How trip affordability calculator Works
The percentage rules
Vacations at 5% of annual take-home are a normal life line; 10% is a deliberate big-trip year; past 15% the trip competes visibly with everything else (emergencies, retirement, the roof). The rules are guides, not laws — but trips funded by revolving debt violate the one that actually matters.
The debt line
A vacation on a 24% APR card costs ~24% more by payoff — and the memory depreciates while the interest compounds. The honest alternatives: resize the trip (shorter, closer, simpler), extend the savings timeline, or wait a year. The trip you save for also tends to be the trip you planned better.
The savings-timeline method
Gap ÷ months = the monthly line, compared against take-home. Under 10% of take-home, it is a budget line; above that, either the trip shrinks or the timeline extends. The method's quiet benefit: the anticipation period — months of a funded plan — is itself a large fraction of a trip's total happiness, at zero APR.