These millennials and Gen Z-ers are going on vacation — no matter how much it costs

Family vacations weren’t a staple of Roby’s childhood, she said. Instead, she recalls growing up “super poor” with a “tumultuous upbringing, especially when it came to finances.” Evictions and electricity being turned off were “a common occurrence,” she said.

But that’s in the past. Now, she’s a freelance journalist in New York City and earning what she says is the most anyone in her family has ever made, at an average of $65,000 annually. (BI could not verify this.)

Her new financial freedom has come with the goal of going on one big vacation a year. So far, that’s been trips to Honolulu and Los Angeles in 2021, Seoul, Korea in 2023, and again in June.

She may not always have the cash to pay for it in full. But as the adage goes, if there’s a will, there’s a way.

When she was “definitely broke” last year, she charged her flight to Korea on PayPal Credit, which prominently advertises its “buy now, pay over time” option. For her recent trip back, she opened a new Chase Sapphire Preferred card to pay for the flights, not the points. “I want to go to Korea,” she said. “We’re going to make it happen. I don’t have the money, so I need to get money.”

That trip left her credit score “very in the gutter.” She’s now paying credit card debt, but happy she had a good time.

About a third of Gen Z and millennials said they don’t feel “financially stable” in Credit Karma’s survey.

Hailee Gilmore, 27, isn’t one of them. She and her husband share a two-year-old child and “a lot of student debt.” But they both work two jobs each, with Hailee earning about $85,000 annually from her full-time position at the New York State Health Department and her part-time job at a car dealership.

Despite this stable stream of income, Gilmore, like Roby, said she would likely use buy-now, pay-later services to book vacations for the foreseeable future.

Before them, Gilmore — who also said she grew up “poor” — had been fronting travel costs on credit cards, although not to the same carefree degree as Roby. “I felt like I was making a bad choice,” Gilmore said. “I felt irresponsible.”

She was initially skeptical of Affirm and Klarna — that is until it came time to book her and her husband’s almost $3,200 honeymoon at a luxury all-inclusive resort in Mexico.

He said they didn’t have the money for it. She suggested using Affirm.

And that they did, booking their big getaway in March 2021 with a 14-month payment plan of about $154 a month. “We go out to dinner a lot,” she said. “That’s the price of a dinner and drinks.”

The vacation had been paid off by their wedding and honeymoon in October 2022.

Take Crystal Witter, a 27-year-old law student, entrepreneur, and content creator in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for example. As a self-proclaimed solo travel lover with no commitments, she says now is the time to prioritize seeing the world, especially as she envisions a short-term future in Big Law, notorious for its long working hours.

She took out a “small” student loan to supplement her full law school scholarship. But because it’s so little, she doesn’t foresee paying it off as a long-term concern. (Interest rates for some student loans are typically lower than that of traditional loans or credit cards.)

“Money comes back, but experiences you’ll have forever,” Witter told BI, calling from her vacation in Dubai. “I’ll never be 27 again, in Dubai, traveling solo, falling off of dirt bikes, and living life.”

However, she believes financial responsibility is more important than “impressing people on social media.”

But just because she went on these vacations doesn’t mean they were stress-free. “I felt like I was living a lie and hiding something from people,” she said. “I was embarrassed.”

“Am I really enjoying it?” Spencer recalled asking herself. “Am I trying to keep up with the Joneses?”

That is, until a switch flipped in November, when she shared her bankruptcy story on TikTok.

Now, she’s wholly committed to paying off her debt.

“I don’t want to be a statistic,” Spencer told BI. “I don’t want to get into a cycle of filing bankruptcy.”

Despite this mindset shift, she still has a goal of traveling once or twice a year. But instead of going further into debt, she now uses a sinking fund, which she supplies with earnings from some of her TikTok brand deals and about $50 to $100 from each of her corporate job’s paychecks. (She said she makes between CAD$75,000 to CAD$85,000 annually from both. BI could not verify the amount.)

While she still has debt, having a travel-specific fund has allowed her to truly enjoy her vacations, including her latest two-week “recharge” trip in April to Florida, which cost about $2,500 — but didn’t deepen the well of her debt.

Or, as Spencer put it, a disagreement with the proliferation of the casual “treat yourself” mentality. “You really deserve it when you save for it and earn it.”

But that doesn’t mean she no longer struggles with the urge to spend more than she can budget for.

Her springtime Florida trip almost completely emptied her travel fund. For her 30th birthday in July, she was tempted to put another trip on her card. “I was having a full battle with myself, even if it’s just a few thousand dollars,” she said. (She ultimately decided against it.)

Spencer said she doesn’t judge people who put vacations on their credit cards. Of course, she’s been there, too.

But now, she “sleeps peacefully.”

“You can’t live life in a delusion, put everything on credit, and hope you’re going to get rich or pay it off somehow,” Spencer said. “Eventually, it catches up with you.”