You can have a financially responsible summer

As originally appeared in The Jerusalem Post on June 19, 2026.

“Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.” -Erma Bombeck

With older children, trying to coordinate schedules for a family vacation is nearly impossible. My wife and I decided to do shorter vacations with just some of the kids. We threw around ideas like a girls-only long weekend, maybe a jaunt to Europe with the boys to catch a sporting event. Whether anything will actually happen is another story. What’s important is that we spoke about doing something! Among the trips has me trying to fly somewhere short and cheap with our 2 younger children. I am quite comfortable using the word ‘cheap’ because I’m pretty confident that they won’t read my column!

Trying to come up with a destination has been difficult, and we still have yet to actually book anything. While I throw out Cyprus or Greece, I am met with Austria, Italy and Montenegro. When we start researching and find that, as teenagers, they will be bored in some of these places, and that in Cyprus or Greece at least there is water, they are not impressed. More and more I’m thinking we should just stay here, they can sit around and play on their phones and maybe I’ll take them out for Hummus!

I had to pick up our youngest earlier this week from a school trip, and we were discussing vacation plans, and then all of a sudden one of my favorite songs was playing. It was the classic Bananarama hit, Cruel Summer. Needless to say, she didn’t appreciate it when I started laughing at the lyrics:

The city is crowded, my friends are away, and I’m on my own
It’s too hot to handle so I got to get up and go

It’s a cruel, (cruel), cruel summer
Leaving me here on my own…

As we know, keeping kids busy in the summer can be costly. Whether it’s summer camp, swimming lessons, baking or drama camp and family vacation, the costs can break any well-intentioned budget. The next 3-4 months will be sunny and hot, with no rain. These drought-like weather conditions are eerily similar to the family financial forecast over the next few months.

What’s a financial drought? It’s getting sucked dry of your money. It tends to happen in the summer, when the expense of vacations, summer camps, book and clothes shopping for the upcoming school year, spending money for kids to go to movies and meet up with friends all hit your wallet at once, depleting your bank account.

A couple of years ago I wrote, “A few weeks ago as I was driving some of my kids to school I was listening to a morning talk show. The segment was about increasing government subsidies for summer day camps. As if the topic of government subsidies doesn’t raise my blood pressure enough, they had a guest who was complaining about how expensive summer is for her. Aside from sending 3 kids to camp during July, she was saying that she has to pay for additional camps and a family vacation to Europe in August. That’s when I lost it. I started talking out loud about her complaining about how much it costs to go to Europe for a family vacation. My 5-year-old asked, “Abba, who are you talking to?”

Yes, summer is expensive and I understand that parents get stuck and need to have a plan for their kids and that costs money. What I don’t get is the need for parents to lose all sense of financial responsibility to finance summer vacation. In fact, if the kids see that the parents aren’t disciplined financially, there is a great chance that they will grow up a lack that same discipline. Whatever happened to the golden rule of personal finance- If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it? If you can’t afford a trip to Europe don’t go. As Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos said, “The one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That’s approaching evil.” Bezos is spot on. Over the last 2-3 weeks I have received all kinds of messages from my bank, credit card company offering me loans for the summer.

There is nothing wrong with kids, especially teens, working and making their own money so that they can spend it and not be constantly hitting up the parents for cash. Parents need to be smart. Start planning and saving well in advance of the summer, so that the sudden expenses don’t send you scrambling to try and find the money to pay for them. In addition, there are plenty of ways to keep children occupied that won’t break the bank.

Use the summer to be a good example for your children and spend only what you both budgeted for and can truly afford.

The information contained in this article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of Portfolio Resources Group, Inc. or its affiliates.

Aaron Katsman is the author of Retirement GPS: How to Navigate Your Way to A Secure Financial Future with Global Investing (McGraw-Hill), and is a licensed financial professional both in the United States and Israel, and helps people who open investment accounts in the United States. Securities are offered through Portfolio Resources Group, Inc. (www.prginc.net). Member FINRA, SIPC, MSRB, SIFMA, FSI. For more information, call (02) 624-0995 visit www.aaronkatsman.com or email aaron@lighthousecapital.co.il.