Why You Should Set Aside a Family Travel Budget. Yes, Even Now.

Note: The pictured family is so not my family. Not the one I was in before and certainly not the one I’m head-mother of now. Unlike us, however, they do look like people who do things like sit down and have family budget night, which brings me to my point in a multimedia-driven kind of way, which I hear is appealing to readers. Besides, if that was my daughter, I’d smack her into next week for wearing that saucy shirt and posing like a Bratz doll for what is clearly meant to be a wholesome family vacation shot.

In these tough economic times (I am so sick of hearing that phrase, but man, it’s the only one that seems to do since economic meltdown just sounds so….apocalyptic) it’s hard to think about setting aside money for anything. With children, there are even more reasons to cling, white-knuckled, to every penny you make because who knows what might happen? College costs could continue to soar, leaving your little genius prone to predatory student lending (there’s a can of worms you don’t even want me opening) or some godforsaken event could change the course of your life (your husband takes up golf or you get mauled at a Toys R Us Christmas melee), thus causing you undue personal economic woe. The fact is, we never know what the hell is going to happen next, so many of us, even if we were so not like this pre-child, tend to over-plan, over-worry, and over-budget for things that even the most meticulous, well-meaning budgeting can’t get you through.

Now, I’m not exactly Miss Responsibility when it comes to money all the time, so far be it from you to take any household budgeting-type advice from me. However, my advice has far less to do with budgets and spreadsheets than it does with life…more specifically, enjoying life. The same rhetoric that comes into play when we talk about planning for unforeseen future events applies, perhaps even more so, to planning travel into the family budget….But why?

Because things can happen that can bring your life to a screeching halt.

Of course, you knew that. But it is at times like those, no matter what sort of circumstances produced the screeching and the halting, that looking back and seeing a solid base of quality family time spent away from home, away from the norm, is the most meaningful. It is what matters. Travel is what makes it matter.

Travel takes us outside of ourselves, outside of the bubble of our homes, cars, jobs, pets, grocery and to-do lists. It makes us realize how small and relatively unimportant these day-to-day things are in the grand scheme of things, but not in that same depressing, awed way you feel when you look at all the stars and realize you’re nothing but a blip on the screen, a grain of sand on endless miles of beach, a flea on the ass of some unfathomable giant. Okay….that kind of talk, even if to prove a counter-point does start working on me pretty fast….Sigh.

So what I meant, in all of my ramblings, is that there is no greater way to create meaning than through shared, family experiences that cannot occur every day or even ever again. It takes distance from the daily trivialities to zero in on that sense of family and hell, for that matter, universal unity. It is a priceless action that all of us should let ourselves afford. And I repeat, we should let ourselves afford it.

In the economy and our daily lives, we are nickled and dimed to death. If you live near the portal to Hoth like we do, heating bills add to your worry. In short, we are, many of us, left feeling like there’s nothing left for personal enjoyment. But there is! There really is!  Can you exchange cable television for one year for a week-long family getaway in some far-off location? I’ll let you go ahead and keep your internet in this deal, but if you got rid of cable for just one year, that would leave you with $600. If you got rid of your morning latte every morning to boot, add another couple hundred dollars to that figure. If you can make do with even less, you’ll get so much more. Keep trimmin’ baby!

So, if you’re more organized and wifely than I am, which you probably are, look at your household budget. Can you trim if it’s for a good cause? What stays and what goes?