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Jul 28, 2010
My Wife Wants a Vacation
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.
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Never put yourself in debt for a vacation. A short time away can do wonders to relieve the stress.
Trust me, this will work!
yes new england is not florida with a strip of beaches, but btwn CT, MA, RI, NH there is so much to do. cape cod has beautiful beaches, jetskiing, glassblowing. newport, RI the famous cliff walks, beautiful! just look and you will find...
#14. your idea rocks! you couldnt have laid it out any better, perhaps send her with a friend as well :)
don't underestimate it
In truth a local vacation is much more relaxing. I would also agree with #9, you can get hotel rewards just with using your cc for your regular purchases during the year. (but you should pay your cc bill in full)
To Mrs 3, you have to deal with what you got not with what everyone else has and does
And yes, our Mashpia wasn't so happy about the ruchnius aspect so we're working on rectifying that through a very meaningful elul of avodas hateshuvah..
if you are asking what is there to do near fort myers in comparision as cape cod to ch...there is miami, key west, coral gables...the list goes on. you can go to viscaya in miami...its really beautiful there.
all you have to do is google "attractions/things to do/activities" in whichever place you're going.
other than that, your in florida, if you dont like the strip of beaches on your coast, go to the other coast ie the mentioned above cities, miami...
Yes money is always an issue for the good and sometimes sadly not for the good. However imho after years of getting older and a tad wiser I say go on vacation. It doesn't have to be millions of dollars but something that all of you would enjoy. Hatzlacha
one is suposed to di things for urself , not to show/tell the world.
ur husband can show u apreciation even on cheaper trips, the wife need to have the maturiry of knowing ur financial limits and enjoy. what makes a good trip is the company and the atmosphere. u can be in the most amazing place but not in a good conection to the husband, the whole trip is worth nothing.
I am sick of the man bashing mentality that the feminist era has spawned and apparently affected Crown Heights women.
There is no question that people work hard and people need a break. Some families the men work harder, some families the women work harder and some families they both work hard, and other families they are both lazy!
I agree. If you dont have the cash then dont spend it.
You think you deserve a vacation? Do you deserve to be poor and in debt at age 70?
Consider the two following scenarios:
Charging your credit card for a one-time $3500 vacation and charging your credit card for regular cleaning help, such as 6 hours per week, for 52 weeks?
The first scenario, unlike the second, does not optimize the use of credit. In that sense, I think that the first scenario reflects a relative waste of money, compared to the second scenario. The second scenario may actually turn out to reflect a desirable, very appropriate investment!
How so?
First, know that I am making the following assumption:
If a woman has a low income, she -and her husband- will be less likely to include domestic help into the household budget. Week after week, such a woman is bound to accumulate fatigue to the point of exhaustion until she realizes that she must slow down. Remember that she has probably observed some of her neighbors' privileged lifestyles. So, that woman will settle for an occasional vacation, but that vacation has to be "real" if she is not to be cheated. And here she is, already breaking free, fantasizing about suitcases, plane tickets, hotel rooms, restaurants, and future stories to share with herself and others! Her husband and apparently other women may find her rather extravagant on this issue.
On the basis of this assumption, I think that frequent breaks are more suitable than one "real" or extravagant break. Regardless of income, Jewish families need domestic help. It is not a luxury. Using a credit card to prevent exhaustion is a matter of kindness. It is desirable while the opposite is undesirable. (Incidentally, using a credit card that way would also "give a break" to the rest of the family... )
Of course, women may still need to take an occasional vacation, but if women are less exhausted and more in control, that need should be more manageable, less extravagant.
Finally, I believe that the "format" of that occasional vacation is a matter of mere preference and can vary from time to time.
C. L.