to view the fall foliage.
Hyde Park to visit the FDR Presidential Library & family estate.
Hyde Park to visit the Vanderbilt estate.
Long Island by train
Niagara Falls visit is possible in a 12 hour day by utilizing a Jetblue flight & Grayline Coach Tour
Panorama at Queens Museum of Art and the "Unisphere" in Queens
Philadelphia is easy to reach by train
Washington DC can be visited using Amtrak trains.
West Point Military Academy
New Jersey Shore

Although I can’t promise you the same thrills as you would get on an exotic trip (or at Disney Land), I guarantee that you will have a great time getting out of Brooklyn (or at least out of Crown Heights). And when Yom Tov comes around (in just 5 weeks!) your family will have more money to pay for the items you know will stretch your already thin budget beyond recognition.

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Rabbi Daniel Schonbuch is a trained marriage and family therapist who maintains a practice in Crown Heights specializing in couples therapy and families with teenagers at risk. Visit JewishMarriageSupport.com or call 646-428-4723.

Sholom Bayis is an advice and anonymous counseling blog on COLlive.com for married Chassidic couples. Questions can be sent to rabbischonbuch@yahoo.com or as a comment below. They will be answered appropriately and anonymously.