Many can’t afford to take vacations this season: study

It will be a long winter for millions of Americans ಌwho won’t be able to head to the ski slopes or sun🌟nier climes for a vacation.

Some꧙ 33 million Americans, many of them millennials, are financially tapped ou൲t and will stay home this winter, .

“It should b🍌e no surprise that 33 million Americans s𓆉ay they can’t afford to travel this winter,” said WalletHub CEO Odysseas Papadimitriou. “Even though unemployment is near record lows and the stock market is near record highs, there are a lot of things weighing on consumers financially right now.”

Papadimitriou said many cardholders are “racking up credit card debt at a pace reminiscent of the run-up to the Great Recession” — a time when milli🥀ons of cardholders, many suddenly unemployed, couldn’t pay their card bills.

And, he adde🅰d, “Student debt clearly is a problem.”

Indeed, some hoping to travel this holiday season are still pa🎃ying last year’s debts, according to another 💝study, .

“One in 12 Americans w꧃ho put 2018 holiday travel expenses on a credit card are still paying for them,”♛ said Kimberly Palmer, a personal finance expert with NerdWallet.

“Nearly two-thirds who spent money on flights and hotels during the 2018 holiday season spent more than they planned to, with some taking cash from their savings or using t😼heir🤡 credit card to cover the additional costs,” she added.

Part of the probleꦰm, according to NerdWallet, is that about 40% of Americans “would rather go into debt paying for holiday travel than skip seeing their family during the holidays.”

The report found that the average h☂oliday expenses on flights and hotels put on a credit card came to $1,105.

Charles Hughes, an adviser in Bayshore, New York, said cardholders, especiall🍬y younge✤r ones, need to “understand how destructive credit card interest is and how it will hurt them achieving long-term goals.”

There is also a generation gap in꧋fluenc▨ing how credit cards are used.

Ama🤪nda Templeton, a business professor at Southern Utah University, noted the income difference between generations. She said this is why many millennials won’t be able to travel this holiday season. But if they do, they will often do so by adding debt.

Baby boomers tend to pay for trips with cash while millennials often use credit cards t🦩o finance trips, ༺according to Templeton.

And mil⛦len🗹nials, she added, are “more apt to treat themselves.”