Stay away from glossy pop culture or travel magazines right now if your dwindling finances or your kids’ camp bills (or college tuition bills) are robbing you of your vacation this year.
Those aspirational publications are filled with gorgeous getaway scenes (populated with sun-kissed celebrities most of the time), which will leave many of us bitterly disappointed or green with envy. Plenty of us sure won’t be experiencing those things ourselves this summer of 2016.
“I hate to be bitter, but my next-door neighbors literally leave every weekend for their lake house while I stand there and wave good-bye,” said one mom.
Don’t you love captions like the ones we all see in the grocery check-out lane? As in — “Check out the stars partying on a yacht off the Amalfi coast!”
Where is the Amalfi coast, anyway? And how is there room in the ocean for so many yachts?
“Seeing me at any beach this summer would be as rare as a Yeti sighting,” one Boston mom of three told LifeZette, laughing. “My big vacation this summer is returning again and again to Walmart to get college dorm-room items. I’m at the point in the summer where my kids are staring at me and I’m glaring back at them — and a ‘big treat’ is going for an iced coffee all by myself.”
So moms and dads are settling for staycations, instead.
“It may be ‘ordinary time’ within the liturgical calendar,” Erin Wylie Newcomb wrote for Christ and Pop Culture, “but reflecting on summer vacation prompts me to consider just how ordinary poverty is for so many of my neighbors, literal and figurative.”
[lz_bulleted_list title=”Save Your Summer” source=”http://money.usnews.com”]Go “out of your way.” Do something you might not normally do.|Take in a movie or concert. Many cities and neighborhoods offer free family-friendly events all summer long.|Try a new restaurant. This allows you to take a break from cooking, while experiencing something fresh and relaxing.|Get outside. Many staycation options cost next-to-nothing, such as going on a hike, taking a family bike ride, going boating, or flying a kite at a local park.[/lz_bulleted_list]
It’s true: The typical worker in the fastest disappearing middle-skill jobs has an annual salary of less than $40,000, according to USA Today.
That leaves little time for fun in the sun, as many Americans are just scrambling to cover monthly bills. “Feet in the baby pool” has replaced summers at the shore, and many moms and dads find themselves taking in the mail, feeding the goldfish, and watering the plants for lucky neighbors who are off to exotic locales — or are at least leaving the neighborhood.
“I hate to be bitter, but my next-door neighbors literally leave every weekend for their lake house while I wave good-bye as I drag in our garbage cans,” one New York mom told LifeZette, laughing. “It’s hard not to begrudge them their time off — jealousy is a real and honest emotion, and I am experiencing it.”
If you are stuck at your own address all summer, don’t forget to take some time off for day trips and activities that you can experience as a family.
Related: Coolest and Smartest Summer Fun
Set up protocols that truly allow this. “Do an “out of the office” message for your e-mail (even if your office is a corner of the playroom),” advises Realsimple.com. “Say you won’t be checking your e-mail till you’re back from vacation. Then power down the computer and throw a towel over it.”
If all else fails, try to remember the words of humorist and mom Erma Bombeck, who wrote of family vacations, “We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings.”
Heck, that makes staying home sound sort of fun.
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