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> The most common sacrifice was taking no or fewer vacations. More than one-third of homeowners and renters (34.5%) who struggle to afford housing indicated tha

> The most common sacrifice was taking no or fewer vacations. More than one-third of homeowners and renters (34.5%) who struggle to afford housing indicated that they skipped vacations in the past year in order to afford their monthly costs. Vacations, at least the kind where you travel somewhere, are the definition of luxuries. It's jarring to hear about skipping them adjacent to a paragraph about skipping meals. I went on only a handful of vacations growing up, all of them staycations or domestic road trips with some other reason for going there or with someone else paying.

swatcoder 3y ago
Yeah, lifestyle expectations have shifted dramatically and many people have become strongly attached to consumer luxuries and extravagences. If you watch or read older media (fiction or non), or if you lived through it, you regularly see even middle class and professional characters living with sparse conveniences in their home and going on exactly those sort of modest road trips and motel stays you talk about and many of us remember. Trips to faraway lands, were treated as a novelty that you might bucket list once or twice rather than an annual necessity. You didn't buy a new TV until the old one broke. You talked to your neighbors and borrowed each others tools. You ate out as a treat, not because you just didn't feel like cooking that day. You planned your grocery shopping around sales and strove not to deviate from the plan while at the store. And these expectations shifted for everyone, not just incoming generations. It wasn't a generational divide and I don't mean to stir up boomer/zoomer tension -- it was a dramatic cultural shift that almost everybody seems to have adopted without even noticing. Exagerrated consumerism and "we are all middle class on the inside" mentality was how the West distinguished itself from its Cold War villian and now we are where we are. Everybody needs an often-unattainable and generaly-unsustainable amount of money to fulfill a life that few would have taken seriously just a few decades earlier, and the essential dissonance is producing widespread misery and angst.
- babycheetahbite 3y ago
  Very well put. People simply don't recognize the standard of living they enjoy, because "everybody" has it.
- mullingitover 3y ago
  Counterpoint: a friend of mine grew up in LA. His family, consisting of his parents and his brother, took a month long road trip vacation every year. They owned a home that is now valued at around $2 million. They did all this solely on his father’s income, which he earned as a public school teacher. The middle class has been gutted in the past 40 years.
  - swatcoder 3y ago
    Counterpoint or anecdote? If you're trying to say that workers in vital industries used to have access to a stable, modest suburban lifestyle negotiated by their union and that the same can't be said now, I don't disagree. But that's a separate and compounding issue, not a competing one.
    - mullingitover 3y ago
      By today's standards, being able to afford a three bedroom home in the LA metro area and raise two children on a single income, and not merely survive but be financially comfortable, isn't just a 'modest suburban lifestyle', it's an unimaginably rare privilege. Even if teachers are unionized, they aren't on the extreme high end of the income range for working class people.
      - swatcoder 3y ago
        I mean, I personallg know people who live exactly that "unimaginable" life in El Monte and Baldwin Park and Rancho Cucamunga and Van Nuys and Val Verde, so I hope you know you're exaggerating for effect. But I don't even disagree with you, as I already said. Things are hard for many people, and uncertain for many more, and in many different ways. I was talking about one of them. You're talking about one of them. Neither contradicts the other.
      - drewcoo 3y ago
        Since when are teachers working class? I had high school teachers who worked construction (working class) jobs during the summer, but that wasn't their regular work.
jncfhnb 3y ago
That’s just bad data storytelling. What’s more likely, that these people were planning extravagant vacations that they had to cancel? Or that they simply cannot afford vacations, and when asked if they “skipped” vacations “for monthly costs” they said yes.
rixthefox 3y ago
Curious then to hear your thoughts then. If a person can't afford "vacation" what incentives do they have to take them then? Fundamentally you're saying that vacation days should be used like sick days. So in reality the only people who can afford to have a real vacation are the ultra rich? So people like Elon Musk who feel like the world owes them attention because they are richer than any of us combined and have this constant need to flex that wealth to "own the poor" are okay? Meanwhile these same rich people will have a heart attack if you so much as dare ask for a living wage that adjusts for inflation. How dare you take away their hard earned money? Right?
- bradfox2 3y ago
  What is a 'real' vacation? If it's laying on the beach for a week in Hawaii, or traveling through France, those are luxuries that should not be annual expectations. Vacation just means having time to periodically not work for a living. Anything above that historically has been earned as a rare experience, but today is unrightfully expected. Like OP, we went camping or to visit extended family once a year. Instagram vacations to the beach were what the rich families did.
Buttons840 3y ago
Maye people simply have fewer vacation days. Objectively, vacation days have declined and home ownership happens later in life and people have fewer children (and more have fewer children than they want). We're doing the same work and getting less for it.
- gruez 3y ago
  >Objectively, vacation days have declined Source? >We're doing the same work and getting less for it. If you're talking about absolute amounts, this is directly contradicted by the BLS data. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
maerF0x0 3y ago
I've felt similarly about tattoos. I've never understand someone complaining about their student debt when they've been to a dozen or so countries, or have $20K of tattoos on their body, or spend more on door dash per week than I do on food per month. I do think for some people the number gets too large and it becomes abstract. $100K debt and they think "I'll never pay this off" while they spend $1000 a month across discretionary extras.

swatcoder 3y ago

Yeah, lifestyle expectations have shifted dramatically and many people have become strongly attached to consumer luxuries and extravagences. If you watch or read older media (fiction or non), or if you lived through it, you regularly see even middle class and professional characters living with sparse conveniences in their home and going on exactly those sort of modest road trips and motel stays you talk about and many of us remember. Trips to faraway lands, were treated as a novelty that you might bucket list once or twice rather than an annual necessity. You didn't buy a new TV until the old one broke. You talked to your neighbors and borrowed each others tools. You ate out as a treat, not because you just didn't feel like cooking that day. You planned your grocery shopping around sales and strove not to deviate from the plan while at the store. And these expectations shifted for everyone, not just incoming generations. It wasn't a generational divide and I don't mean to stir up boomer/zoomer tension -- it was a dramatic cultural shift that almost everybody seems to have adopted without even noticing. Exagerrated consumerism and "we are all middle class on the inside" mentality was how the West distinguished itself from its Cold War villian and now we are where we are. Everybody needs an often-unattainable and generaly-unsustainable amount of money to fulfill a life that few would have taken seriously just a few decades earlier, and the essential dissonance is producing widespread misery and angst.

babycheetahbite 3y ago
Very well put. People simply don't recognize the standard of living they enjoy, because "everybody" has it.
mullingitover 3y ago
Counterpoint: a friend of mine grew up in LA. His family, consisting of his parents and his brother, took a month long road trip vacation every year. They owned a home that is now valued at around $2 million. They did all this solely on his father’s income, which he earned as a public school teacher. The middle class has been gutted in the past 40 years.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  Counterpoint or anecdote? If you're trying to say that workers in vital industries used to have access to a stable, modest suburban lifestyle negotiated by their union and that the same can't be said now, I don't disagree. But that's a separate and compounding issue, not a competing one.
  - mullingitover 3y ago
    By today's standards, being able to afford a three bedroom home in the LA metro area and raise two children on a single income, and not merely survive but be financially comfortable, isn't just a 'modest suburban lifestyle', it's an unimaginably rare privilege. Even if teachers are unionized, they aren't on the extreme high end of the income range for working class people.
    - swatcoder 3y ago
      I mean, I personallg know people who live exactly that "unimaginable" life in El Monte and Baldwin Park and Rancho Cucamunga and Van Nuys and Val Verde, so I hope you know you're exaggerating for effect. But I don't even disagree with you, as I already said. Things are hard for many people, and uncertain for many more, and in many different ways. I was talking about one of them. You're talking about one of them. Neither contradicts the other.
    - drewcoo 3y ago
      Since when are teachers working class? I had high school teachers who worked construction (working class) jobs during the summer, but that wasn't their regular work.

jncfhnb 3y ago

That’s just bad data storytelling. What’s more likely, that these people were planning extravagant vacations that they had to cancel? Or that they simply cannot afford vacations, and when asked if they “skipped” vacations “for monthly costs” they said yes.

rixthefox 3y ago

Curious then to hear your thoughts then. If a person can't afford "vacation" what incentives do they have to take them then? Fundamentally you're saying that vacation days should be used like sick days. So in reality the only people who can afford to have a real vacation are the ultra rich? So people like Elon Musk who feel like the world owes them attention because they are richer than any of us combined and have this constant need to flex that wealth to "own the poor" are okay? Meanwhile these same rich people will have a heart attack if you so much as dare ask for a living wage that adjusts for inflation. How dare you take away their hard earned money? Right?

bradfox2 3y ago
What is a 'real' vacation? If it's laying on the beach for a week in Hawaii, or traveling through France, those are luxuries that should not be annual expectations. Vacation just means having time to periodically not work for a living. Anything above that historically has been earned as a rare experience, but today is unrightfully expected. Like OP, we went camping or to visit extended family once a year. Instagram vacations to the beach were what the rich families did.

Buttons840 3y ago

Maye people simply have fewer vacation days. Objectively, vacation days have declined and home ownership happens later in life and people have fewer children (and more have fewer children than they want). We're doing the same work and getting less for it.

gruez 3y ago
>Objectively, vacation days have declined Source? >We're doing the same work and getting less for it. If you're talking about absolute amounts, this is directly contradicted by the BLS data. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

maerF0x0 3y ago

I've felt similarly about tattoos. I've never understand someone complaining about their student debt when they've been to a dozen or so countries, or have $20K of tattoos on their body, or spend more on door dash per week than I do on food per month. I do think for some people the number gets too large and it becomes abstract. $100K debt and they think "I'll never pay this off" while they spend $1000 a month across discretionary extras.