re: Typical cost for a 7 day vacation.

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Direct flights, booked Nov 2023, were $5,000 for a family of four. That's Anytime tickets on SWA.

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5k for 4 round trip tickets to Mexico is absurd wtf

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Direct flights, booked Nov 2023, were $5,000 for a family of four. That's Anytime tickets on SWA.

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First, props for including the dog sitter costs, people forget to add in stuff like that and airport parking and food and drink that add up.

Was going to ask you were flying first class, but its SWA. Not sure where you are flying from, but there had to be multiple SW sales since November where you could have swapped/booked the same flights for significantly cheaper.

To the larger question, you can still do a 7 day vacation for 3 or 4K, key is nailing the flight and having a realistic F&D budget. Also helps if you can get by without renting a car wherever you go.

Right on, especially if we can bring our dog. I rarely drive anywhere outside of the beach but a 5-6 hour drive both ways probably cost $200 in gas and $100 each way in food/bucee's/snacks on the road, but that $400 is half the price of dog boarding and airport park or uber/lyft each way.

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We flew to Destin about 5 years ago for a 4 day weekend and that was in early May and it wasn't crowded at that time.

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We flew to Destin about 5 years ago for a 4 day weekend and that was in early May and it wasn't crowded at that time.

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That's shoulder season and typically a good time to travel because you get off-peak fares with smaller crowds but also get some of the benefits of peak season (mice weather, opening hours, etc.)

That's the sweet spot for Europe imo.

The Caribbean can get a little tricky because of hurricaine season and the mountains typically have a shorter window for hiking or skiing due to inclement weather at altitude.

For 7 days I could maybe pull this off if I went to Jackson Ms for vacation or went to the beach and did sandwiches and spaghetti in the condo for every meal

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Is $3K for a week for 2 people low, high or somewhere in the middle, if you include flight, stay, food and entertainment?

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I would say 5k is your baseline floor for a 7 day vacation anywhere “nice” and that’s assuming you can drive there

For a basic, domestic vacation for the wife and I, we're normally in that $4500-$5k range.

I mean, $3500 or so for a week cruise out of a florida port, one night hotel before we sail, airfare, drink package, excursions, etc.

Same for Caribbean all inclusives.

I’ve flown to Europe for a week (solo) for vacation a couple of times. Flights lodging and concert tickets/attraction fees etc, under $2500 every time, except when I had to buy a soccer match ticket with a big markup. That time I came close to $3k.

I don’t shop, and eat where the locals tell me is good, not at wherever ballers tell me to.

it's ridiculous the cost of some places especially this summer
even places like Biloxi have extremely high rates for this week which is not even a destination type place

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Dumb question I know, but how do you find peak seasons for some locations?

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1. If you're not familiar with a location and it's popularity, start with Matrix.itasoftware.com (it's essentially Google Flights.)
Example from IAH to SFO You'll see there are days when the tickets are $150, and there are days $300 for a 7 day trip. Why? I don't know, but there may be a wine country festival around the expensive days, etc.

Another example, you can fly to/from Paris (France) for 7 days in August for $673 or for $977, depending on when you leave (hence why I find the SWA $5k fares to Mexico a joke.)

2. For foreign destinations, the timing is going to depend on latitude. Northern Europe gets warmer/sunnier later than southern Europe, but southern Europe also turns into a sweatbox faster. The sweet spot for Ireland is the second and third week of May, before tourist season kicks off, but you will get rained out once or twice.

3. The school calendar (Texas is usually a week different than every other state) plays a role. If you can pull your kids out of school two days before the end of school for most districts in KY, you'll see the price be much different (usually) for flights out of your locality.

4. You can use the "flexible dates" feature illustrated in ITA with hotels, too. On Marriott.com, I can see the Moxy in Paris can be 148 Euro a night, or 605 Euro a night (Olympics still going on early in the month.) Right after the Olympics closes out, rates crash to about 160. I can see "normal" level is about 225 Euro a month using the calendar.

5. Do not search/book through an OTA (Expedia, Priceline, etc.) especially overseas. You may "save" $13 a night off of the rack rate, but you create an extreme inflexibility for your travel plans. They have back end incentives to prioritize certain results. Searching the same dates to Paris (12th-19th of Aug, from IAH) the lowest fare ITA shows me is JetBlue at $768 R/T. Expedia shows me $886 as the lowest on BA.

6. When booking itineraries take care to really pay attention. People end up missing flights because they book a ticket from KY to Chicago to Seattle, but don't realize you fly into Midway, and out of O'Hare on the way there. Or, you have a 1hr 20m connection in Heathrow (London) but you have to go through Terminal 5, and you will never make that flight. Or, you have a 12 hour layover to save $140 a ticket. Newsflash, you will blow that eating in the airport anyway.

I saw prices like that in 2023, but not in 2024. Best you can usually do is $600.