- Five Gen Zs and millennials explained to BI how they pay for travel.
- Some say they've gone into debt or used "buy now, pay later" services like Affirm for their vacations.
Money can't buy happiness — but it can buy a weeklong vacation to the Amalfi Coast.
And if you don't have the cash, you can just fake it 'till you make it — or at least put the trip on a credit card and worry about it later.
Would you go into debt to fund your dream vacation? More than one in three Americans who said they planned to travel this summer would — either by borrowing money, using credit cards, or a buy now pay later service like Klarna and Affirm — according to an online Bankrate survey of about 2,300 adults in March.
According to the survey, millennials and Gen Z were the most willing to take on debt, with 47% and 42% of them, respectively, saying so. That's a stark comparison to Gen X and boomers, of whom 31% and 22%, respectively, said they're willing to do the same.
Why not, when, as one young globetrotter, 24-year-old India Roby, put it, "There's biggest fish to fry," she told Business Insider, pointing to general attitudes about the economy and global conflict.
'Fuck it — we ball.'
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.
"I don't want my finances and economic status to be the reason I can't have fun, live life, and be cute," Roby told BI. "I want to live my life and worry about the specifics later."
But her secret sauce to affording traveling isn't just putting big payments on new cards. It's also buy now, pay later services like Affirm and Klarna, which she said she uses for almost every purchase, whether Instacart, supplies from Petco for her two guinea pigs, or "impulse purchases at Sandy Liang."
Some flights, such as a trip to New Orleans in 2023, and Airbnbs, like the one she had booked for her trip back to Seoul.
And she's not alone — 16% of millennial and Gen Z travelers said they were considering using these services to fund their summer vacation, according to a recent Credit Karma report, which surveyed 2,006 adults online from June 6 to 8.
"I can't afford a $4,000 trip right off the bat, but if you split it up across six months, I could probably make that work," Roby said. "I am treating my childhood self to things I wasn't afforded, and also current me because I want to go on a vacation too."
'For now, it's going to be credit cards and Klarna until I die.'
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.
What she once thought was a "scam" has become a routine part of booking Airbnbs, flights, and an annual family vacation to Ohio. In the next year and a half, the Gilmores also plan to take their first family trip to Disney — using Affirm, of course.
"I would be able to pay a chunk of money, but my heart, growing up poor, is saying I shouldn't pay $2,000 right now for a vacation," Gilmore told BI. "In my mind, it's more feasible when I look at it as a monthly budget item."
To some, going into debt isn't worth a vacation.
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."
Witter funds her trips using her earnings from her TikTok accounts, her main source of income, which she said averages more than $6,000 monthly. (BI could not verify this.) While she does use a travel-specific credit card for points, she won't accrue a balance or use buy now, pay later services, calling them "risky."
"Having high debt is not the real trend despite what people see on social media," Witter said. "As young people, we have a responsibility to ensure our future is safe as much as we want to enjoy the present."
Take it from someone who learned the hard way.
If there's one person who can speak to Witter's sentiments, it's Canada-based Erin Spencer. Her full-time job is in the "financial industry," but she also creates TikTok content about her journey with debt, a topic she's personally well-versed in.
By 19, she was accruing credit card debt while "going on trips I couldn't afford," Spencer told BI. By 24, she had accumulated 25,000 Canadian dollars — about $18,300 — in debt, ultimately filing for bankruptcy.
Now, at 30, she still owes more than CAD$26,150 — about $19,100 — for payments such as taxes, car, and student loans. "I've basically had debt my entire adult life," Spencer said.
Like others, accruing a credit card balance was her way of affording trips. For example, her Boston vacation in 2022 and an international shopping trip to Maine in 2023, which she estimates had added a "couple thousand" onto her card.
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.
Yes, she got some backlash on TikTok for going on the trip. And yes, she could've put that money toward her payments. "But I would still have debt, and I'd probably be way more burned out if I didn't take a break and come back focused and ready to pay off my debt again," she told BI. "Everybody needs a break sometimes."
According to Credit Karma's survey, about one in four and one in five Gen Z and millennials, respectively, said they will use cash from a travel-specific savings fund to pay for their summer vacation.
Like Spencer, Zakaria Karanikos, 25, is one of them. She uses a sinking fund to budget for travel despite graduating with student debt — a balance of which currently sits just shy of $120,000 — in 2022.
In the past, she would put her vacation expenses on a credit card and work extra shifts to pay it off. Now that she earns more in her post-grad job — $72,000 annually — she only uses credit cards for the points.
"People my age feel this pressure to either not care about money and travel because they're never going to be this young again, or prioritize their career and never travel to get financially ahead," Karanikos told BI. "I think you should find a way to balance both. Our time is limited. Both can be important."
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."