Guess what? For calling myself the Roamer and this site Traveling Wallet,  In 2014 I had made no written goals that we were going to travel. It wasn’t that we weren’t planning to. We have a standing trip to the In-laws at least once a year. It just wasn’t something I was going to focus my attention on.

My baby hadn’t even turned a year old so travel was not even on my mind. I mean how do you travel when you have what I would consider a newborn. (Less then a year is a newborn baby to me). So other then the trip home to Michigan which was required, specially because we had said baby, we had no other travel plans.

Yet even like that, in 2014 we all still hopped on a few planes as a family, as well as just the grown ups.

But before I jump into our Vacation wrap up lets talk about what the average American vacation looks like. This will give me something to compare to later.

So I guess first off the average american doesn’t take much vacation. It says so on the internet, and I can attest to that, as at my current job several employees have accumulated over 200 hrs of vacation.  Why would anyone do that? Then there are those who don’t travel anywhere for it. They didn’t call them staycations before but that is what happened.

However those who do vacation seem to spend quite a bit per family member.

So what does the standard vacation look like and cost. According to a few sources the average American family spend about $4,000 on vacation and it usually covers 4 people for a week now lets just assume it was a full 7 days and not 5 days.

According to vacationkids.com families should budget 5-10% of income. Hmm, so they are saying the more you earn the more you’ll spend.Then this other site has a nice info graphic.

So with all these rules of thumb being thrown around lets just go with the american express survey numbers. $1145 per person or $4580 for a family of 4.

I don’t know about you but that seems pretty pricey for the amount of time you get. So now lets see what the Roamer clan did this year.

Comparing Figures

How much did we spend on vacations/ travel all year?

$3951.67*

How big is our family?

4+1=5 , If you haven’t figured it out yet, our family of 5 consist of: Me, Mr. Roamer, Little boy and little girl and my Mom. So 3 adults, 2 children. Yes I live in a multigenerational household. (that’s a story for another time)

How many days of vacation per person?

• 1 got 24 days- My mom**
• 4 got 10 days- The Roamer clan
• 2 got an extra 6 (that would be us, The Roamer and Mr.Roamer)

Where did we go?

All of our trips required flying as we live in California and our trips took us to

• Milwaukee
• Denver
• Michigan
• El Salvador**

How much do standard american families spend?

A lot! And they don’t seem to get very much. Below I have a chart of what you’d get at the “standard family vacation”.  Seems like with a bit of planning and some savvy spending you can get much more bang for your buck.

For us the short impromptu trips were due to being invited to some weddings. We had known they were coming in 2014 but we didn’t really decided that we were going until late. Those trips were the most expensive per person per day.

Yet…

All in all it was a fun year and it look like we made out better then the typical Jones’.

We also saved a whopping $7496 compared to the average Joe (and Family). Sounds good to me I don’t miss traveling like the average joe one bit.

During our travels we learned some new things so Lets play a quick game of

Did you Know?

Did you know?

It is absolutely no trouble at all to take the bus from the airport in Milwaukee (MKE) to downtown.

It cost very little about 2.50/ person and the bus was mostly empty and felt safe. So if you’re ever flying in to that airport and staying in the downtown area. Skip the cab and the rental car. The buses work great and its a very walk-able area.

Did you know?

Denver has this awesome tool for transportation called the bcycle.

Its a pretty cool business and in a city were there are major bike routes it just makes so much sense. So if you are in Denver you might want to remember to pack your bike helmet and skip the car rental as well.

If your looking for low cost entertainment mixed in with a little nostalgia stop by 1 up arcade. I’m not a drinker but adult beverages are served and most(all) of the games are the standard quarter(check out their FAQ in you don’t believe me). I’m not an Xbox or PlayStation gamer but I really enjoy arcades(Pack-man please)

If you have kids like I do, another great thing are public parks and pools. Growing up I had never been to a community pool that included a mini water park for the kids. I thought this was awesome The cost? Okay I don’t remember exactly but it was about $2 per person.

Did you know

El Salvador is home to these popular sites. Blah! I’ve never actually been. I really wanted to have some cool insight but without having been there well I’ve got nada.  When I get there on my own 2 feet I’ll share. Until then if you ever are in my neck of the woods I can cook you some authentic Pupusas!

Thanks for reading

The Roamer

 How did you make out last year did you travel as much as you wanted too? What do you have planned for this year?

* Some thing to consider is that our total cost likely doesn’t include some numbers for example food costs. Some food costs might have been sorted to our standard monthly food budget. Still I checked and on our vacation months we did not go over our food budgets.  Same for gas. All this means is that if we were gone for a week we spent the same money we would have otherwise spent on food. It wasn’t above or beyond which is usually the case for vacations. Anything that was above and beyond was included in our cost.

** We only paid for the flight, all other costs were incurred by my mother. However I wouldn’t peg her spending anything more then $250 while she was out.

*** I am not getting paid for any of these awesome recommendations. I just think these are cool. Plus Mr. Roamer said that’s what he’d include if he was writing the post.