Here is a tip that many couples may find useful. Our second car is always a “beater.” By this I mean a used car with high milage that costs little enough (in my case, less than $1500) to justify not carrying collision insurance. This results in an insurance cost of less than $40 per month and NO CAR PAYMENT. I drive the beater to work and my wife drives the “family car,” currently a Chevy Equinox. The money we save by not having a second car payment and the corresponding high insurance payment goes into our vacation fund (we put away $300 a month this way – certainly a conservative figure.) By adding the money we would normally spend during the time we are on vacation (food, fuel, entertainment, etc.) we can spend $5000 per year on vacation without incurring any additional debt (we DON’T borrow money for vacation expenses.) We have been able to take 3 to 5 weeks of vacation each year for the last 30+ years using this method.