I can hear my mother now...

Well, the summer vacation season is winding down. Even around here, some of the school systems are back already. But, even though we'll have plenty of summery weather in September, Labor Day is just around the corner. And the curtain's coming down on the Summer of '24.

Anyway, I saw an article in The New York Times last week about families going into debt to bring their kids to Disney World.

Which, of course, put me in mind of a) the family vacations I grew up with; and b) one of my mother's pet peeves.

a) Our vacations were pretty simple.

Every other year, we went to Chicago to visit my mother's family. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of those trips. We always spent a few days at my grandmaother's very Chicago prairie-style, sweltering bungalow in the city, doing touristy things like swimming in Lake Michigan and going to the Museum of Science and Industry. Doing untouristy things like dropping in at my (late) grandfather's grocery store or stopping by the house around the corner which had a yard cluttered with all sorts of elf statues. (Elves playing cards on mushrooms, elves on swings in the trees. It was an absolute magical dreamscape.) Extended family members - all sorts of great aunts and second cousins - would drop by to see us, including some recent arrivals, DPs (displaced persons) from the old country who my grandmother had sponsored.

And then we went out to The Lake, my grandmother's summer house, which was on Sand Lake (better name would have been Muck Lake), in Lake Villa, about 50 miles north of Chicago. There we would meet up with my Aunt Mary's family, and our fabulous Dineen cousins, who were roughly our age, so the house was crammed with kids. My youngest aunt and uncle were only 6 and 10 years older than me, so they were just slightly bigger kids. During those visits, there could be as many as 20 people crammed in a house with one bathroom. Somehow we survived. (We bathed in the lake, and probably did a lot of peeing in there, too.)

Oh, what a paradise it seemed. Lazing in the lake in big old inner tubes, making hollyhock ladies (all you need is a hollyhock and a bobby pin), playing endless games of rummy on the big porch that ran the length of the house. We didn't have elves like Grandma's neighbors did, but my late grandfather had liked his lawn ornaments. So we got to enjoy the fake wishing well, and a miniature lighthouse with tiny colored glass windows that must have opened, because I remember looking in to see all sorts of dead bugs. The only downside to a trip to The Lake was gagging down the wax beans that came from Grandma's garden. (My trick: floating them in a mouthful of milk and sluicing them down without actually having to taste them.)

To get to Chicago, we would either drive or take the train, which, I guess, depended on how flush my parents were at the time.

In the off years, we sometimes went to the Cape for a week or two, where we rented the modest Bass River cottage of my parents friends Mae and Nemo.

If we didn't go to the Cape in the off years, we did day trips. One would be to Nantasket Beach or, in later years, Horseneck Beach. Nantasket was fabulous, as it had an amusement park (Paragon Park) and Lahage's Salt Water Taffy. But even back then, the beach was narrow, and at high tide the beach shrunk considerably. Horseneck lacked amusements and taffy, but the beach was very nice - long and wide - and the changing facilities were brand new.

Another day trip would be to someplace doable in a day. Bennington, VT. Old Sturbridge Village.

After a couple of day trips, all my father wanted to do was sit in the backyard reading on the chaise longue, taking a break on good days to go up to Sargent Pond, just up the road in Leicester, for a swim and an ice cream cone.

We never did anything that was very exciting, that's for sure. Our vacations were exceedingly modest, but they were what the family could afford. And they were all absolutely wonderful. My Chicago/Lake memories are cherished. So are the Cape and day trip memories.

Of course, back then, no one (at least in our social circle) did anything very exotic. My friends went for a week or two to the Cape, or Hampton Beach. If they went to a faraway place, it was to see family. My friend Kathy's family had an aunt and uncle in DC, and one summer they visited them. My friend Susan's older cousin Marcia and her husband moved to SF, and Susan and her sister got to fly out there for a visit. (I was so excited, you'd think I was going along in the baggage. Most of my friends had never been on an airplane.)

And, of course, there was no Disney World at the time.

There was a Disneyland, and I remember watching the opening (on our B&W TV) and hoping that someday I could go there. (I did, when I was 22, and I was very happy to ride in those teacups and drive a flivver on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.) But no one went to Disneyland, unless they lived in California or something. No one I knew, anyway.

Which leads me to b) one of my mother's pet peeves.

There was not a lot of discussion/awareness of finances in our house. We lived comfortably; we had what we needed. There were people who lived in nicer houses. Sometimes we drove through their neighborhoods to ogle. My assumption was always that they probably weren't Catholics. But that was them. We were fine where we were. And we knew that there were plenty of people who had less than we did. Plenty of them were in our parish.

When I was in high school, a scholarship girl at the "fancy" Catholic girl school where the doctor-lawyer-funeral parlor daughters went, I became more aware of economic differences, but as a younger kid, I didn't see it at all. (Even in high school, my closest friend was a cop's daughter, also on scholarship.)

While there wasn't a ton of discussion of money in our house - other than that you didn't spend money frivolously - we were all well aware of my mother's pet peeve: no one should ever go into debt to finance a vacation.

Someone in her acquaintanship had done so, and she was forever bringing it up as the nth degree of foolishness. She never named names. Were they family members? Friends? Who was she talking about? I had my suspciion (friends, not family) and wish I'd asked her at some point, but never did.

How could you enjoy a vacation knowing you hadn't paid for it upfront?

You took on a  mortgage for your house. You might have a car loan. You might use your "charge plate" at the store for some reason, but you paid off the bill the second it arrived in the mail.

Borrow to go on a vacation?

What sort of imprudent ninny would do that?

Not my family, that's for sure.

But it's a different world now. People have credit cards, and charge everything. And there's Disney Land AND Disney World, and a divine-right expectation is that, in order to have a happy childhood, your kid will get to see one of them.

Thus, the families who went on trips they couldn't really afford and were happy to tell the NY Times that they were doing so.

Of course, you can't really blame them. Who doesn't want their little ones to meet Mickey and Elsa, etc. Sure, Disney is wildly expensive. But Disney is clean, pretty wholesome, and, let's face it, FUN.

But, but, but...

How can you enjoy a trip, knowing you'll be paying it off for months after. And, yes, I know, it's easier to pay off the trip than it is to save up ahead of time. There's always something to spend that spare $100 on, as much as you want to put it aside in the trip fund.

Still, it seems pretty crazy to go into $6K worth of debt to take a two-year old kid to Disney World because the mom "wanted his first visit to the park to be special." Of course, the kid's only two, so he won't remember a thing. But whatever.

This mom is not, of course, the only one going on a borrowed vacay.

In June, LendingTree, a financial firm, published the results of a survey of over 2,000 people that found that 45 percent of parents with children under 18 who have gone to Disney went into debt for the trip. (Source: NY Times)

Given how many millions of families trke each year to Disney World (with 17.1 million visitors in 2022, the largest amusement park in the world) or (second runner up with 16.8 visitors that year) Disneyland, that's a ton of families going into debt.

Not that I don't get the desire to take your kids to Disney. It really is magical. I would have eaten Disney up with a spoon when I was a kid. 

“Disney does carry a level of nostalgia for people,” said Rachel Cruze, who hosts a personal finance podcast and wrote a personal finance book with her father, Dave Ramsey, geared toward parents. “It’s a lot of people’s childhoods. When you can go to one singular place and have so many of those memories and those characters come to life, it does bring a level of joy.”

And I'm sure if I had had kids, I would have made the Orlando run with the kiddos. Still...

I keep hearing my mother. Even if there'd been Disneyworld when I was a kid. Even if there'd been credit cards. No way our family would have gone to Disneywherever. It would have cost too much, and my parents would sure as hell not have gone into debt to go there. 

Thank god we had Chicago. Thank god we had Paragon Park.