Finance
For travel-loving Canadians, other financial goals take a back seat to vacation spending
Liza Akhvledziani Carew and her husband David Carew visited Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve on their honeymoon. The couple strategically use credit card points to help pay for their travel.Supplied
Driving through rolling savannah plains in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve on her honeymoon, Liza Akhvledziani Carew saw elephants, lions and giraffes. She was reminded of the sheer vastness of the world and felt her “own little life” put into context.
For Ms. Akhvledziani Carew, the chief executive officer of a startup that helps Canadians earn more credit card points, travel is a non-negotiable budget item.
“It’s a big part of our lifestyle. That’s probably what I would spend most of my money on,” she said, adding that the couple pays for part of their travel with a “sophisticated [credit card reward] points strategy.”
The cost of travelling has soared in recent years, driven by the postpandemic travel boom, inflation and new taxes imposed by destinations affected by overtourism.
But for many Canadians, travel remains a high-priority spending area, regardless of rising costs. And it’s clashing with other financial goals.
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Kathleen Daunt, a financial adviser with the New School of Finance in Toronto, works with clients who are saving for a major financial milestone, most commonly to buy a home.
When she sits down with her clients and calculates the amount they’d need to save each month to reach that goal – which usually means not spending on travel – they balk at the trade-off.
“People expect to have all the items on their list of priorities. If anything, it means you have to understand your priorities and have flexibility,” she said.
She also said roughly two in five new clients will cite annual travel as one of their top financial goals.
Ms. Daunt said she sees the desire for travel as a mix of social media-induced fear of missing out, widespread burnout and a societal view of vacations as a right – all of which can make it easier to justify overspending.
“You have that same old expectation [of being able to take vacations] but everything just feels more pricey,” she said. “It’s so much money for a family of four or more to do an on-a-plane vacation.”
Canadians’ overseas trips were up 32 per cent in the July-to-September period last year from the same period a year earlier, and up 6.5 per cent from 2019, according to Statistics Canada’s most recent national travel survey. The amount they spent abroad also jumped, rising 20 per cent in 2024 from a year earlier and nearly 40 per cent from 2019.
Tourism operators anticipate a strong summer as more Canadians avoid U.S. travel
Even the trade war with the United States and growing possibility of a recession have not dimmed Canadians’ vacation ambitions. While travel south of the border by plane and car is down, Transat A.T. Inc. chief executive officer Annick Guerard said on a conference call with analysts in March that Canadians’ spending on transatlantic flights has not been affected.
According to estimates by Barry Choi, a personal finance and travel expert at moneywehave.com and regular Globe and Mail contributor, a two-week European vacation costs about US$5,050 ($7,000), though he noted the estimate was for a solo traveller, so couples or families should expect to pay notably more. Timing can significantly affect costs, with June to August the most expensive months.
In contrast, according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., Canadians’ average monthly mortgage payment at the end of 2024 was $2,042 (and much higher in Toronto, at $3,006, and Vancouver, at $3,053).
Rachel Dodds, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management who studies overtourism and consumer motivations for travel, said social media plays a huge role in stoking travel interest. According to data from TikTok, as of mid-2024 the app had seen a 410-per-cent increase in travel content views since 2021.
“Everyone has a phone, everyone consumes [travel content] – if you see a reel on Instagram you’re like, ‘Oh, I wanna go there,’” Prof. Dodds said. That goes both ways: While on vacation, people are much more likely to post photos for the “instant gratification” of likes and comments. “There’s an emotional and sharing aspect of it that didn’t exist before 15 years ago.”
Relative to previous decades, travelling is now more affordable and is seen as a right rather than a privilege in Western countries, Prof. Dodds said. And that increase in affordability has come at a time when many people, particularly millennials and Gen Zers, have more disposable income but feel other large financial goals are out of reach.
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“Travel has become a substitute for those kinds of things,” she said.
Prof. Dodds said we are an increasingly lonely society, and many people are travelling to connect with others to have meaningful, authentic experiences of other cultures. That’s given rise to sustainable travel, and nature-based trips and community experiences, rather than the traditional resort-based vacations.
While Ms. Daunt said none of her clients have ultimately chosen travelling over other financial goals, some have opted to delay major purchases. She said she usually sees people negotiating within their new budgets to downgrade from a trip every year to once every two or three years, or from pricier international trips to smaller ones close to home.
“It’s hard, because we have the push from feeling burnt out and I would argue expecting vacations. We live in a country where we feel like, ‘I deserve to be able to have vacations,’ and there’s this other push on the home-buying side where there’s so much FOMO when it comes to home purchasing despite a bonkers overpriced market,” she said. “We’re still putting those expectations on ourselves.”
A strategy of making small regular contributions to a dedicated travel savings account can be an effective way to save for vacations without compromising other travel goals, she said.
For Ms. Akhvledziani Carew’s part, when she and her husband bought their home a few years ago after years of rigorous monthly savings goals that mimicked what they expected to spend on mortgage payments.
They also tapped their investments, and her husband sold a condo he previously owned. She said they did slightly less-elaborate trips, but their points strategy meant they didn’t have to cut back much.
“It was a different position we were starting from,” she acknowledged, but added later “you build your lifestyle around the thing that’s most important to you.”
Written by Jitendra Parashar at The Motley Fool Canada
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Finance
Martha Aguirre, former El Paso ISD interim superintendent, resigns as CFO as district finds ‘key financial challenges’
El Paso Independent School District Chief Financial Officer Martha Aguirre, who served as interim superintendent last year, resigned this week as the district said it had discovered “key financial challenges.”
The district issued a news release late Thursday afternoon that lacked details but indicated that a recent review had raised questions about the district’s fund balances, a key indicator of financial health.
“Through this process, key financial challenges were identified that must be addressed prior to closing out the 2025-26 school year including a current budget shortfall that is being actively addressed ahead of the district’s final financial presentation to the Board of Trustees in June,” the news release said.
A CFO is charged with developing a school district’s budget and overseeing its finance department. The EPISD Board of Trustees must adopt a budget for the 2026-27 school year by the end of the fiscal year June 30. The operating budget for the current school year is $547 million.
EPISD Deputy Superintendent David Bates will oversee the budget while the district searches for an interim and permanent CFO, district officials said in a statement.
EPISD Board President Leah Hanany said trustees were notified about Aguirre’s resignation this week. She said the district plans to give the public more information on the current year’s budget during a board meeting later this month.
“The board was also notified of a potential budget shortfall for the 2025 budget, but we don’t have final numbers yet. My understanding is that we are still primed to pass a balanced budget for fiscal year 2026-27 in June,” Hanany said in a statement.
Aguirre could not be reached for comment. EPISD’s CFO makes $148,200 to $209,900 a year, according to the district’s administrative pay plan.
She served as EPISD’s interim superintendent from June to December 2025 after the district’s former superintendent, Diana Sayavedra, resigned under pressure from the board. She returned to her position as CFO when Brian Lusk was hired as EPISD’s new permanent superintendent.
Aguirre’s resignation comes amid an uncertain budget season after a state funding calculation error tied to school property tax breaks caused EPISD to lose out on $17 million in projected revenue. In late April, EPISD officials estimated it would cause the district’s spending to exceed its revenue next year by $10 million.
The district is also considering calling for a bond election in November to upgrade its aging campuses as part of the larger 2024 Destination District Redesign initiative to close schools and improve the ones that remain open.
El Paso Teachers’ Association President Norma De La Rosa said Aguirre’s departure was unexpected.
“We’re right in the middle of the committee meetings for a possible bond and getting ready to get that budget to the June board meeting for next school year. So, to say that I’m highly surprised is an understatement,” De La Rosa told El Paso Matters.
Aguirre started working with the district in 1996 as a general clerk, according to a video published by the district.
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