Does it feel impossible to afford a family vacation as a single parent? 

In late 2024, my oldest asked me if we could go to the beach for Spring Break in 2025. At that time, I was in the holiday blitz and struggling with my Christmas budget. My immediate response was No.

After that conversation, I started considering whether I could make it work. To decide, I looked at a few factors:

1. Do I have the vacation time?
2. Can I afford it?
3. Do I want to go?

Do I have the Vacation Time?

I had to check if I had enough paid time off (PTO) time off of work. To figure out the duration of the trip, I had to consider:

• The drive there and back — 2 days there and 2 days back
• How much PTO I can take — 5 or 6 days
• How long the kids were off of school for Spring Break — 5 school days (9 days if including the weekends)

I checked my work calendar, and there were no conflicts (at the time) to take the time off. To ensure we had the most time possible for vacation, we would leave on a Saturday and return on a Saturday, which would be five PTO days.

This would be a road trip for us with a 12-hour drive. With the kids, it would look something like this:

• Day 1 (Saturday):
  • Leave home 🏠 and drive 3 hours — stop for lunch
  • Drive 3 hours — stop mid-way at Hotel #1
• Day 2 (Sunday):
  • Leave the hotel and drive 3 hours — stop for lunch
  • Drive 3 hours — arrive at the vacation destination and Hotel #2
• Days 3 (Monday) —  6 (Thursday): Vacationing! 🏖️
• Day 7 (Friday):
  • Leave the hotel and drive 3 hours — stop for lunch
  • Drive 3 hours — stop mid-way at Hotel #3
• Day 8 (Saturday):
  • Leave the hotel and drive 3 hours — stop for lunch
  • Drive 3 hours – arrive home! 🏠
• Day 9 (Sunday): Recovery and unpacking day!
• Day 10 (Monday): Back to normal routine!

✅PTO good!

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Can I Afford to Take the Vacation?

A Little History

I struggled with debt ever since I became an adult. I accumulated a lot of credit card debt and student loan debt. In 2020 I paid off my credit card debt and in 2021 I paid off my student loan debt. I promised myself I would never get into that kind of debt again. So far, I have managed to stay out of credit card debt. Since I got out of debt, I have funded vacations with cash. I use YNAB and start a sinking fund for any type of vacation or trip. Sometimes it takes me years to save up for a large trip.

When my son asked me if we could go on vacation in a few months, my immediate answer was “no” because I did not have a sinking fund for Spring Break 2025. Originally, I had planned to do things locally for Spring Break, like we did last year. A road trip to the beach would cost a pretty penny that I didn’t have in my budget.

Can I Adjust my Budget?

The first item I looked at in my budget was my sinking funds to see if I could “find” enough cash to fund a trip to the beach.

Taking into consideration how many days we were traveling I looked at cost estimates for:

• Accommodations/hotels
• Food
• Gas
• Activity costs

For baseline estimates:

• Looked at our last trip to the beach
• Used websites like Hotels.com to check hotel costs
• Used ChatGPT to see if I was on the right track

I started building my budget based on the rough cost projections. I’ll break down my budget further in a separate post.

Where I Found Monday in my Budget

1. I budgeted for a family vacation for the summer of 2025 and started the sinking fund in 2020. An unexpected family event came up and I cancelled that trip and reallocated the funds for a trip home instead. My costs are lower for that trip since we will be staying with family for most of the trip and don’t need a hotel room.
2. I was overfunded in a few sinking funds and moved those funds to the Spring Break 2025 budget.

Moving funds around, I was still short on funds based on my budget projections. I calculated how much I would need to save monthly to get to my budget numbers, I added this to my YNAB budget as a target goal.

Unexpected Medical Costs

As I mentioned in, Breaking Free: Starting My Journey to Financial Independence as a Single Parent and How You Can Too – Single Parent Life, we had some unexpected medical costs in the first few months of 2025. The costs were significant enough that I considered canceling this vacation to fund the medical bills. However, I was able to get creative with my budget to fund the medical costs:

• Shaved some spending on budget categories
• Wamming (YNAB term — whack-a -mole or WAM— when you borrow funds or move funds from one budget category to another) funds from other sinking fund accounts
• Cut some sinking fund target goals for “want” items I’m saving for

I managed to make it work without wamming from the Spring Break Budget! We were good to go.

✅ Budget good!

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Do I Want to Go?

Considering if I wanted to go on the vacation was tricky. We’ve taken this trip before and it was exhausting. “Vacation” sounds like a big yes — most of the time. However, road-tripping for 12 hours with 3 kids —  solo —  is that really a vacation for me? To be transparent, it’s not easy and it’s sometimes not that enjoyable.

It’s not always relaxing for solo parents to go on vacation.

Other considerations:

• My kids like routine and vacations can lead to dysregulation.
• Behaviors can be unpredictable in new locations (I have a special needs child).
• Knowing we had the summer trip back home, I hesitated to take another trip the same year.
• Even though I made the budget work, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use the funds that way.

Some pros:

• Spend quality time with my kids without work/regular life commitments as a distraction.
• New experiences for us as a family.
• Spend time at the beach!

I felt the beach calling my name! And my kids were doing all they could to talk me into it.😂 Therefore, I decided the pros outweighed the cons.

✅ Decision to go!

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What’s Next

I love planning. I think I love planning more than actually executing the plan. 😊 To follow along with our 2025 Spring Break vacation, future posts will cover:

• My Budget Plan
• Road Trip Logistics
• My Packing Plan
• Vacation Recap
• Lessons Learned from the Trip

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Have you hesitated on taking a vacation?

• What’s the biggest reason you hesitate to take a vacation?

• If money weren’t a concern, where would you go and why?

• What’s one step you could take today to make a future trip more realistic?

✨We have different reasons for putting off vacations—money, time, and responsibilities. What’s yours? Let’s share and support each other!