35% of Travelers Still Haven’t Paid Off Last Summer’s Vacation — and They’re Booking Another One

NerdWallet published a statistic this year that deserves more attention than it got. Among Americans who put last summer’s vacation on a credit card, 35% still hadn’t paid off the balance when surveyed in February 2026.

Not “took a few months.” Still hadn’t. Half a year after the tan faded, more than a third of last summer’s travelers were still carrying the trip — at an average interest rate of 22.3%, per the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

And now it’s July, and they’re planning this year’s.

The Full Picture Is Worse Than the Headline

The survey — conducted by The Harris Poll among 2,082 U.S. adults — found that only 26% of 2025 summer travelers who charged their trip paid it off with the first statement. Which means 74% incurred, or are still incurring, interest on a vacation that ended a year ago.

Meanwhile, 2026’s trips are already booked. NerdWallet found 45% of Americans plan a summer vacation requiring a flight or paid lodging, expecting to spend an average of $3,940 on those two items alone — over 120 million travelers and more than $475 billion. Squaremouth’s all-in number is even starker: a record $9,032 per trip, up 17% year over year.

How are they paying?

• 84% will use a credit card for at least part of the trip — by far the most common method
• 59% will use cash on hand or checking
• 43% will pull from savings
• 17% will use buy now, pay later
• 13% will take a cash advance
• 7% will use a payday loan

That last cluster is the one to sit with. Buy now, pay later, cash advances, and payday loans are not travel financing strategies. They’re what people reach for when the trip has already been decided and the money hasn’t.

And of the 84% using cards: 61% say they’ll clear it with the first statement. 23% say, up front, that they won’t. That’s a quarter of card-using travelers who know before they leave that they’re financing the trip — and, based on last year’s pattern, the ones who intend to pay it off don’t all manage it either.

“Vacation Math Hits Differently”

Sally French, NerdWallet’s travel expert, puts her finger on the mechanism:

“In the moment, it might just be $200 more for an ocean view or $40 extra for that seat upgrade, but multiplied across all the meals, tours and transit over a week or two, and your vacation budget can easily balloon.”

That’s exactly it. Nobody blows a vacation budget in one decision. The ocean view is $200 — evaluated on its own, on a trip you’ve been looking forward to for eight months, it’s obviously worth it. So is the seat upgrade. So is the nicer dinner, the extra tour, the cab instead of the train because it’s hot.

Each decision is defensible. The sum is a balance at 22.3%.

The reason this happens abroad more than at home is that the guardrail is missing. At home you know instantly whether $18 for lunch is out of line. On vacation there’s no baseline — no running number telling you that this particular $40 is the one that pushes food into the red. So the guardrail never fires, forty times.

The Two Numbers That Prevent It

Here’s the frustrating thing: this is a solved problem, and the solution is two numbers.

Number one: what you’ll save per week before the trip.

The most effective anti-debt move happens before you leave the house. A $4,000 trip eleven months out is about $84 a week. That’s it. That’s the whole intervention. Nobody feels $84 a week, and it gets you to the airport with the trip already paid for — which is the only version of this where the vacation genuinely ends when the vacation ends.

Compare that to the alternative. Financing $4,000 at 22.3% and paying it down over a year adds hundreds of dollars in interest to a trip you already took. You’re paying a premium for the privilege of not having planned.

Number two: your daily on-the-ground cap.

Once flights and lodging are booked, subtract them from your total. Divide what’s left by the number of days. That’s your daily allowance — and unlike “we have $4,000 for this trip,” it’s a number you can actually apply while standing outside a restaurant.

Then track against it as you go. Not as a discipline exercise — as a feedback loop. If food is at 70% of its budget on day four of ten, you find out on day four, swap two dinners for market food, and the trip lands on target. Nobody’s vacation was ruined. You just got the information while it was still actionable.

That’s the whole difference between the 26% and the 74%. Not income. Not restraint. Information timing.

A travel budget planner spreadsheet runs both numbers: a savings goal tracker that counts down the target and tells you the weekly amount to hit it, and a 9-category budget with an expense log you can fill from your phone at dinner, flagging green/yellow/red as categories drift. One handles the debt you’d otherwise create; the other handles the drift that creates it.

What About the 42%?

One more finding worth naming. 42% of Americans say they’d rather skip a vacation entirely than book budget airfare and lodging — and it skews young: 50% of Gen Z and 47% of millennials, versus 38% of Gen X and 36% of boomers.

There’s something honest in that. Travel is supposed to be good. Nobody wants a miserable trip to save $300.

But it’s a false binary, and it’s probably a decent part of why people finance vacations. Budget airfare and budget lodging aren’t the only levers — they’re just the two most visible ones. Flying at 6am instead of noon, choosing a mid-tier hotel over a swanky one, booking earlier, traveling a week off-peak, comparing all-in costs so a $200 resort fee doesn’t ambush you: none of those make the trip worse in any way you’ll remember, and together they usually beat what you’d save by suffering through a budget carrier.

Squaremouth found 88% of travelers are already making at least one adjustment to keep their plans intact — closer destinations, driving instead of flying, shorter trips, off-peak dates, staying with family, cooking some meals. They’re not skipping vacations. They’re engineering them.

The only thing missing from that list is the number to engineer against.

The Line That Should Stick

French again, and it’s the right note to end on:

“Remember that the goal of travel is the memories — and not the kind of memories you get every month when you’re still making minimum payments a year from now.”

Thirty-five percent of last summer’s travelers are getting that second kind right now. The trip’s over. The statement isn’t.